Libertarian Leanings

Party Affiliations?

Yesterday, an exchange on FOX News Sunday was a surprising reinforcement of my perception that the military tends to be Republican while the Washington bureaucracy tends favor Democrats.  It would seem that the partisanship so obvious with the CIA during the Bush administration, has reached new heights.  The Pentagon may have joined the fight. 

Chris Wallace had just turned the discussion with his All Stars to the leak revealing General McChrystal's urgent request to Obama for more troops in Afghanistan.

LIASSON: I don't know if it's gotten to the point of Truman and MacArthur, but it was extraordinary to have the Pentagon or to have somebody leak this incredible report in an attempt, it seems, to force the president's hand...

Wallace turned to Dana Perina who was the White House Deputy Press Secretary and then Press Secretary during the Bush administration when the CIA was leaking like a sieve.

WALLACE: I want to ask you just one more question about this. I don't know that you had military leaks, but you certainly had CIA leaks in President Bush's White House. How do presidents react when they suddenly see top secret advice to them on the front page of the Washington Post?

PERINO: Oh, I'm sure -- well, it makes them very angry, in one instance. I don't know about the current occupant of the White House...

Now we have a Democrat in the White House.  We hear hardly a peep from the CIA, but the Pentagon is chiming in.  Does this grand entrance into the information business by the Department of Defense mean that Democrats don't have a political lock on all of the Washington agencies?  Either way the tail is trying to wag the dog.

(Emphasis in the quotation above is mine.) 

Hey Girl

In 1963 "Hey Girl" by Freddie Scott made it to number 10 on the charts.  It's one of those songs that got so little play on the oldies stations that I'd forgotten it even existed until I heard it on a juke box some 25 years later. 

It was surprising then, how hearing it again brought me right back to the summer of '63 and tobacco picking in Windsor, Connecticut. 

Windsor shade grown tobacco provided wrapper leaf for high quality cigars.  In 1961 shade grown tobacco made the silver screen in Parrish, filmed in Windsor with Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens.  Tobacco was big in the 60s, but since then almost all of the farms have been sold off to real estate developers. 

Obama And The Iranian Nukes

So Iran has come forward to admit it has been working away on a second, heretofore undisclosed, nuclear enrichment plant.  The effect of that announcement, according to the Washington Post, was an immediate refocus of Obama administration foreign policy as regards Iran.

The disclosure of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has led the Obama administration to shift the emphasis in its dealings with the Islamic republic -- away from engagement and toward building an international consensus for sterner action against Tehran.

The effort to directly engage Iran was a hallmark of the early months of the administration, with President Obama offering a televised greeting in honor of the Persian New Year and sending private letters to the country's supreme leader. But the gestures went largely unreciprocated.

It's time to be stern, even though stern wasn't such a good thing in the not too distant past.  It's a past Barack Obama can't stop himself from bringing up nearly every time he opens his mouth, and I wonder if that will ever get to be even mildly embarrassing for him. Hardly a day goes by that we are not reminded that our Messiah inherited a mess. 

Obama's election came at the conclusion of a campaign in which he promised a reversal of nearly every George W. Bush policy.  With regard to Iran, Obama's prescription could very well have been lifted straight from a 2008 Foreign Affairs article by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh entitled, The Costs of Containing Iran: Washington's Misguided New Middle East Policy.

Iran does present serious problems for the United States. Its quest for a nuclear capability, its mischievous interventions in Iraq, and its strident opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process constitute a formidable list of grievances. But the bigger issue is the Bush administration's fundamental belief that Iran cannot be a constructive actor in a stable Middle East and that its unsavory behavior cannot be changed through creative diplomacy.

Therein lay the conventional wisdom.  The bigger issue was the Bush administration.  With creative diplomacy and engagement Barack Obama would surely succeed where George Bush had utterly failed.  According to conventional wisdom, anyway.

Shortly before taking the oath of office, then president-elect Obama explained to George Stephanopoulos his plan to ditch Bush administration policy and apply his diplomatic intensity directly upon Iran.

