Other Stuff

I just can't get across all the beauteous links I have to share with the world with the space I am fortunate enough to be given at FDL as I await the dedicated site. So, um, here:

• Gavin Newsom has a new ad up doubling down on changing the Constitution and ending the 2/3 rule (he mentions it twice in a 1:00 ad). I think this is the beginning of more to come, as Newsom recognizes that moving into an aggressive reform pose is the only way for him to differentiate himself from Jerry Brown, who will find this too hot to handle.

• The unions are coming out hard against the Baucus bill, for two reasons: the public option and the tax on high-end insurance plans. On the former I'm glad to see them so aggressive; on the latter I just don't think it's good public policy to prop up an inefficient system of providing health care to people. Congress is debating this intensely, and my hope would be that the public option would be enough for the unions to back the bill even with a high-end tax, although I do think it should be indexed so we don't get a perpetual problem like the AMT.

• A deal in Honduras? But President DeMint said that the coup plotters were freedom fighters!

• Nancy Pelosi wants to allow children to remain on their parent's health plans up to 26 years of age. Great policy and great politics. This is one of those short-term deliverables that Mike Lux is talking about.

• Republicans are going to lose a House race in New York because of a third party from the far right getting all the attention and all the money. The Democrat in NY-23 (no great shakes himself) is outspending her 12-1 on TV. Nobody should trust Republicans to get their act together long enough even to make a dent in the Democratic majority.

• Abortion bans do not cut the abortion rate. They kill women.

• Why should the public be allowed to see Blackwater on trial for the Nissour Square murders? You'd think we have an open and transparent judicial system or something! I'm not talking about putting them on Court TV, the public would be banned from even ATTENDING the hearings.

• Wow, this isn't good.

American officials in Baghdad urged Iraqi lawmakers Tuesday to pass an election law crucial for organizing a January vote that the Obama administration considers key to withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

In a statement, U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and Gen. Ray Odierno, the American military commander here, said they were concerned that parliament hasn't yet reached an agreement on the law. They urged lawmakers "to act expeditiously on this important legislation that will set the terms for successful, transparent political participation in this milestone event." A day earlier, Ad Melkert, the U.N. representative in Iraq, voiced similar concerns.

The Iraqi Parliament doesn't exactly move swiftly, and we're talking about an election scheduled for just a few months from now. In addition to delaying withdrawal it could throw Iraq's political system into crisis. Yikes.

• The green jobs bill in New York could be a model for the nation. It creates jobs and reduces emissions. Win-win.

Honduras, Red State

I think the plan for the ruling regime in Honduras is to negotiate out the clock on restoring Mel Zelaya. He only has a few months left on his term, and so endless talks would just serve to push resolution past the end. While they talk the talk of diplomacy, the government is using mercenaries, in violation of international conventions, to suppress dissent and support the rulers.

Meanwhile, the ruling regime has spent over $600,000 in a high-profile lobbying campaign, hiring those responsible for America's bloody crackdown in Central America in the 1980s like Otto Reich, along with corporate whores like Lanny Davis who will literally say anything for money. This has allowed them to gather friends at the top of the government, particularly Congressional Republicans like Sen. Jim DeMint.

Let's see, endless delays in negotiations, use of mercenaries, fealty to lobbyists, PR as a national policy.

They really are a mirror for American democracy! Circa 2002, at least.

Politics Doesn't End At The Water's Edge

The US government long ago decided that what happened to Honduras President Mel Zelaya was a coup. The whole "waking him up in the middle of the night in his pajamas and putting him on a military plane" must have been the giveaway. Since then diplomatic efforts have attempted to resolve the crisis, but to no avail. Zelaya snuck back into the country, and has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy. The leaders of the new regime in Tegucigalpa, after trying to take away civil liberties to suppress dissent, have finally warmed to the idea of restoring Zelaya to office with limited powers until the next Presidential election ends his term in January. That would be a responsible compromise for both sides and would put an end to the crisis.

