In 1830, Colombia sent General Simón Bolívar Palacios packing. Dispatched from power, Bolívar would die on his way to exile abroad melancholic and regretting that he plowed the sea. By any standard, Bolívar was a tyrant, an autocrat who wanted to perpetuate himself in power. That political tradition runs deep in the veins of Latin American history. It is called continuismo - the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely - and it has been the lifeblood of Latin America's authoritarian tradition. One that unfortunately remains very much alive today.

More than any other country, Colombia has avoided continuismo by enacting strict term limits. For much of the 19th century, Colombian Presidents served two year terms. They are now allowed a four-year term though in Colombia the law allows for non-successive terms. Still, only one man, Alfonso López Pumarejo, managed to get elected for a second term. That is until Álvaro Uribe Vélez who will complete his second consecutive term in August 2010. Though he is still mulling a run for a third term and remains undecided, President Uribe would be undermining Colombian democracy should he choose to run just as Hugo Chávez Frías' tenure is undermining Venezuela's democracy.

Latin American political traditions favor a strong chief executive and weak legislative bodies. Presidents have wide appointive powers and sweeping powers of decree. Recall the protests in Argentina last year. Those protests were set in motion because President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner raised export tariffs from 35% to 48% on soy beans and other agricultural products by decree. Faced with six months of protests that shut Argentina down, President Fernández de Kirchner was forced to seek Congressional approval for her decree. She lost that battle by one vote in the Senate, ironically that of her Vice President Julio Cobos. This is one of the rare times that a presidential decree has been overturned.

Another week, another John Bolton op-ed in a major newspaper, this time in the Washington Post, arguing for an Israeli attack on Iran.

With Iran's hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.

Iran's nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.

Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process.

That logic only exists in the minds of a demented few who fail to weigh the consequences of what such an attack would bring. While Iran is unlikely to respond in kind, it does have asymetrical options available. These might endanger the flow of oil out of the Gulf and place American strategic interests across the region in jeopardy. Former Ambassador Bolton seems to believe that one well placed bomb will bring the regime in Tehran down. That's unlikey.

Whether or not Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapon or a credible nuclear deterrent without actually possessing a nuclear weaopn remains unclear. Nonetheless reliable estimates suggest that the Iranians are still years from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Furthermore, a military strike is not an efficient or reliable way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.  "Far from setting back Iran's nuclear programme, a military attack might create the political conditions in which Iran could accelerate its nuclear weapons programme," nuclear weapons physicist Dr. Frank Barnaby concluded in a March 2007 Oxford Research Group (pdf) report entitled, "Would Air Strikes Work?"

Yglesias weighs in on the new Senate balance:

In many respects the main significance of Franken's victory isn't that it brings us to 60 senators, it's that it increases by one the number of serious progressives in the Senate. But Franken or no, the balance of power still rests with a large block of centrist Democrats and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe on the other side. The situation by no means dooms Obama's agenda to defeat, but it does mean that legislative outcomes are overwhelmingly likely to be a fairly pale shadow of the agenda a majority of the public voted for last year.

There's two different issues. The first involves the centrist block - Senators are islands to themselves, and Dem leadership can't herd them easily. Obama's agenda will always face resistance - but I'd rather negotiate with Senators in my own party than with Republicans.

Yglesias also mentioned the second roadblock: until Senators Byrd and Kennedy return to full health, Democrats literally won't actually have 60 votes.

Senator Chuck Grassley has been holding town-hall meetings around the state this week, and the Iowa Democratic Party highlighted a fun clip from his June 30 meeting in Waukon. A constituent wanted to know why his health insurance policy was so much more expensive than Grassley's, despite having less generous coverage.

The senator advised the questioner to "go work for John Deere" if he wanted a better insurance policy. (Not too practical, since Deere has laid off workers in Dubuque, Ottumwa and the Quad Cities this year.) As Grassley tried to move on to the next question, the man continued to press for details about Grassley's own coverage, and the senator advised him to go talk to the people at the Farm Services Administration about health insurance.

But the questioner followed up again: "How come I can't have the same thing you have?"

To which Grassley replied, "You can. Go work for the federal government."

Since there aren't too many federal government jobs in the Waukon area, I have a better idea: why doesn't Grassley support a real public health insurance option for all Americans?

I have tried to stay away from the Mark Sanford story as best I could over the past week, but with the South Carolina Governor continually stepping in it, it's getting increasingly hard. Looking through the latest news, it's difficult to see how Sanford isn't done.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has backed out of a promise to release personal financial records to the media proving he did not use state money for trips to see his mistress.

Charles wrote, "Governor Sanford should resign not because he is having an affair but because he misled his staff as to his whereabouts and breached his duties." I think that's about right, particularly on the last point.

When this story was just about moral turpitude, it looked like Sanford was going to be able to survive. Though such news probably foreclosed the possibility that he could run for President in 2012, it did not implicate the type of broader legal issues that had forced previous politicians to step down as a result of sex scandals.