Speaking on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Obama reiterated that he wanted to work directly with Iran — a country whose president has called for Israel’s destruction — to improve relations and halt a nuclear program that Tehran describes as peaceful, but that the West believes is not.

“We are going to have to take a new approach,” he told the program’s host, George Stephanopoulos. “My belief is that engagement is the place to start.”

Mr. Obama said he wanted to adopt “a new emphasis on respect and a new willingness on being willing to talk” to the Iranians, while making it clear “that we also have certain expectations.”

The remarks suggested a clear departure from the often pointed and deprecatory speech that has prevailed between Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and President Bush.

His plan of action had the added benefit of restoring America's reputation.  A twofer.  As Politico's Anderson reported in November, 2008, progressives were with Obama one hundred percent.  He brought hope and change they could believe in.

Still, in the Middle East particularly, "we have a lot to do to repair the U.S.'s reputation, credibility and effectiveness," said Dennis Ross, who was the top Middle East peace negotiator under President Clinton and is sometimes mentioned as a possible Obama Cabinet member.

"The fact is, being someone not named Bush will help," Ross said, "but the next president has to realize what he's going to face and fashion a policy that focuses on things that can be done," such as "being a leader on climate change. Being on the right side of issues with a broader imperative will affect American's image."

Although much goodwill has evaporated, these analysts said, Obama will find that when he goes to the well, there's still some left.

Progressives everywhere exhaled.  With George W. Bush was out of the White House, America could expect more allied support in its efforts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Obama's skillful diplomacy would tap that well of good will, and a blessed gusher of peace would shower down.

Or not.  News of Iran's second uranium enrichment plant has taken the air right out of Obama's diplomatic initiative. Simon Tisdale of the Guardian could hardly be more incensed at the Iranians. 

Like riverboat gamblers casting loaded dice, Iran's leaders have played a double game of deceit, duplicity and Persian blind man's bluff in on-off talks with western countries since the existence of suspect nuclear facilities was first exposed. Now it seems the Iranian regime has been caught red-handed, and clean out of trumps, by the forced disclosure that it is building, if not already operating, a second, secret uranium processing plant.

The revelation will bring a triumphal roar of "told you so!" from Bush era neoconservatives in the US to hawkish rightwingers in Israel. The likes of former vice-president Dick Cheney and UN envoy John Bolton, and the current Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, have long insisted that Tehran's word could not be trusted.

Yet the argument about who was right and who was wrong about Iran is hardly important at this juncture.

He was aghast.  Iranian theocrats turned out to be untrustworthy.  Who could possibly have foreseen it?  Other than Bush and the neoconservatives, I mean.  A lucky guess that turned out right. 

Or maybe it wasn't so lucky.  Yesterday Thomas Joscelyn posed some questions about that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate.  You know.  The one that said Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003?  That one? 

In November of 2007, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) drafted a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program. In its publicly released “Key Judgments,” the IC concluded: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” A footnote at the end of that sentence made it clear just what the IC thought had been “halted” (emphasis added):

For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.

As many noted at the time, the language and logic of the NIE were nonsensical. There were transparent flaws in its analysis, including the arbitrary decision to set aside concerns over Iran’s overt uranium enrichment and ballistic missile development efforts –- both of which continued apace.

Now, with the Obama administration’s revelation this morning that Iran has secretly built a covert uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom, we know just how flat wrong –- and potentially willfully misleading –- that 2007 NIE was.

Though the Iranians were supposed to have shut down their weapons program back in 2003, the New York Times reported yesterday that the new uranium enrichment plant, which had been under construction and under surveillance for years, was better suited for making bombs than for commercial use.

The plant’s size, secrecy and location on a Revolutionary Guards base all point to a covert plant for making weapon fuel, analysts said Friday. They called it too small for any commercial use, but a good size for the much easier task of making bomb fuel.

Up to now progressives have been giddy over the perceived repudiation of our Texas cowboy's go-it-alone policies.  Cooperation and diplomacy have become the new watch words.  But we go back to the Washington Post to ponder, how is that creative diplomacy going to work out now?

