What is it w/ Obama and dictators ????
The only way this makes sense is the obvious one; Obama is simpatico with leftist, socialist dictators. His "reasoning" is complete nonsense.
Frankly, it is disgusting.
Obama: "Universal Principle" Gives Presidents the Right to Keep Ruling Even If They Violate the Law
July 7, 10:20 AM
Honduras removed its would-be dictator, President Mel Zelaya, for violating his country’s constitution by seeking to extend his term in office, and replaced him with a leading Congressman. Zelaya’s removal was authorized by Articles 239 and 272 of the Honduran Constitution, and ordered by his country’s Supreme Court, after he used coercion and aid from Venezuela’s dictator to push an illegal referendum. But Obama has joined Cuban dictator Castro and Venezuelan dictator Chavez in demanding that Zelaya be reinstated.
Originally, Obama’s justification for this demand was his erroneous claim that Zelaya’s removal was “illegal.” But when Honduras’s new president, a veteran legislator, pointed to stacks of court rulings that Zelaya had violated, the fact that the Honduran Congress had voted 123-to-5 to replace Zelaya, and that the military had legally executed a warrant for Zelaya’s arrest, Obama changed his tune.
Now, Obama claims that Zelaya must be put back in power because of the “universal principle that people should choose their own leaders”. Never mind that even publications that criticized the manner of Zelaya’s removal, like the Economist, have candidly admitted that Zelaya was unpopular with Hondurans, who overwhelmingly back the removal of their president — and that Zelaya was a bullying crook with approval ratings below 30 percent who repeatedly violated his country's laws. In the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other papers, Hondurans have overwhelmingly supported his removal.
Apparently, Obama is determined to saddle Hondurans with Zelaya whether they want him or not, just because they once elected him. (Even though he radically changed his policy positions after being elected). Under Obama’s reasoning, Richard Nixon, who was twice elected president, shouldn’t have been forced to resign over Watergate, because that violated the American people’s “universal” right to choose their ruler.
What Obama really means is that presidents, once elected, have a universal right to rule their subjects, and to flout the constitution, as Zelaya did, without being subject to removal. This sounds disturbingly like the “divine right” to rule (without following the law) claimed by medieval kings. (It's certainly not what Obama and I were taught at Harvard Law School.)
But the entire purpose of constitutional checks and balances, and the constitutional impeachment process, is that even elected presidents can lose their right to rule if they violate their country’s constitution or laws. In our constitution’s impeachment process, the Congress removes the president from office for wrongdoing, even if he was elected by a landslide. In Honduras, the Congress voted by 123-to-5 to replace Zelaya, including the vast majority of Zelaya’s own political party.
Honduras did not use a formal impeachment process because its constitution does not have a well-developed impeachment mechanism, says Latin American scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the Cato Institute. But its unwieldy constitution does have other, less elegant means of removing abusive presidents: Article 239 bans presidents from continuing to hold office if they seek to extend their tenure, or merely propose an end to presidential term-limits. And Article 272 gives the military the power to enforce those term-limit provisions. (The military’s law enforcement role is not unique to Honduras: in the U.S., federal troops were used to enforce a court order desegregating the schools in Little Rock in 1957, when the court’s order was thwarted by the Arkansas Governor. When confronted with powerful executives with armed followers who refuse to comply with the law, the courts cannot rely simply on a handful of U.S. marshalls, but rather must look to federal troops or the national guard).
Journalists who romanticize foreign dictators have faulted Honduras for removing Zelaya and kicking him out of the country in his pajamas. But getting rid of tyrants is a messy and difficult process. You can’t get rid of a tyrant by asking him nicely to leave office.
Honduras was far gentler to its menacing ex-president than the U.S. was in the past to people who threatened its democracy or constitutional order. In the Civil War, the U.S. government jailed without trial thousands of suspected confederate sympathizers, some of them innocent, as William Safire has noted, and many of them died in jail. After the Civil War, Tennessee’s Governor “Bloody Bill” Brownlow had to hold racist legislators at gun-point to make them ratify the 14th Amendment — something that was far less legal than what happened in Honduras.
http://www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC-SCOTUS-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Obama-Universal-Principle-Gives-Presidents-the-Right-to-Keep-Ruling-Even-If-They-Violate-the-Law
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Obama has his own version of the Cold War ....
it just ended .... by itself .....
