Honduras: Crossing the T's, Dotting the I's

If you ever had confidence in the reporting in the news, perhaps the reporting of the "Honduran coup" should give you pause. Here's a news stories some days after the breaking news that puts the whole thing in perspective. CLICK HERE
Just to summarize:
1) At the request of the Honduran attorney general, the Supreme Court of Honduras issued an order to the military to arrest the president giving the military authorization to enter Zelaya's home to execute the arrest. (The matter is on the Honduran Supreme Court website in Spanish)
2) The issue: The Constitution of Honduras forbids three kinds of amendments.
"... No amendment can ever change (1) the country's borders, (2) the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and (3) the requirement that presidential administrations must "succeed one another" in a "republican form of government." "
3) "Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason."
4) With a few months left in his term Zelaya proposed a referendum on convening a new constitutional convention. His motivation was transparently to overturn the existing constitution and allow himself to continue to a currently illegal second term. But the call for a referendum was itself illegal.
5) Only a referendum approved by a 2/3rd majority of the Honduran congress can be put on the ballot. But the Honduran congress voted that Zelaya's referendum was illegal.
6) The attorney general secured a court order halting the referendum.
7) Zelaya announced that it would be called a "opinion poll" and go forward.
8) The courts ruled this illegal.
9) Zelaya ignored the courts and ordered the head of the armed forces to go forward with the referendum and then fired him when he declined (it would have been illegal).
10) The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and ordered the head of the armed forces reinstated.
11) Zelaya went ahead and had ballots printed in Venezuela and the ballots were confiscated by Honduran customs when they entered the country.
12) Zelaya organized his supporters to seize the ballots.
13) The attorney general, now exasperated, sought a warrant from the Supreme Court for Zelaya's arrest on charges of treason, abuse of authority and other crimes.
14) The military executed the arrest.
15) Sending Zelaya into exile is the only item which is not clearly legal.
16) The Congress met and voted 122 to 6 to remove him from office. He was replaced by Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress, next in succession because the Vice President had resigned to prepare to run for the presidency in the coming November election. Micheletti was a member of Zelaya's own party.

Our country's response was to blindly react, apparently without all the facts, to support Zelaya who was rather clearly attempting a kind of coup of his own. It is both troubling and telling that we were joined by a group of the usual suspects such as Chavez, Castro, and others who have less than stellar records on human rights. We should remedy the situation and regularize relations with Honduras. It is an outrage that we are supporting someone who was trying to illegally overturn the constitution of his own country. Tyranny rising.