Now the question is whether Russia -- which has long had close ties with Iran -- will be prepared to take even tougher action if Tehran resists full disclosure, such as canceling fuel shipments to the Bushehr reactor, which Moscow constructed.

"So much depends on the Russians," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He noted that sanctions to date have been used in an attempt to change Iran's behavior, without much success. Now, tougher sanctions may need to be used as punishment.

China probably remains the most difficult obstacle to broad new international sanctions. The Chinese reaction on Friday was much weaker than Kremlin's.

"We hope that the IAEA will deal with the matter according to its terms of reference and its mandate," Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a brief statement. "It is also our hope that Iran will cooperate with the IAEA on this matter."

Another official, He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, stressed the need for negotiations. "You talk about punishment, and personally I don't like the word 'punishment,' and I think all issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation," he told reporters.

So we're hoping the Russians will favor tough sanctions, and the Chinese are hoping the Iranians will cooperate, and by stressing that issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation, the Chinese vice foreign minister sounds a lot like Obama did last month, before his apparent epiphany. 

But the big question remains.  Will American national security interests ever become as important to Barack Obama as they were to George W. Bush?  Or will the preferences of the Russians, or the Chinese, or any other leftist regime always weigh into his decisions?

Meanwhile the Iranians have given no sign that they intend to slow the uranium production, nor do they seem care to if they never sit face to face with Obama.  So, how is that creative diplomacy supposed to work now?

Security Council Resolution

ABC's Jake Tapper reports that the UN Security Council, chaired for the first time by a U.S. president, has has unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming the U.N.'s goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama, who delivered an unusually blunt speech to the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday, became the first ever U.S. president to chair this meeting.

"We now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches," the president said. "The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal."

The resolution calls for further progress on nuclear arms reductions through a strengthened Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, a U.N. treaty first opened for signature in 1968, and since amended, under which nuclear power nations agree to refrain from transferring nuclear weapons or related technology to any non-nuclear weapon state and to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." A total of 187 nations have signed the treaty, though Israel, India, and Pakistan are not among them, and North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003.

How timely. Along with the Security Council resolution the Washington Post also reports, Iran Reveals Existence of Second Uranium Enrichment Plant.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 25 -- President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran's construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions.

"Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow," Obama said, detailing how the facility near Qom had been under construction for years without being disclosed, as required, to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "International law is not an empty promise."

The new Iranian plant, the country's second uranium enrichment facility, is believed by U.S. officials to be part of a broad effort by Iran's leadership to pursue the ability to build nuclear weapons.

And as if that's not enough, the Brazilian Vice President weighs in with his opinion:  Brazil ought to develop nuclear weapons, too.

Jose Alencar says "a nuclear weapon has great importance" to prevent attacks on Brazil because of its extensive borders and maritime holdings. Alencar tells Brazilian newspapers that Brazil doesn't have a program to develop nuclear weapons, but should.

If his is any indication, The Messiah's diplomatic strategy isn't working all that well.

The Fruit of Obama's Diplomatic Genius

It was a remarkable speech Obama gave at the UN.  He began by claiming to be humbled.  And then once again he reminded everybody of the big mess he keeps saying he inherited.  He said that in spite of the "almost reflexive anti-Americanism," he would never apologize for defending the interests of his nation and his people.  It should be an easy promise to keep, since he hasn't been caught defending them yet. 

In our humble president's next breath came the inevitable list of things he's doing differently than the Bush administration, for which he expects the world will like us better.  All of this came as lead up to what he plans to accomplish, and high on that list is... world peace!  Starting with the nations of the world standing shoulder to shoulder against the spread of nuclear weapons.

I've said before and I will repeat, I am committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations.

But if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East - then they must be held accountable.

The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future does not belong to fear.

But do we find any interest in holding Iran and North Korea accountable?  How about sanctions?  Might sanctions will do the trick?  Tough ones?

BEIJING — China will not support increased sanctions on Iran as a way to curb its nuclear program, a government spokeswoman said Thursday.

