He said that Zelaya's wife was beaten and his family is in trouble, haha. This proves once again that GD knows nothing about what is going on. He is trying to seem informed on the sitution more than the others on here. You know, because he has a bunch of friends there. Her beating was never reported in Honduras and she looks fine leading the rally in the below noted story. Haha. And there was no tear gas! It is not a police state. One more thing you are wrong about. Would you like to make any other false statements?

(since you can't read Spanish, the picture at the top of the article is la esposa de depuesto presidente Zelaya)

http://www.latribuna.hn/web2.0/?p=17176

I think it is time for everyone to not worry for a little bit. Presidente costarricense Oscar Arias will be a good mediator. Now that there is a way to tell both sides, things will get done and Zelaya will not be shown as a victim all the time.

Personal I can't think of anything more likely to destroy democracy in Honduras than returning Zelaya to power. He already proved he will not respect the law or the constitution.

Um, sorry, a mistake in whether he should have been sent to jail or removed from the country does not invalidate all the previous actions of their Supreme Court and Congress, as much as you might want it to. It was an 'after the fact' error.

And it is not 'my' high ground – it is the position of both their Supreme Court and Congress. It is you, GD, and others on the Left that want to usurp their decisions, not the Right.

Let's see what true lawyers and lawblogs think, along with some actual Hondurans, shall we?

http://zerosheep.com/2009/07/01/no-coup-in-hond...
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_07_05-2...
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/preside...
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/07/h...
http://hondurascrisis.org/a-letter-to-the-inter...
http://www.tipte.com/2009/07/javier-corrales-is...

In case you haven't read the rest of this thread, there is some controversy about just how legal/illegal this action was.

You don't have possession of the high moral ground.

Even you admit that mistakes were made.

If you want to claim the right is just correct and the left is just wrong, go ahead. But because the rule of law was not obeyed, you're open to the utterly obvious parallel criticism.

Utterly obvious.

Except for the 'inconvenient truth' that it was not a military overthrow, unless your definition extends to the Honduras Supreme Court issuing a legal arrest warrant, the Military (as per the Honduras Constitution) executing said warrant, and the Honduras Congress, of which the deposed of President's party had a majority, voting 123-3 to support the removal of Zelaya, and replacing him with the next civilian in line for succession as per that same inconvenient Constitution.

The only error that occurred was the Military's, which has admitted in hindsight they should have taken him to jail rather than removed him from the country.

My comment was addressed to Austin Roth, and contained an obvious, blocked quote, which was from Austin Roth.

It seems to me that there's a lot more support for reinstatement of Zelaya being expressed by liberal commenters here than there is by conservative Americans saying that we should support his ousting. The few who are speaking out pretty forcefully for that are Honduran natives, not American conservatives.

Another point about this 'debate' is that it is clearly spelling out the tendency for the Left to ignore the law when it does not provide the results it wants, or to claim the laws must be illegitimate because it 'feels wrong to them'.

Maybe the debate is really showing the tendency of the Right to support any military overthrow of any government they consider illegitimate?

Still though, I think you underestimate that if he truly was rhetorically threatening an illegal referendum which would have extended his term or permitted his running for another term, and ignoring court rulings against that, then even if he found a clever way (or perhaps, I'd conjecture, Chavez found a clever way) to look innocent by changing the format to one that would not have been illegal- then the legislative and judicial branches and the military may have overreacted but not without some reason for their belief that he had to be stopped quickly.

Perhaps you should just take my statement at face value- a reminder that none of us (I presume, at least) would say that there are no circumstances that would justify military intervention to overthrow an illegitimate government, or an elected government which is seen as illegally grabbing power beyond the mandate of the election. I think I was pretty clear also in stating that I don't know if that justification exists in the present case of Honduras or not, since unlike others here I don't feel that reliance on selective translations of portions of the Honduran Constitution would enable me to make that judgement.

Oh, Christine, you sly fox, you! I know you're just trying to make sure we're all awake and paying attention, right? Of course you know the answer to your statement — it's too obvious for you not to know — but you want to see if we know it, too. Right?

