
Honduras Inauguration Day, January 2006: Now-ousted President Manuel Zelaya taking the oath of office next to his wife and then-Congress President Roberto Micheletti, who is now serving as acting-president.
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Writing yesterday at NRO, Andy McCarthy picks up on Honduran-born legal scholar Miguel Estrada's LA Times piece explaining, as Andy writes, "why the ouster of aspiring dictator Manuel Zelaya was not a `coup,' as the Obama administration mind-bogglingly claims."
Of course, once you understand Obama as a professionally alienated, Marxian leftist, there is nothing "mind-boggling " about it. I think the mind-boggling part comes in when you realize that such a man with such an ideology now guides US policy. Andy continues:
In fact, the removal of Zelaya from office was compelled by the Constitution of Honduras. That is, it represents, through and through, the rule of law the Obama administration would rather pay lip-service to than heed. As Miguel explains, the only dubious aspect of the episode is Zelaya's transfer to Costa Rica when, as a matter of law, he should have been arrested and tried for treason (power grabs of the type Zelaya attempted, Miguel notes, are officially defined as treason under Article 4 of the Honduras Constitution).
Bottom line: Hugo Chavez wants Zelaya in, the law of Honduras says Zelaya must be out; Obama sided with Chavez.
More thoughts on why this is so here.
What can be done? Cliff Kincaid of AIM has posted an instructive interview with Alejandro Pena Esclusa, a former Venezuelan presidential candidate and prominent critic of Hugo Chavez. As head of UnoAmerica, a group of pro-democracy, pro-freedom Latin American NGOs, Pena Esclusa is "spearheading opposition to the Sao Paulo Forum, a coalition of communist and leftist parties and terrorist movements in Latin America" with whom, mindbogglingly, the United States, as led by Barack Hussein Obama, is increasingly finding common cause.
As Pena Esclusa explains, UnoAmerica decided "to recognize the new Honduran government because the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya was actually an impeachment. Zelaya wanted to change the Constitution, without the approval of the Supreme Court and the Congress, in order to stay illegally in power. As in all democratic governments, there are three branches of power in Honduras. In this case, the Executive wanted to stage a coup against the Constitution, and the other two powers (Legislative and Judiciary) did not let that happen. It is very simple."
Very simple, indeed. So, now we have a new simple way to divide the world politically: the people who believe what happened in Honduras was a coup, and the people who believe it was an impeachment.