However, once Sanford dangled out in front of the press a promise to prove that he did not misuse state funds -- only to rescind the offer -- he made this story significantly bigger. Now the scandal is about a potential abuse of office, even if also an affair. The press isn't going to let this story go until they find out whether or not Sanford properly paid for the trips to see his paramour, and apparently even the South Carolina GOP is beginning to get antsy. So I think he's just about done.

Now living in La Jolla, California, Mitt Romney has been keeping a low profile even as many think that the former Governor of Massachusetts is increasingly the heads-on favorite to win the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination. Certainly many of his likely opponents seem to be engaged in acts of political self-immolation. Certainly by staying out of the limelight, Romney seems to benefit. But on Tuesday, Romney was back at the Massachusetts State House for the unveiling of his portrait as the 70th Governor of the Commonwealth.

In an interview with Fox News, Romney urged Republican to stand in opposition to the President's policies:

"I think Republicans have to stand up and make it very, very clear that we run the risk as a nation of having the entire world lose confidence in the currency of the United States and that would lead to something worse than a recession -- that would lead to an extraordinary slowdown globally that would hurt us more than any other," Romney told FOX News Tuesday evening.

He said the GOP has a responsibility, however thin their numbers, to stand up to stimulus spending and excessive government intervention in health care.

"When the stimulus bill is wrong, when it wastes money and threatens the viability of our currency long-term, you have to stand up and say 'no.' When a health care plan says we're going to have the government take over health care which is roughly a fifth of our economy, Republicans are going to have to say 'no' to that," he said.

Leave it to Mittens to get his facts wrong. Actually, health care is more like a sixth (17%) of US GPD and that's the problem. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), health care spending accounts for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France. Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens but somehow Mittens and the GOP can't bring themselves to recognized that it is our system that is broken, not theirs. 17,000 Americans die annually for lack of proper health care but this doesn't seem to bother the GOP.

The Colombian magazine Cambio is reporting tonight that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe agreed in principle this past Monday during his meeting with US President Barack Obama to allow the US military access to five Colombian military bases scattered across the country. The US will gain use of the three most strategic air bases of the Fuerza Aérea Colombiana (FAC), the Colombian Air Force, and two of the most important naval bases of the Armada Nacional, the Colombian Navy, including one on each coast. The US has been looking to replace the loss of the Manta Naval Air Station in Ecuador that it has used to run counter-narcotic operations across South America and Central America.

According to Cambio the US gains use of the Palanquero FAC base, the most important in the country, situated in the center of the country on the right flank of the Magdalena River between the departments of Cundinamarca and Caldas, the Alberto Pouwels FAC base in Malambo in the Colombian department of Atlántico just outside the city of Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast and the Capitán Luis Fernando Gómez Niño FAC base in Apiay in the Colombian department of Meta. This last base, located on the northern fringe of the Amazon Basin, places the US into the midst of Colombia's long-standing civil war. It is from Apiay that the Colombian armed forces coordinate the war against Bloque Oriental of the FARC, the most powerful group in the Marxist insurgency. The base in Palanquero has also long been a FARC strategic objective as it is the largest air base in the country and boasts the longest runway in Colombia. In terms of naval bases, the US is to gain use of ARC Bahía de Málaga on the Pacific Coast and the ARC Bolívar in the historic city of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.

Mark Sanford, the increasingly embattled Governor of South Carolina, must think that the Associated Press is some sort of licensed therapist. How else can one explain this statement? "I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate," he told the Associated Press. He was referring to his mistress, Maria Belen Chapur of Buenos Aires. That's all fine and good. I'm happy for the Governor but does the world need to know the intimacies of Mark Sanford?

It gets better. Despite his Argentine soul mate, the good Governor insists he can fall back in love with his wife, Jenny Sanford. The Governor should realize that a soul mate is worth more than a mere governorship. Edward VIII, after all, gave up his throne for the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. More from the Associated Press:

The once-promising presidential prospect said he is committed to reconciling with his wife, but professed to The Associated Press his continued love for the Argentine woman at the center of the firestorm that gutted his political future.

In emotional interviews with the AP over two days, he said he would die "knowing that I had met my soul mate."

Sanford also said that he "crossed the lines" with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as he did with his mistress.

"There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line," he said.

Sanford insisted his relationship with Maria Belen Chapur, whom he met at an open air dance spot in Uruguay eight years ago, was more than just sex.

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

Even with the latest revelations, Sanford maintains he is fit to govern and has no plans to resign.

"I've been able to do my job and in fact excel at it," Sanford said, while acknowledging he is a spectator at his "own political funeral."

At this point, the wounds are self-inflicted. I'll repeat what I said last week when this story broke. Governor Sanford should resign not because he is having an affair but because he misled his staff as to his whereabouts and breached his duties.