It is at this moment when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-Bugfuckistan) decides to lead a Republican delegation to meet with the ruling regime, which no country on Earth has recognized as a legitimate government. To quote Steve Clemons:

In other words, Jim DeMint is acting on behalf of, in cahoots with, and against the foreign policy of the United States of America in encouraging post-coup Honduran government officials defy the United States. He is encouraging a political leadership which has no legitimacy and which not recognized by other democracies in the region -- while the ousted President makes cell phone UN General Assembly statements from a couch-bed in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

A US Senator alone does not make the America's foreign policy, and working against the policies of the United States in collaboration with foreign officials. . .well. . .there are words that come to mind to describe this behavior, but I want to be civil towards the Senator.

But let me be less blunt. Should we require Senator DeMint to register with the Foreign Agents Registration office at the Department of Justice?

I don't think this is a violation of the Logan Act any more than it was a violation for Nancy Pelosi to meet with members of the Syrian government. But at least that was a recognized world body.

The President and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry tried to block the trip, but Mitch McConnell intervened, and DeMint and three House Republicans - Reps. Aaron Schock (IL), Peter Roskam (IL) and Doug Lamborn (CO) - will attend the meeting.

DeMint calls it a fact-finding mission. But he has been blocking two Obama Administration nominees for Latin American foreign policy in protest of the Honduras policy. Clearly, the Senator is intervening in an area of international diplomacy for naked political reasons. DeMint's response to that is interesting for a variety of reasons:

"Sen. DeMint cannot prevent Sen. Reid from bringing the nominees to the floor, he can have a vote at any time. Sen. DeMint has objected to unanimous consent," said Denton, also adding: "In fact that's all you can do. In the Senate when, someone says you're holding up a bill or a nominee, what one Senator can object to is passage by unanimous consent. No one Senator can stop the Senate working the majority of its will through 60 votes.

I hope the Democrats recognize that when it comes to health care.

I don't see anything legally wrong with DeMint's trip. From the standpoint of foreign policy, it's damaging and corrosive - and there was a time when members of political parties saw themselves as Americans first and party regulars second.

...And you can extend this out to the nonsensical Olympics controversy. As Alan Grayson said today, "Someone should remind them what team they're on." Actually, I think they know. Team GOP.



...it's part of a pattern.

Doing Away With Those Inconvenient Civil Liberties

I still don't understand Mel Zelaya's game plan in Honduras, but it's pretty telling that the ruling regime, who staged a coup to remove Zelaya from office, immediately turned their thoughts to eliminating civil liberties the moment they felt any dissent toward their brazen action. Kind of tells you what kind of people we're dealing with.

The new restrictions, including a ban on non-authorized gatherings and a media clampdown, aimed to protect "the large majority of the Honduran population which is not engaged with groups of violent protesters," according to an announcement on national television.

The restrictions were announced on the eve of mass protests called by Zelaya for Monday, the three-month anniversary of the coup.

Zelaya has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy since his surprise return to the country last week.

The right, which has been praising the coup and chiding the President for "coddling" Zelaya, self-evidently history's greatest monster, will probably find a way to explain away the state-sponsored supression at work here. They always do. As Glenn Greenwald notes in a fantastic post today, they are the kings of moral relativism, having convinced themselves that violating international treaties and suspending laws and dealing in the weapons trade and stealing elections are fine for us and our allies, but reprehensible for those designated enemies of freedom and liberty. To quote Greenwald, "It's the adolescent self-love of believing that 'X, by definition, is good when I do it and bad when you do it.'"

Again, And His Point Was?

So Mel Zelaya breaks back into Honduras so he can hole up at the Brazilian Embassy, get his supporters tear-gassed, watch the nation fall under curfew and martial law and just sit there until the food ran out? This was the plan?

Honduran troops surrounded the Brazilian embassy where ousted President Manuel Zelaya was holed up with dwindling supplies and a few hundred supporters, diplomats and journalists.

