Flying Down To Tegucigalpa

As Barack Obama befriends banana republics by the bunch while turning the United States into the Chiquita Banana of banana republics, a small Republican Congressional delegation flew down to Honduras to see for themselves what was really going on.

The delegation was headed by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. For the record, they brought along a couple of law school professors of international law and constitutional law. Not surprisingly, their findings don't look anything like the putsch that Obama and his merry band of leftists would have Americans believe.

To start with, the delegation found that government and the private sector were just humming along with none of the signs of a military coup that Obama's left guard has been foisting off on Americans and the sycophantic mainstream media. Unlike the completely democratic Venezuela which enforces peace, love, and brotherhood in Caracas by maintaining large military encampments in full sight of the capital and close to the remaining newspaper offices, there is no strong military presence in or around Tegucigalpa. Well, there is one exception. The reserve troops maintained around the Brazilian embassy to keep power-hungry former president Manuel Zelaya from sallying forth to stir up civil unrest.

Even former Zelaya supporters freely admit that there has been no repression, that civil order is taking care of itself without any need for military or police enforcement, and though they didn't much like their candidate being summarily removed from office and spirited out of Honduras, they realize there are strong legal and constitutional reasons for the Honduran Supreme Court and the Honduran Congress to have done so.

Another false Obama tale is that it was a military coup. There have been plenty of those in Central and South America over the years, and since Obama is a complete ignoramus about foreign affairs, he just jumped right on the bandwagon of ignorance. Zelaya attempted to overthrow the Honduran constitution in order to become president for life like his good friend Hugo Chavez. Because there have been so many "peaceful" coups like that in that part of the world, the Honduran constitution is extremely tough on sitting presidents attempting to hang on to power. It forbids any sitting president from proposing, supporting, encouraging, or in any other manner publicly attempting to change the constitutional term of office of president while holding that office. The enabling legislation is draconian. Once sufficient evidence has been produced that the president has broken that rule, the president is subject to immediate removal from office (and in a less clear provision, to be ordered out of the country if there is sufficient evidence to prove that the president would attempt to challenge his removal).

Zelaya refused to leave office after the finding of the Supreme Court and the censure of the Honduran Congress and there is some evidence he was preparing to mobilize troops to back him. That produced his expulsion. He was escorted to the airport and put on a plane by the military, under orders from the Supreme Court and the Congress. To a simpleton like Barack Obama, that makes it a "military coup." He doesn't understand the U. S. Constitution so how can we expect him to understand the constitution of Honduras? So exactly who would our prissy president have expected to remove a potential dictator from Honduras, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?

Honduras, a solid constitutional republic, has shaken off its mini-crisis and moved on. If it weren't for the ignorant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation abiding by the rule of law, this whole incident would have been a mere blip on the radar screen. But three socialist presidents have managed to turn the facts and the law upside down--Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Barack Obama of Chicago. The elections that will occur in due course and in proper constitutional form on November 29 were scheduled over a year ago, and the candidates named at that time. If this was a military coup, isn't it a bit odd that the interim president, chosen as provided by the constitution, is not on the ballot and has no intention of running for the office again? Even Zelaya's vice-president and personal friend, who is the proper nominee of Zelaya's party, has stated very clearly that he believes the elections will be fair and untainted by any hint of military interference.

The opinion of Harold Koh, Obama's man in the Justice Department, is supposed to demonstrate that Zelaya's ouster was illegal. But Justice and the Obamists claim it is an internal memo, not subject to public review. Aw, c'mon you damned fools, are we really supposed to believe that? Meanwhile, the senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress has declared the ouster to be fully legal and constitutional. And unlike Barack Obama's invisible legal treatises from Harvard and Koh's alleged opinion, the Congressional analysis is not only public, but published and available on the internet Opinion of Law Library of Congress. Even James Kirchik, the legal writer for the liberal Democratic magazine The New Republic, wrote an article on October 3 declaring that the Obama administration had acted hastily, precipitously, and foolishly. He described Obama's policy as "a mistake in search of a rationale."

Obama and his two socialist ally presidents know that if they fail to blow up the November elections with their dishonest and dangerous position on Zelaya, the whole issue will die a natural death with the installation of the newly-elected president. Zelaya will simply have no legal or constitutional claim on the office since his term would have expired after the November elections anyway.

So as Senator DeMint concludes, the only figure of any standing whatsoever in Honduras who sides with Zelaya is American Ambassador Hugo Llorens. When DeMint asked how he could take a postition contrary to every lawyer, politician and judge in Honduras, Lloren referred the Senator to the legal opinion of Koh--you know, the one nobody is allowed to see outside of Obama's inner circle.