Well, why not. There’s an opening for a repressive Jew-hating dictatorship on our July 4th barbecue guest list and it’d be a shame to see all those extra hot dogs to go to waste.

The two nations expelled each other’s envoys last September in a dispute involving allegations by Bolivia, a close ally of Venezuela, that Washington was meddling in its internal affairs.

The normalisation of diplomatic ties “will take place in the coming days, and as soon as the ambassadors have resumed their functions we will move forward to a more fluid communication,” Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan foreign minister, said on Wednesday.

Ian Kelly, a US state department spokesman, said it was unclear when an ambassador would return to Caracas or who it would be.

We’ll be sending an ambassador to Syria soon, too. With all that’s going down in Tehran, this may seem like a curious moment to hold “hug an evil douchebag” week, but there is a method to Obama’s madness. Syria and Venezuela are, of course, chief allies of Iran; peeling them away with a charm offensive is designed to further isolate the regime (and could help seriously weaken it in Lebanon), although why that would discourage them from building nukes rather than spur them on to an even greater paranoid nuclear frenzy isn’t clear to me. You see where this is headed, though. There’ll be a nice thaw between the U.S. and these megalomaniacs for a few months or years, then Chavez will order a pogrom or do something similarly vicious and nutty and we’ll be treated to the same excruciating spectacle of disapproving Obama half-measures that we’ve seen this week. “Grave concern,” “this is not the dictator I thought I knew,” the whole nine yards. Can’t wait. Oh, and if you think I’m exaggerating about Chavez ordering a pogrom, think again. As the photos at the link demonstrate, the writing’s on the wall in Venezuela. Literally.