Soldiers earlier fired tear gas and wielded truncheons to disperse around 4,000 pro-Zelaya demonstrators who had camped out overnight around the embassy to protect the man they see as the rightful leader of their country.

Electricity, water and telephone lines to the Brazilian embassy compound in the center of Tegucigalpa were all cut off as the de facto leadership tried to put the squeeze on Zelaya and force him out.

There were also reports of a clampdown on Zelaya's supporters, with human rights organizations in Honduras and elsewhere saying two demonstrators had been killed, others injured and hundreds arrested.

I think the ruling regime is acting in contravention of human rights and with dubious authority - Zelaya is not a Branch Davidian in a compound, and he shouldn't be treated like one. Still, I don't understand the strategy. There are apparently a bunch of kids trapped in that embassy with Zelaya, with no food. How does this help Zelaya's cause, which has a shelf life of three months before the next elections anyway?

...The interim President now says he'll talk with Zelaya. So maybe that was the point, to create an international incident to break the deadlock. There was a human cost for that, however.

The Great Escape

So this Mel Zelaya guy actually snuck back into the country somehow.

Honduran authorities have mobilised riot police, declared a curfew and shut airports after the dramatic return of Manuel Zelaya, the president ousted in a coup three months ago.

The interim government scrambled to keep control after being caught off-guard by Zelaya's appearance on Monday at the Brazilian embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa, where he drew throngs of supporters.

The deposed leader sneaked back into the central American country - apparently travelling in a car boot and a tractor, among other means - and from the sanctuary of the embassy vowed to retake power.

"I want to tell you I am committed to the Honduran people and I am not going to rest one day, one minute, until the dictatorship is toppled," he told hundreds of cheering, chanting supporters.

My question: what exactly is the plan here? Zelaya's a wanted man in the country, though by staying in the Brazilian embassy he'll probably be all right. There's an election scheduled in a month and a half, after which point he cannot really make a claim to the Presidency anymore. The Honduran government basically held firm and refused to negotiate, and while Zelaya can certainly cause trouble for them, in the end I don't see any game plan to get him back in power for the remaining couple months of his term. Even the United States has essentially given up.

Honduras Update

The deposed President was sitting on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, and briefly stepped inside Honduran territory for reasons that are inscrutable. He then walked back over the line, reporters in tow.

Meanwhile, the current Honduran government has a curfew set in the border areas.

As the talks to settle this dispute have collapsed, I don't see a possible endgame, though I assume more sideshow activity like "I'm in Honduras, now I'm not" will probably be in order.

And I think we can all agree that, while it's hard to find winners in this situation, we can definitely pinpoint one loser - Lanny Davis.

"My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America," Davis said when reached at his office last Thursday. "I do not represent the government and do not talk to President [Roberto] Micheletti. My main contacts are Camilo Atala and Jorge Canahuati. I'm proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law." Atala, Canahuati, and other families that own the corporate interests represented by Davis and the CEAL are at the top of an economic pyramid in which 62 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.

For many Hondurans and Honduras watchers, the confirmation that Davis is working with powerful, old Honduran families like the Atalas and Canahuatis is telling: To them, it proves that Davis serves the powerful business interests that ran, repressed, and ruined Honduras during the decades prior to the leftward turn of the Zelaya presidency.

"No coup just happens because some politicians and military men decide one day to simply take over," White says upon hearing for whom Davis is working. "Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests. The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour."

"The tragedy," adds White, "is that the Canahuatis and the Atalas and the other big businesspeople don't understand that it's in their best interest to help to do things like help people make a decent living, reduce unemployment, and raise the minimum wage."

What do you get when you cross a wealthy businessman, the might of a military, and a Latin American coup? Lanny Davis for ten grand or so a month.

New Civil War!

