Sean Penn, the Toast of Venezuela

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, has publicly given props to Sean Penn for taking a stand against the war in Iraq. The politico even hopes to meet with the actor when he isn't busy touring the poorer neighborhoods of the country. "What drives [Penn] is consciousness, the search for new paths," Chavez said in a televised speech. He then read aloud from the Oscar winner's open letter to President Bush — you know, the one in which he calls the chief and his cronies "villainously and criminally obscene people."