The Supreme Court of Venezuela recently handed down a ruling in favor of the government of Nicolas Maduro which rejected a measure designed to prevent the dictator from rewriting that nation’s constitution. The current plan is for a group of people largely selected by Maduro to elect a “constituent assembly” to draft a new version of the document. The court’s ruling keeps that plan in place for the time being.

That turned out to be a rather unpopular decision among the thousands of starving people who were protesting in the streets. It was, in fact, so extremely unpopular that some of them decided to visit the Supreme Court building and set it on fire. (Telegraph)

Anti-government protesters set fire to the supreme court in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday.

This is the twelfth week of upset in the country, as protesters demand the resignation of president Nicolas Maduro and call for elections…

Violence broke out in protests at the Supreme Court over a bid to change the constitution, and Venezuela’s chief prosecutor said on Monday her family had been threatened and followed by intelligence agents since she split with the government.

Fanned by anger at triple-digit inflation along with shortages of food and medicine, protests have grown smaller but more violent over the past two months, with at least 67 killed and thousands injured.

Maduro may be running out of friends quickly and I don’t just mean the protesters in the streets. We recently talked about the country’s Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Diaz, who has been standing up to Maduro on more than one occasion. Since that time she and her family have been receiving death threats. Maduro wants to blame it on the rioters (along with everything else) but Diaz has told reporters that she’s been being trailed by police cars which look suspiciously like the Venezuelan intelligence service.

The protests are spilling over into every aspect of Venezuelan life. This week there was a large festival organized to honor the country’s youth soccer team (which placed highly in the World Cup) but chants condemning Maduro broke out there as well. Venezuela has been going off the rails for quite some time now as we’ve frequently discussed, but now the tone seems to have become even more dark. Members of the ruling government are turning on each other even as the death toll in the streets continues to rise.

Wherever this train is heading, the final stop isn’t going to be pretty. Sadly, there’s little anyone else can do at this point but pray.