Those defending the Honduran government for rousting the democratically elected President out of bed and into a plane leaving the country and installing a new leader always claim that Mel Zelaya was attempted to subvert the Constitution by seeking a second term, justifying the coup. Clearly, then, if Zelaya would give up that claim and agree to even earlier elections than required by law, there could be some common ground, right? As long as the Constitution was defended and all that. But no:

Talks to resolve the coup crisis in Honduras collapsed Sunday after the de facto government refused a mediator's proposal to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

The failure of negotiations under the direction of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias dashed the most promising diplomatic effort aimed at ending the crisis and raised the specter of more violence.

"What is the alternative to dialogue?" a disappointed Arias said in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital. "Possibly . . . there could be a civil war, or bloodshed, that the Honduran people do not deserve." [...]

Carlos Lopez, representing the de facto Honduran government as foreign minister, said it would not agree to the brief reinstatement of Zelaya, the first of seven points proposed by Arias.

"I am very sorry," Lopez said to Arias, "but the proposals you have presented are unacceptable."

He said efforts to reinstate "petitioning citizen Mr. Zelaya" represented foreign interference in Honduran affairs. He likened Zelaya's purported violation of the Honduran Constitution to "a woman being raped by the person obliged to defend her."

So much for understatement!

In addition to reinstating Zelaya, the deal would have moved up elections, installed a "national unity government" with new cabinet ministers from all major parties, and gave amnesty for any coup-related crimes. That's everything the coup plotters say they wanted. What they actually sought was power through the barrel of a gun.

Coup Watch

Just in case you're wondering, the President of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, is still outside the country, negotiations are still ongoing (though not producing much of value), and now he's called for a popular insurrection.

"The Honduran people have the right to insurrection," said Zelaya, speaking Tuesday in the neighboring Central American country of Guatemala.

Insurrection is a legitimate democratic right "when faced with a usurping government and a coup-supporting military," he added, urging his supporters in Honduras to strike, march and engage in civil disobedience because that is "a necessary process when the democratic order of a country is disrupted.

"I want to tell you to not leave the streets, that is the only space that they have not taken from us," he told a news conference alongside Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom.

Zelaya has issued an ultimatum to the interim government led by Roberto Micheletti that it must relinquish power within the week and demanding his own immediate restitution.

This is in the middle of negotiation sessions, mind you. I guess Zelaya is playing bad cop.

...which seems to be working!

(CNN) -- Provisional Honduran President Roberto Micheletti told reporters Wednesday that he would be willing to step down as long as ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya ceases his claims to the presidency.

The provisional president said that if it became "extremely necessary" for him to step down in order to maintain peace in the country, he would, as long as Zelaya was not restored to power, Micheletti's son, Aldo Micheletti, confirmed to CNN en Español.

It seems like the best practice here is to allow Zelaya to serve out his term but leave after that without expanding term limits. That is not what Micheletti is offering here, but it's closer.

Coup De Grace

I remember seeing "Our Brand Is Crisis," with all the Clintonite campaign types using American-style techniques to get the dull neoliberal technocrat Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (nicknamed "Goni") elected in Bolivia through an image makeover and sophisticated polling. Eventually this led to riots in the streets after Goni tries to open their markets and after the corporations extracting the country's natural resources simply fleece the poor. Eventually, the populist Evo Morales rose to power.

It's fun to see the same kind of Clintonite defend a military coup to keep at bay the same kind of populist leader in Honduras:

Honduran business leaders are turning to Washington lobbyists to convince Congress that it should support rather than oppose the military removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.

The Honduran branch of CEAL, the Latin American equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has hired Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to make the case to U.S. lawmakers and foreign diplomats.

And leading the lobbying effort for the firm is partner Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and well-known supporter of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when she ran for president in 2008. (Davis is also a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog.) [...]

Davis said he has not called Clinton to set up a meeting between her and Honduran government officials and does not plan to do so.

Davis said the business group wants to restore order to Honduras, which has been in upheaval since the country’s military ousted Zelaya on June 28 after he tried to alter the constitution.