No luck with China, but on the upside, the Russians said they'll at least consider sanctions.  Or maybe the nations of the world will stand shoulder to shoulder some other time. 

The president turned his focus to the Middle East -- Israel and Palestine in particular.

I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. Yesterday, I had a constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. We have made some progress. Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians. As a result of these efforts by both sides, the economy in the West Bank has begun to grow. But more progress is needed. We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

The time has come to re-launch negotiations - without preconditions - that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The goal is clear: two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.

I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult.

I'll go along on difficult, yes.  But I'm not sure about the "not naive" part.  Having already demanded that Israel halt all construction in the West Bank, not even for natural growth expansion, he said the time has come to re-launch negotiations with no preconditions.  But that's a precondition.  We get it straight from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The speech was "good and positive" for Israel and for moving the peace process forward, the prime minister told The Jerusalem Post.

However, speaking in New York, Abbas said that even at the risk of alienating Obama, he could not return to talks without a clear agenda.

"In all honesty, we want to protect our relations with President Obama under any conditions," he told the London-based Al Hayat newspaper. "We don't want to come out with a crisis with the Americans, or create a crisis. But in the meantime, we can't go on unless there is a clear path. The road must be defined so we can know where we are going."

Abbas called again for a complete settlement freeze.

"We can't accept the status quo because a partial halt means a continuation of settlements," he said. "Even if it is halted by 95 percent, it is still a continuation of settlement activities."

The historic re-launch-without-preconditions will just have to wait.  Wait until those preconditions are settled.  Was Obama expecting something else? 

The best, however, was saved for last.  The president concluded with an historic call for reform.

The United Nations was built by men and women like Roosevelt from every corner of the world - from Africa and Asia, from Europe to the Americas. These architects of international co-operation had an idealism that was anything but naïve - it was rooted in the hard-earned lessons of war; rooted in the wisdom that nations could advance their interests by acting together instead of splitting apart.

Now it falls to us - for this institution will be what we make of it.

The United Nations does extraordinary good around the world feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, mending places that have been broken. But it also struggles to enforce its will, and to live up to the ideals of its founding.

I believe that those imperfections are not a reason to walk away from this institution - they are a calling to redouble our efforts.

The United Nations can either be a place where we bicker about outdated grievances, or forge common ground; a place where we focus on what drives us apart, or what brings us together; a place where we indulge tyranny, or a source of moral authority.

Reform the UN!  Fat chance!

Update:  The Independent reports that Iran has been told in no uncertain terms that it will face economic sanctions if it continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Iran has been given an ultimatum to suspend its nuclear programme and warned it will face economic sanctions unless it makes a "serious response" by 1 October. At a special session of the United Nations Security Council yesterday which endorsed Barack Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, six major powers issued a tough warning to Iran.

But what does that mean?  Nobody's committing to anything.

Mr Brown said the six nations – the US, Britain, Germany, France , Russia and China – had sent the "strongest possible message" to Iran. Last night a Downing Street spokesman said the six countries would decide their next steps after they held talks with Iran in Istanbul on 1 October.

Yes, the nations will vote for tough sanctions.  They'll decide exactly what they are later.  And then vote on them.  That's sure to work.

Snubs For The Hondurans

Interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti is not leftist, and for my money that explains why he can't get the time of day from the Obama administration.

"We have not spoken to any ranking U.S. officials," Mr. Micheletti told The Washington Times by telephone, speaking in Spanish. "They have shut the door on us. We want [President Obama] to understand and to send officials to Honduras to see for themselves that we didn't do anything unconstitutional.

"What has happened in Honduras is part of a judiciary, congressional process that went into effect when Zelaya tried to extend his power and authority against the constitution."

Mr. Zelaya, a leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was ousted in June when the Honduran Supreme Court ruled he violated the constitution by seeking a second consecutive term. The constitution limits the president to a single term.

Zelaya is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy and still trying to incite a violent overthrow in Honduras.  He's like a community organizer in that regard, bullying, intimidating, using anything that works to get his way.  What he wants is to be a dictator in the mold of Hugo Chavez, which would put him in real tight with our community-organizer-in-chief.  So far the Hondurans are not budging, not even an inch.  Three cheers for the Hondurans!