Gotta chuckle however at M.V. bloggers posing as Honduran constitutional scholars. “The Honduran constitution is really long (more than 300 pages, oh my!!) and it's in ra eally difficult foreign language called “spanish”, so instead of actually reading and studying it myself, I read a blog (less than a page long!) by a guy who doesn't live in Honduras, nor is he a Honduran constitutional lawyer or anything, but he says he has read the Honduran constitution, and he says…” What a hoot!

Zelaya tried to hold a “consultation” (legally binding) for a November 2009 referendum on changes to the Honduran Constitution

Honduras' Supreme Court, attorney general, top electoral body, and human-rights ombudsman all ruled that the 28 June plebescite would be illegal.

Zelaya went ahead with it anyhow, had ballots printed in Venezuela, and announced that the vote would take place June 28,

Honduran Attorney General Luis Alberto Rubi took the case to court. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum to be illegal and ordered the ballots to be confiscated.

Zelaya ordered the Chief of the Army Romeo Vásquez Velásquez to distribute ballots per the military's role of assisting the Government of Honduras in conducting elections.

Vásquez refused to distribute the ballots after seeking legal opinions.

Zelaya fired him on 24 June 2009, the same day Minister of Defense, Edmundo Orellana resigned.

Zelaya and a group of supporters stormed an airforce base and seized the ballots and issue another executive decree, which directed government officials to set up 15,000 polling stations at schools and community buildings across the country.

In an attempt to counter the Supreme Court's argument that the proposed consultation was illegal, Zelaya reclassified the legally binding “consultation” as a non-legally binding “public opinion poll.”

In response to a request from Attorney General Rubi, the Honduran Congress controlled by Zelaya's own party, opened an investigation into the president's mental stability and fitness to govern.

The Supreme Court ruled the dismissal illegal and reinstated Vásquez on 25 June 2009.

A detention order, signed 26 June by a Supreme Court judge, ordered the armed forces to detain the president

The military removed Zelaya from his home early on the morning of 28 June, before the polls open for his plebiscite and sent him into exile in Costa Rica

The Honduran Congress affirmed Zelaya's departure (125-3) and, in accord with the constitution, named Roberto Micheletti, who had been president of the Congress, as interim president of the country.

Chavez, Ortega, Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales immediately condemned the “coup” demanding Zelaya be restored to power.

Chavez threatened military action

——————–

Now given that course of events, who in their right mind would endorse putting Zelaya back in power? He disobeyed the Supreme Court, was kicked out by the Congress which his own party controlled and which all but 3 members voted in favor of the Supreme Courts removal of him, He stormed army bases with supporters taking away what the legal system had ordered to be held by the military, he tries to fire anyone disagreeing with him, the attorney general called for and the Congress was investigating his mental health,

That anyone would suggest this other than Chavez and his ilk is just mind boggling.

BTW more on that Congressional investigation:

Members of Congressional commission in charge of investigating Zelaya's actions have reportedly said that because the commission has concluded that Zelaya has broken the law, it would recommend to the entire Congress that Zelaya be removed from office. This was before his arrest.

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/06/27/intern...

My, what thin skin you have for GD. You also seem to think he needs your protection. I have not found GD needing others to speak for himself, myself.

Go back to stroking your putter. You are better at that.

You seem to want to become an overnight Honduras Constitutional expert, and to try and prove every branch of the Honduras government, and Zelaya's own party (except 3 people), were wrong in what they did.

I still say it goes back to the the fact that you cannot tolerate a Leftist being removed from power by the very government you now seem hell-bent on proving is illegitimate. Seems you want to overthrow the will of the entire government of Honduras because, well, what they did, believing themselves to be acting fully within the law, makes you unhappy.

Oh yeah, and because you now know Honduras Constitutional law better than any man or woman alive, Honduran or otherwise, Honduran Supreme Court member or otherwise, Honduran Congressman or otherwise.

In fact, from the sounds of it, the only person on the face of the earth remotely qualified to run that country is now…YOU!

At least in your somewhat overinflated opinion of yourself on this topic