“This is about the rule of law. That is the only message we have,” Davis said, adding that Zelaya “was acting unconstitutionally and illegally” when he pushed for a voter referendum to change presidential term limits. The Central American nation’s other branches of government opposed his move, and his decision to ignore them led to his ouster.

I certainly believe Lanny Davis would probably have been inside the government in some capacity in a Hillary Clinton Administration, and I'm glad he's instead on the outside agitating for military coups. Also of note - that the "rule of law" includes rousting an elected President out of bed in his pajamas and putting him on a plane. The overall story is more complex than that, but there's hardly a world where that happened that can be accurately termed as acting under the rule of law. Not even Bush-era right-wing judicial nominee Miguel Estrada can escape from that fact.

Neogtiations In Honduras

Some better news out of Honduras. After a meeting between ousted President Mel Zelaya and Secretary of State Clinton today, a diplomatic agreement has been brokered, though I don't think it will be entirely smooth.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Tuesday accepted a U.S.-backed effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate an end to the political crisis in Honduras and said talks with his rivals would begin on Thursday.

"Our first meeting is set for Thursday, in Costa Rica," Zelaya, told Honduran radio from Washington, saying he would meet the "protagonists" of the June 28 coup that ousted him.

But Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, faces mediating between sharply opposed positions.

Zelaya said that his reinstatement as president was "nonnegotiable," adding of the talks, "What this is is not a negotiation, this is the planning of the exit of the coup leaders."

In Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Honduran lawmakers after the coup, also said he accepted Arias as a mediator, but added his government maintained his position that Zelaya could not return.

If you can squint and sort of see the outlines of any deal, let me know. But dialogue can bear fruit if given enough time and backing. You could see some sort of deal where Zelaya gets to serve out his term (which has less than a year left) in exchange for a vow not to change Presidential term limits. And then the people of Honduras get their elected leader and can choose another one. Obama made a good statement:

"America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies," Obama said in a speech in Russia.

"We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not," he added.

Sounds reasonable to me, which is why he'll get endlessly attacked for "siding with Castro and Chavez."

Air Drama In Honduras

Moving to the other country locked in a political crisis, as I mentioned yesterday Mel Zelaya's plane was blocked fom landing on the runway in Tegucigalpa Airport. The military placed army trucks across the landing strip to prevent the plane from touching down. Meanwhile, large crowds massed at the airport and were pushed back by the military, causing at least one death. I will say that reporters and photographers do seem to have more access in Honduras than in Iran, leading to more in-depth stories. This, from Marc Lacey and Ginger Thompson at the NYT, is a good example.

An airborne drama that held Honduras in suspense for most of the day ended Sunday evening with the ousted president’s plane circling over the airport here in the capital, where soldiers and riot police officers blocked the runway and used tear gas and bullets to disperse supporters who had awaited what was supposed to have been his triumphal return.

As the plane carrying the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, swept in low and made two passes over the city, cheers erupted from the crowds below. An air force jet then streaked across the sky and Mr. Zelaya’s plane flew off to Nicaragua, where he made a brief stopover before heading to El Salvador.

“The runway is blocked,” Mr. Zelaya said in an interview from the sky that was broadcast over loudspeakers to his supporters on the ground. “There is no way I can land.”

He vowed to make another attempt soon.

There are some diplomatic efforts going on between the new Honduran government and the Organization of American States, which suspended Honduras last weekend. But who knows whether that will bear fruit.

At least there's something new to monitor on Twitter.

Reporters Should Do More Than Check Twitter Hashtags

Here's the latest on the Honduran situation: the new government remains defiant despite condemnation from most of the Americas. The Organization of American States has threatened their removal from the group, but the government threatened to leave the OAS right back. Manuel Zelaya attempted to enter the country today, but the military vowed to turn back his jet and divert it to El Salvador. The government has said they would arrest Zelaya if he set foot on Honduran soil. Protests continue in the capital.