Pharmaceuticals Ad Campaign For Health Care Reform

Hot Air asks, "Did the White House cut a deal with drugmakers for an ad campaign?"

Via Jim Geraghty, this looks like a pattern now at the White House. Offer a few concessions in exchange for a bit of third-party campaigning, and everyone wins! In this case, it’s more that the pharmaceutical manufacturers won’t lose as much as they fear, but otherwise the concept is the same as with the NEA’s efforts to get its grant recipients to make art about universal health-care coverage. If the deal explicitly included a requirement for the pharmas to launch their upcoming $150 million ad campaign, this could cross the lines of campaign-finance laws...

It's not new news, the deal having been cut back in June and reported in the New York Times in August, but the question of campaign-finance violations is a new twist.

Still Campaigning

By appearing on five Sunday news programs Obama is showing himself to be a one -trick pony.  He's still campaigning.  

On "Face the Nation" Mr. Obama said he would pay for two-thirds of his health-care proposal by redirecting Medicare funds that are "just being spent badly." "This is not me making wild assertions," Mr. Obama said, "waste and abuse" can provide "the lion's share of money to pay for" health-care reform.

If that is true, Mr. Obama could flip the health-care debate to his advantage by offering a stand-alone bill that would cut the $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid that he sees as badly spent. Such a bill would show that Mr. Obama can be trusted when he says overhauling health care will be painless.

On The Side of Dictators

When Neda Agha-Soltan bled to death on the street in Tehran, having been shot by a Iranian theocracy sniper, Barack Obama finally stirred himself to speak out in support of human rights for the people of Iran.  That was June 23, 2009.

On Tuesday, President Obama called the images of Miss Agha-Soltan's death "heartbreaking."

"We have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history," he said at a press conference.

Neda's gone, and in Washington her death is a forgotten affair.  Protests are over, the theocrats in Tehran are firmly in control.  Obama has moved on.  He did his bit for human rights in Iran.  Today he preens for the UN, showing off his diplomatic genius.

But one thing is certain.  Obama's diplomatic genius will not be brought to bear to help the Iranian people, no matter how hard we might wish for it.  Writing in the Weekly Standard, John P. Hannah points out that Obama has a unique opportunity to stand up for human rights by standing up to Iran.

This month's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations offers President Obama a critical opportunity to reset America's posture toward Iran's post-June 12 turmoil, and to demonstrate that negotiations over Iran's nuclear program will not come at the Iranian people's expense. With his extraordinary political skills and international popularity, President Obama is uniquely positioned to challenge the global body to make clear, at long last, the civilized world's profound concern with Iran's elections and their bloody aftermath. He should call not only for the release of all those detained in the recent protests, but for an international inquiry of this summer's large-scale human rights abuses, including the use of officially-sanctioned rape, torture and lethal violence.

President Obama entered office promising to pursue a policy of engagement with Iran that would be tough and principled. We are about to find out if he really meant it.

Unfortunately, we already know he didn't mean it.  Tough talk to Iran is for benefit of us rubes.  When the Iranian people took to the streets, Barack Obama, the quintessential community organizer and rabble rouser, was nowhere to be found.  Contrast this with Obama administration dealings democratic regimes, Honduras for instance. 

On Monday Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into Tegucigalpa and hid himself in the Brazilian embassy, from which he has been trying to instigate street violence ever since.  He has the tacit approval of the Obama administration in this. 

It brings up the noticeable difference between Iran and Honduras.  Iran is run by a murderous theocracy.  When thousands of Iranians took to the streets to peacefully protest a stolen election they were met with violence, murder, torture, rape, and imprisonment.  Obama has not been on side of the Iranian people with anything more than a few spoken words, more for the support of his image than their rights. 

But let's look to Honduras.  It's a functioning democracy in which a tiny leftist minority has taken to the streets in support of violent overthrow.  Obama is on the side of those people, the side of the aspiring leftist dictator.  

