At today’s bloggers briefing, Representative Connie Mack (FL-14) joined us to talk about the threat posed by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Specifically how Chavez is building alliances with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other US enemies. Mack was recently featured in documentary about the growing ties between Iran and Venezuela titled, “Crisis in the Americas.”

Here’s the trailer.

We also heard from Dave Mastio who came by to promote the launch of a new site, RightyBlogs.com.

Connie Mack

Yesterday a resolution co-sponsored by Mack was passed in the House, which according to Mack's office, laid out the "House of Representatives’ growing concerns over the national security implications regarding Iran’s growing relationships in Latin America."

Mack described the resolution, and the documentary as all part of an effort to get the American people to pay more attention to what’s happening in Venezuela.

Mack said,

It rests upon our shoulders and your shoulders to highlight to the American people the dangers posed by Hugo Chavez.

Mack argued that if Hugo Chavez continues his relationship with Ahmadinejad, and gives Ahmadinejad a foothold in our hemisphere, we’ll have something like Castro and Cuba during the Cold War.

"Do we want someone like that in our backyard?" Mack asked. He continued, saying we need to have a forceful discussion about policy toward Chavez, and we need to let the people of Venezuela know that we support them.

This guy's addicted to power, and he’s addicted to conflict. He sees himself as Castro, except he doesn’t want to be the dictator of just Venezuela but of all of Latin America.

Mack also stated that free trade agreements between Latin American countries and the US are important.

It sends the message to allies that we care.

RightyBlogs.com

Dave Mastio came by to talk about Rightyblogs.com, a directory of Conservative blogs organized by state, that Mastio hopes will be an, "accurate reflection of the Conservative blogosphere in each state."

The site's been launched in cooperation with Eagle Publishing (the owners of RedState) and is build on the BlogNetNews.com platform, that Mastio also developed.

Mastio said that they already have over 4,000 blogs in the directory and are adding about a dozen a day. If you have a blog that you want listed, you can email Mastio at editor (at) blognetnews (dot) com.

::UPDATED::
Next week Rob Bluey announced that John Bolton is supposed to come by to talk about his new book.