Obama's New History of the Cold War [Andy McCarthy]
What does it say when the President of the United States is unable to acknowledge that the United States won the Cold War and broke the bonds of Soviet tyranny for nations of Eastern Europe?
Obama in Moscow yesterday, during his speech to students at the New Economic School:
... Like President Medvedev and myself, you're not old enough to have witnessed the darkest hours of the Cold War, when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, and children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But you are the last generation born when the world was divided. At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.
And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.
Obama's New History of the Cold War [Andy McCarthy]
What does it say when the President of the United States is unable to acknowledge that the United States won the Cold War and broke the bonds of Soviet tyranny for nations of Eastern Europe?
Obama in Moscow yesterday, during his speech to students at the New Economic School:
... Like President Medvedev and myself, you're not old enough to have witnessed the darkest hours of the Cold War, when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, and children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But you are the last generation born when the world was divided. At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.
And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.
ObamaCare Update ... (train wreck in progress)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmQ5NDlkYzJjOTE4MDliODZhN2Y4ZDhhZmIxZjlkMzg=
Let the Unraveling Begin [James C. Capretta]
The Obama administration has been desperately trying to create a sense of momentum around their health-care push, which is why they are touting the latest “deal” with hospital associations so heavily.
But there are clear signs that Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House have steered the health-care effort into seriously choppy political waters.
Consider:
1. Yesterday, Senate Democratic leaders all but rejected Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s months-long effort to impose a limit on the tax preference for employer-paid premiums as a way to pay for his reform plan. Media reports indicate he was hoping to generate $340 billion from such a tax to pay for his plan, but that looks highly unlikely now. House leaders were never much interested in the idea, given the adamant opposition of organized labor, and won’t include it in their bill. Revising the tax treatment of job-based insurance was the one potential “reform” with some potential for bipartisan appeal, as it could, under the right circumstances, encourage more cost-conscious consumption of health-care. Senator Baucus had been planning to take up consideration of his bill — with the tax on benefits in it — in his committee next week. Where is he going to find a politically palatable $300 billion in a matter of days, let alone one that can also appeal to committee Republicans?
2. Party activists pushed Congressional Democrats over the July 4th recess to write a bill reflecting long-standing party goals — which means government-run insurance and near-total government control. This push has made the chances for bipartisan compromise — already remote — even less likely. In response to the pressure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Sen. Baucus that he is not authorized to cut any deals with Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, which would bind the rest of the Democratic caucus. Senate Democrats have now committed themselves to including a muscular, government-run insurance option in the bill — which is, rightfully, a deal-breaker for the vast majority of Republicans. Indeed, at this point, it is hard to see why Senator Grassley or any other Republican senator would continue to negotiate with Senator Baucus or Senator Reid at all, as it is beyond obvious that Congressional Democrats are only interested in Grassley’s views until they can get a bill off the Senate floor — and even then, they are not interested in true bipartisanship but only enough to get two or three Republican votes.
3. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf explained in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg that adding Medicaid coverage for persons with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line to the Kennedy-Dodd legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) would increase the cost of that bill by around $500 billion. That would put the total cost of the bill at about $1.1 trillion, but it is likely to go even higher because states will balk at picking up their part of the tab for the new Medicaid coverage. Thus, when all of the details are finally in the bill, the Kennedy-Dodd plan is likely to cost close to $1.5 trillion over a decade. But even with this massive expenditure, Elmendorf predicted there would still be 15 to 20 million uninsured Americans.
4. In testimony before the HELP Committee today, Elmendorf said this about the Kennedy-Dodd proposal: “This bill will add substantially to the long-term spending burden for health care on the federal government.” Recall that President Obama pledged to oppose any bill that does not — eventually — “bend the cost-curve” and reduces the government’s long-term cost burden.