Interestingly, while there is significant Twitter traffic about Honduras, very little reporting has gotten out about the protestors, and certainly not to the extent of Iran. It's just interesting what captivates global attention. Iran is obviously a larger country with more technological savvy, but that should not necessarily drive coverage. The truth is that Zelaya's power base comes from the lower classes in Honduras, who don't have access to social media in the way that students in Iran do. And thus, the coverage changes.

Seems like we should be paying more attention to this situation.

...there are conflicting reports, at least as I read them in broken Spanish, of Zelaya arriving in Honduras or touching down in El Salvador. Then there's this report:

Canciller de facto de Honduras: "Obama es un negrito que no sabe nada de nada"

The minister of information on Honduras: "Obama is a little black man who knows nothing from nothing." More.

Showdown In Tegucigalpa

The Organization of American States unanimously demanded the return of Mel Zelaya to the Presidency in Honduras, and gave the new government three days to do so. If they refuse, they will be suspended from the organization. The US has put joint military exercises in Honduras on hold. The UN resolved not to recognize the coup-backed government. And Mel Zelaya will head back to the country:

The two presidents of Honduras were headed on a collision course Tuesday, as the president ousted by a coup vowed to return and his replacement threatened to arrest him the minute he lands.

Neither side seemed willing to bend in a looming confrontation that is the first test of the Obama administration's diplomacy and clout in the hemisphere.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, removed from office Sunday in a military-led coup, addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and said he would fly back to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the head of the Organization of American States.

But the newly appointed interim president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, warned that if Zelaya returns, he will be arrested, tried and sent to prison for years. Micheletti's claim on the presidency is seen as illegitimate by the international community.

The situation is somewhat complex - referenda of the kind that Zelaya sought have questionable legality in the Honduran system, and sadly, the military runs elections. But the real problem here is the lack of a legislative check on the Presidency. If a President falls from favor with the representative Congress, they have no means, through impeachment, of removing him. There's nothing constitutional about rousting the President from his bed at gunpoint, sending him to the airfield in pajamas and flying him out of the country. But there's no remedy to a Constitutional crisis of the type that supporters of the coup, at least, feel they had with Zelaya's call for a referendum that they say would eventually increase Presidential term limits.

This sounds like a compromise:

As the rally was underway, a small, anxious but growing group of Honduran lawmakers sought to build a coalition to endorse a compromise measure to allow for Zelaya's return. According to one participant in the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of derailing the negotiations, the compromise would include a general amnesty for everyone involved, including the coup leaders and members of the military, while Zelaya would have to abandon his plan to hold a referendum that could lead to a change in the Honduran constitution.

One four-year term sounds a little constricting for a President, but Zelaya shouldn't necessarily be allowed to orchestrate his own hold on power. Of course, the point of a referendum is that the people decide, so I'm not seeing the dictatorial nature of it. I guess the military is saving the people from themselves.

Honduras' Coup/Not-Coup

The first day after the coup in Honduras included riot police turning hoses on protestors and angry denunciations from the President of the United States, in a break from past tradition when Presidents offered tacit support to Latin American coups (or overt support, as in the Bushies' reaction to the attempted coup of Hugo Chavez in 2002). Questions still dogged the White House, however.

The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the C.I.A. may have had a hand in the president’s removal.

Obama administration officials said that they were surprised by the coup on Sunday. But they also said that they had been working for several weeks to try to head off a political crisis in Honduras as the confrontation between Mr. Zelaya and the military over his efforts to lift presidential term limits escalated.

The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military and helps train Honduran military forces. Those close ties have put the Obama administration in a difficult position, opening it up to accusations that it may have turned a blind eye to the pending coup. Administration officials strongly deny the charges, and Mr. Obama’s quick response to the Honduran president’s removal has differed sharply from the actions of the Bush administration, which in 2002 offered a rapid, tacit endorsement of a short-lived coup against Mr. Chávez.