5. Rumors are circulating that House leaders are apparently considering a trifecta of popular “pay fors”: $500 to $600 billion in Medicare cuts, a new surtax for households making more than $250,000 per year, and $350 billion in funding from the so-called “pay or pay” employer mandate — while unemployment heads toward 10 percent. All of these proposals are going to generate substantial controversy and opposition, to put it mildly. The surtax would come on top of the Obama administration’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for upper-income households, which would increase the top rate from 35 to 39.6 percent. A new, three-percentage point surtax, for instance, would push the top income tax rate to 42.6 percent — a rate not seen in more than two decades.
6. Oh, and those momentum-generating “deals” with Phrma and the hospital associations — turns out they aren’t deals after all. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said today that neither he nor the White House is bound by them, and a White House official agreed. Moreover, it remains unclear how much federal savings they will generate anyway, as they have not yet been assessed by CBO. So what do the deals signify exactly?
The Obama White House and their congressional allies have built expectations among their core supporters that this is the year to pass a government-takeover of American health care. With expectations set so high, most elected Democrats have concluded they have no choice but to set out on a forced march to try to do exactly that — despite unified Republican opposition. But a partisan bill means that Democrats own all of the messy and unattractive details too. The debate is no longer about vague concepts of “coverage” and “cost-control” but who pays and who is forced out of their job-based plans. The more people learn about these details, the less they will like them —which is why the Democratic committee chairmen are working desperately to shorten the time between a full public airing and a vote. They’re hoping there won’t be enough time for public opposition to put a halt to the proceedings.
Why Read It When You Can Vote on It? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Steny Hoyer reveals more than his colleagues probably wanted him to about the way they care to operate:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.“
If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.“
Members clearly—and staff and review boards, they read them in their entirety. They go over it with members, and members read substantial portions of the bill themselves, but the issue is—I don’t know who signed this (pledge), but frankly the opposition has been very vociferous, not of the verbiage and bill, but on the concept that it incorporates,” Hoyer said.
Let the Unraveling Begin [James C. Capretta]
The Obama administration has been desperately trying to create a sense of momentum around their health-care push, which is why they are touting the latest “deal” with hospital associations so heavily.
But there are clear signs that Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House have steered the health-care effort into seriously choppy political waters.
Consider:
1. Yesterday, Senate Democratic leaders all but rejected Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s months-long effort to impose a limit on the tax preference for employer-paid premiums as a way to pay for his reform plan. Media reports indicate he was hoping to generate $340 billion from such a tax to pay for his plan, but that looks highly unlikely now. House leaders were never much interested in the idea, given the adamant opposition of organized labor, and won’t include it in their bill. Revising the tax treatment of job-based insurance was the one potential “reform” with some potential for bipartisan appeal, as it could, under the right circumstances, encourage more cost-conscious consumption of health-care. Senator Baucus had been planning to take up consideration of his bill — with the tax on benefits in it — in his committee next week. Where is he going to find a politically palatable $300 billion in a matter of days, let alone one that can also appeal to committee Republicans?
2. Party activists pushed Congressional Democrats over the July 4th recess to write a bill reflecting long-standing party goals — which means government-run insurance and near-total government control. This push has made the chances for bipartisan compromise — already remote — even less likely. In response to the pressure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Sen. Baucus that he is not authorized to cut any deals with Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, which would bind the rest of the Democratic caucus. Senate Democrats have now committed themselves to including a muscular, government-run insurance option in the bill — which is, rightfully, a deal-breaker for the vast majority of Republicans. Indeed, at this point, it is hard to see why Senator Grassley or any other Republican senator would continue to negotiate with Senator Baucus or Senator Reid at all, as it is beyond obvious that Congressional Democrats are only interested in Grassley’s views until they can get a bill off the Senate floor — and even then, they are not interested in true bipartisanship but only enough to get two or three Republican votes.
3. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf explained in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg that adding Medicaid coverage for persons with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line to the Kennedy-Dodd legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) would increase the cost of that bill by around $500 billion. That would put the total cost of the bill at about $1.1 trillion, but it is likely to go even higher because states will balk at picking up their part of the tab for the new Medicaid coverage. Thus, when all of the details are finally in the bill, the Kennedy-Dodd plan is likely to cost close to $1.5 trillion over a decade. But even with this massive expenditure, Elmendorf predicted there would still be 15 to 20 million uninsured Americans.
4. In testimony before the HELP Committee today, Elmendorf said this about the Kennedy-Dodd proposal: “This bill will add substantially to the long-term spending burden for health care on the federal government.” Recall that President Obama pledged to oppose any bill that does not — eventually — “bend the cost-curve” and reduces the government’s long-term cost burden.
5. Rumors are circulating that House leaders are apparently considering a trifecta of popular “pay fors”: $500 to $600 billion in Medicare cuts, a new surtax for households making more than $250,000 per year, and $350 billion in funding from the so-called “pay or pay” employer mandate — while unemployment heads toward 10 percent. All of these proposals are going to generate substantial controversy and opposition, to put it mildly. The surtax would come on top of the Obama administration’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for upper-income households, which would increase the top rate from 35 to 39.6 percent. A new, three-percentage point surtax, for instance, would push the top income tax rate to 42.6 percent — a rate not seen in more than two decades.
6. Oh, and those momentum-generating “deals” with Phrma and the hospital associations — turns out they aren’t deals after all. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said today that neither he nor the White House is bound by them, and a White House official agreed. Moreover, it remains unclear how much federal savings they will generate anyway, as they have not yet been assessed by CBO. So what do the deals signify exactly?
The Obama White House and their congressional allies have built expectations among their core supporters that this is the year to pass a government-takeover of American health care. With expectations set so high, most elected Democrats have concluded they have no choice but to set out on a forced march to try to do exactly that — despite unified Republican opposition. But a partisan bill means that Democrats own all of the messy and unattractive details too. The debate is no longer about vague concepts of “coverage” and “cost-control” but who pays and who is forced out of their job-based plans. The more people learn about these details, the less they will like them —which is why the Democratic committee chairmen are working desperately to shorten the time between a full public airing and a vote. They’re hoping there won’t be enough time for public opposition to put a halt to the proceedings.
Why Read It When You Can Vote on It? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Steny Hoyer reveals more than his colleagues probably wanted him to about the way they care to operate:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.“
If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.“
Members clearly—and staff and review boards, they read them in their entirety. They go over it with members, and members read substantial portions of the bill themselves, but the issue is—I don’t know who signed this (pledge), but frankly the opposition has been very vociferous, not of the verbiage and bill, but on the concept that it incorporates,” Hoyer said.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Honduras update: Obama still on the wrong side; w/ Chavez & Ortega
http://www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC-SCOTUS-Examiner~y2009m7d5-Will-Obama-blackmail-Honduras-into-installing-a-bullying-wouldbe-dictator
Last Sunday, Honduras removed its would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, who flouted court rulings by using intimidation to try to get Hondurans to change their constitution to allow him to extend his tenure in office. The country's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya, which the military enforced by seizing Zelaya and kicking him out of the country. The country's legislature then voted almost unanimously to replace him with its legislative speaker, in accord with the country's constitution.
Now, Obama, who knows nothing about Honduran law, is ignorantly claiming that Zelaya's removal was "illegal," and demanding that Zelaya be reinstated as president. His demand is joined in by the Organization of American States, many of whose leaders, like Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, have either violated their own countries' constitutions, or likewise seek to eliminate term limits contained in their own countries' constitutions. ("A senior Obama administration official said the United States would probably move to suspend economic development and military assistance" to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere).
Obama is quite wrong to claim that the removal of Zelaya was "illegal." The Honduran president forfeited his right to rule under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, which bans presidents from holding office if they even propose to alter the constitutional term limits for presidents. And the Honduran military, which acted on orders of the Honduran supreme court, expressly had the right to remove the president for seeking to alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution, as even left-leaning commentators have now admitted. The Honduran military's role in enforcing the court order does not make it a "coup" anymore than federal troops' role in enforcing the court-ordered integration of the Little Rock public schools in 1957 constituted a military occupation or takeover.
(Zelaya was a corrupt ruler who so mismanaged his country's finances so badly that it recently failed to pay many of its bills. His violations of his country's constitution were criticized by human rights groups and the Catholic Church as well as the legislature and judiciary).
What happened in Honduras was not "illegal," much less a "coup,” agrees the Honduran lawyer and former Minister of Culture Octavio Sanchez in his July 2 column in the Christian Science Monitor. He notes that under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, the President automatically lost his right to remain in office by seeking to extend his term in office: “According to Article 239: ‘No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.’ Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says ‘immediately’ – as in ‘instant,’ as in ‘no trial required,’ as in ‘no impeachment needed.’ Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo. The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya’s arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day. Don’t believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.”
If Richard Nixon had been impeached and convicted for Watergate, and then refused to leave office, until being forced out by the military, would that have been a “military coup”? Of course not. But Obama and many in the press are taking essentially that position in demanding the reinstatement of Honduras’s would-be dictator.
The fact that the military carried out the Honduran Supreme Court’s orders in removing a would-be dictator, after he flouted the court’s rulings, does not make it a “military coup.” When court orders are defied by powerful government officials, troops are sometimes called out to enforce them, as happened in the U.S. in 1957 when federal troops forced Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to stop blocking the court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s public schools. Indeed, Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution gives the military the power to remove a president even without a court order, if he seeks to violate the term limits prescribed in the Honduran Constitution. Even a legal commentator, Litho, at the leading liberal blog Daily Kos, which is run by a leftist Latin American immigrant, admits that the military’s action was “legal” in a “technical sense” under the Honduran Constitution.
Honduras [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From Otto Reich:
Zelaya trying to land in the capital, Tegucigalpa. He is reportedly on the airplane of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner. The runway is blocked. The provisional government realizes that what Zelaya wants is a TV spectacle. CNN, which Hondurans now call Chavez News Network, is giving Zelaya's side of the story.
Time to Condemn the Meddling? [Jonah Goldberg]
Nicaragua moving troops to the Honduran border?
TEGUCIGALPA, July 5 (Reuters) - Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti said on Sunday Nicaraguan troops were moving to the mutual frontier and urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respect Honduran sovereignty.He gave no further details about troop movements in Nicaragua which shares a border with Honduras to the southeast of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.His comments came as ousted President Manuel Zelaya attempted to fly home a week after he was ousted in a coup. Zelaya is a left-wing ally of Ortega and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Last Sunday, Honduras removed its would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, who flouted court rulings by using intimidation to try to get Hondurans to change their constitution to allow him to extend his tenure in office. The country's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya, which the military enforced by seizing Zelaya and kicking him out of the country. The country's legislature then voted almost unanimously to replace him with its legislative speaker, in accord with the country's constitution.
Now, Obama, who knows nothing about Honduran law, is ignorantly claiming that Zelaya's removal was "illegal," and demanding that Zelaya be reinstated as president. His demand is joined in by the Organization of American States, many of whose leaders, like Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, have either violated their own countries' constitutions, or likewise seek to eliminate term limits contained in their own countries' constitutions. ("A senior Obama administration official said the United States would probably move to suspend economic development and military assistance" to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere).
Obama is quite wrong to claim that the removal of Zelaya was "illegal." The Honduran president forfeited his right to rule under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, which bans presidents from holding office if they even propose to alter the constitutional term limits for presidents. And the Honduran military, which acted on orders of the Honduran supreme court, expressly had the right to remove the president for seeking to alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution, as even left-leaning commentators have now admitted. The Honduran military's role in enforcing the court order does not make it a "coup" anymore than federal troops' role in enforcing the court-ordered integration of the Little Rock public schools in 1957 constituted a military occupation or takeover.