As if to rebut the past support for military overthrows in the region, Obama began with a sharp statement and built on it at a press avail with Colombia's Alvaro Uribe:

All of us have great concerns about what's taken place there. President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected President there. In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.

I think it's -- it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections. The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America. We don't want to go back to a dark past. The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies, but over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States. And that is a tradition that we want to continue.

So we are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected President, and we will work with the regional organizations like OAS and with other international institutions to see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way.

Zelaya, according to his critics, was attempting to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election (Honduras has a seemingly constricting one-term Presidential limit), but he actually
was attempting to put a nonbinding resolution on the ballot about convening a constitutional assembly, something so tyrannical and anti-democratic that it could be DEFEATED AT THE BALLOT BOX. As an unnamed official said in the Times story, “On the one instance, we’re talking about conducting a survey, a nonbinding survey; in the other instance, we’re talking about the forcible removal of a president from a country.”

Significantly, Hillary Clinton refused to call the action a coup, "which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country." Obama certainly called it a coup in his remarks, so I don't see the distinction. But that signals a preparation to live with this consequence while offering stern rebukes. Zelaya plans to return home on Thursday, and who knows what that will spark. Quite the mess.

Eighties Redux

When I think about the 1980s, I am reminded of Pac-Man, Thriller and right-wing Central American military coups by School of the Americas graduate.

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was ousted by the army on Sunday, capping months of tensions over his efforts to lift presidential term limits.

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Mr. Zelaya, a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, angrily denounced the coup as illegal. “I am the president of Honduras,” he insisted at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, still wearing his pajamas.

Later Sunday the Honduran Congress voted him out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

Romeo Vazquez, the head of the Honduran military, matriculated at the School of the Americas.

Both the Organization of American States and President Obama spoke out against this coup, which apparently was carried off to prevent a vote of the people on a new Constitutional convention. It's a puzzling rationale for a coup, but the opposition feared that Zelaya would use the referendum on a new Constitution to rewrite it, and give himself the opportunity for more terms in office, I guess.

As a result, the Army, which normally distributes ballots, declined to do so, the President sacked the head of the Army, his Attorney General argued to the Supreme Court that the firing was illegal (on the rather puzzling grounds that "it regarded the president's decision to hold the referendum as "illegal," and therefore his order to the military commanders as well"), and the Supreme Court agreed.

Meanwhile, the Congress banned referenda within 180 days of a general election, thereby making this referendum illegal. The President took the ballots so that the referendum could be held, and today the military removed him from power and flew him to Costa Rica.

The President's supporters seem to think that he plans to use a National Constituent Assembly to create some sort of Chavez-like system in Honduras. His supporters seem to think that the coup just reflects an entrenched oligarchy's unwillingness to contemplate anything that might reduce their power. (Some Honduran takes are here.)

For my part, I am puzzled. (Seriously: I know nothing about Honduras.) If holding an Assembly to revise the Constitution is such a bad idea, why not just vote no on the referendum? If the people would, in fact, like to have such an Assembly, why not have one? What, in short, is so scary about a referendum that simply asks whether people would like to have an Assembly that might revise the Constitution in as yet unspecified ways? And even if there's some reason for thinking that it is scary, is this (seemingly) mild, non-binding referendum anywhere near threatening enough to hold a coup over?

Probably not, but oligarchs reacting to a populist leader find whatever thin reed they can to topple them.

I guess the United States tried to step in and stop this coup from happening, but the military broke off talks at some point and went ahead with their plans. Of course, these plans do not appear to meet with the will of the people, who are protesting despite a curfew. And they do not meet with the will of the world, which has offered near-universal condemnation of this coup. It appears Hugo Chavez is willing to go further than the rest of the Western world and threaten open war against the Honduran military, which can't be good for civilians, either. Stay tuned.

...Wow, the Wall Street Journal editorial page supports overt military coups. Not just at cocktail parties, but in their own pages.