(Zelaya was a corrupt ruler who so mismanaged his country's finances so badly that it recently failed to pay many of its bills. His violations of his country's constitution were criticized by human rights groups and the Catholic Church as well as the legislature and judiciary).
What happened in Honduras was not "illegal," much less a "coup,” agrees the Honduran lawyer and former Minister of Culture Octavio Sanchez in his July 2 column in the Christian Science Monitor. He notes that under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, the President automatically lost his right to remain in office by seeking to extend his term in office: “According to Article 239: ‘No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.’ Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says ‘immediately’ – as in ‘instant,’ as in ‘no trial required,’ as in ‘no impeachment needed.’ Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo. The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya’s arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day. Don’t believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.”
If Richard Nixon had been impeached and convicted for Watergate, and then refused to leave office, until being forced out by the military, would that have been a “military coup”? Of course not. But Obama and many in the press are taking essentially that position in demanding the reinstatement of Honduras’s would-be dictator.
The fact that the military carried out the Honduran Supreme Court’s orders in removing a would-be dictator, after he flouted the court’s rulings, does not make it a “military coup.” When court orders are defied by powerful government officials, troops are sometimes called out to enforce them, as happened in the U.S. in 1957 when federal troops forced Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to stop blocking the court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s public schools. Indeed, Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution gives the military the power to remove a president even without a court order, if he seeks to violate the term limits prescribed in the Honduran Constitution. Even a legal commentator, Litho, at the leading liberal blog Daily Kos, which is run by a leftist Latin American immigrant, admits that the military’s action was “legal” in a “technical sense” under the Honduran Constitution.
Honduras [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From Otto Reich:
Zelaya trying to land in the capital, Tegucigalpa. He is reportedly on the airplane of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner. The runway is blocked. The provisional government realizes that what Zelaya wants is a TV spectacle. CNN, which Hondurans now call Chavez News Network, is giving Zelaya's side of the story.
Time to Condemn the Meddling? [Jonah Goldberg]
Nicaragua moving troops to the Honduran border?
TEGUCIGALPA, July 5 (Reuters) - Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti said on Sunday Nicaraguan troops were moving to the mutual frontier and urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respect Honduran sovereignty.He gave no further details about troop movements in Nicaragua which shares a border with Honduras to the southeast of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.His comments came as ousted President Manuel Zelaya attempted to fly home a week after he was ousted in a coup. Zelaya is a left-wing ally of Ortega and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Whaddya Know: Obama's Murky Past Suddenly Found ...
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDEyMGNkZTI4MWE1ZjU4MzBiZjcwZjJhNzMyYzljYTA=
Obama: Student Radical [Andy McCarthy]
During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.
Read the whole thing ...
Obama: Student Radical [Andy McCarthy]
During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.
Read the whole thing ...
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Stolen Election (Minnesota)
The WSJ speaks the truth that most in the media would cover up or pitch an alternate reality version ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640687950076679.html
The truth is Democrats stole the MINN Senate election with the nutty Al Franken (same state that elected Jesse the Body Ventura as Governor; and gee didn't that work out great); and a governor's election in Washington State a few years back; and of course tried, and failed, to steal the US Presidential Election in 2000 by hijacking the pivotal Florida vote (Bush v. Gore).
Between stolen elections, ACORN illegitimate voters, registration of felons and dead people and illegal aliens, no wonder that the Dems now control the House Senate and White House and that this country's politics are completely FUBAR.
The truth is Democrats stole the MINN Senate election with the nutty Al Franken (same state that elected Jesse the Body Ventura as Governor; and gee didn't that work out great); and a governor's election in Washington State a few years back; and of course tried, and failed, to steal the US Presidential Election in 2000 by hijacking the pivotal Florida vote (Bush v. Gore).
Between stolen elections, ACORN illegitimate voters, registration of felons and dead people and illegal aliens, no wonder that the Dems now control the House Senate and White House and that this country's politics are completely FUBAR.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