Mr. Zelaya was deposed and deported this summer after he agitated street protests to support a rewrite of the Honduran constitution so he could serve a second term. The constitution strictly prohibits a change in the term-limits provision. On multiple occasions he was warned to desist, and on June 28 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest.

Every major Honduran institution supported the move, even members in Congress of his own political party, the Catholic Church and the country's human rights ombudsman. To avoid violence the Honduran military escorted Mr. Zelaya out of the country. In other words, his removal from office was legal and constitutional, though his ejection from the country gave the false appearance of an old-fashioned Latin American coup.

The U.S. has since come down solidly on the side of—Mr. Zelaya. While it has supported negotiations and called for calm, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both insisted that Honduras must ignore Mr. Zelaya's transgressions and their own legal processes and restore him as president. The U.S. has gone so far as to cut off aid, threaten Honduran assets in the U.S. and pull visas to enter the U.S. from the independent judiciary. The U.S. has even threatened not to recognize presidential elections previously scheduled for November unless Mr. Zelaya is first brought back to power—even though he couldn't run again.

Some time ago President Roberto Micheletti had offered to allow Zelaya's return, pledging that he would not seek re-election in November and asking Zelaya to do the same.  But with the weight of the U.S. State Department on his side Zelaya has felt no need to compromise.  His supporters are at the gates of the Brazilian embassy with Molotov cocktails. 

So far this hasn't worked out so well for Zelaya.  He sits alone in the Brazilian embassy.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Diplomats and activists streamed out of the increasingly isolated Brazilian Embassy in Honduras where ousted President Manuel Zelaya holed up with a shrinking core of supporters and relatives, prompting Brazil to urge the U.N. Security Council to guarantee the compound's safety.

Zelaya's backers ventured out at several points in Honduras' capital to skirmish with police, after hundreds of their colleagues were routed by baton-wielding soldiers from the street in front of the embassy and police roadblocks sealed off the mission building Tuesday. Authorities denied local media reports that three people died in the confrontation.

The entire country was largely shut down, with almost no cars or pedestrians in the streets and few businesses open under a nearly round-the-clock curfew decreed by the interim government that ousted Zelaya in June. It accused Zelaya of sneaking back into the country Monday to create disturbances and disrupt the Nov. 29 election scheduled to pick his successor.

Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez said the government would not try to enter the embassy to arrest Zelaya, but he also said Honduras' interim leaders had no intention of yielding on the central point demanded by the international community: the reinstatement of Zelaya to serve out the remaining four months of his term.

Obama is first and foremost on the side of leftists, but when a lefty dictator is no where to be found his next choice is any other kind of dictator.  Dictators can get things done, like spreading the wealth, nationalizing health care and other industries.  It's harder to do those things in a democracy.  People get in the way.  It would be so much easier for Obama to bring about hope and change if he could just have the style of government that he hopes to nurture in Honduras.

A Health Care Reform Object Lesson

Medicare Advantage gives Medicare beneficiaries the option to receive benefits through private health insurance plans.  Medicare then reimburses the Medicare Advantage providers.  Humana Inc. provides Medicare Advantage.  At least, it does for the moment, but that may change.  The Senate Finance Chairman, Max Baucus has sent federal regulators after Humana for criticizing his health care reform bill. 

Earlier this month, Humana sent a one-page letter to its customers enrolled in its Medicare Advantage plans, which offer private options to Medicare beneficiaries. Humana noted that, because of spending cuts proposed by Democrats, "millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable." The Kentucky-based company also urged its customers to contact their Representatives. Pretty tame stuff, as these things go.

Mr. Baucus took it as a declaration of war. He complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal health-care agency, which on Friday duly ordered Humana to cease and desist. CMS claimed the mailer was "misleading and confusing" and told the company it has opened an official probe as to whether the mailer violated laws about how the insurers that manage Advantage plans are allowed to communicate with their customers, as well as other federal statutes.

"Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions," CMS concluded, ominously. Humana could be fined or booted from Medicare Advantage altogether.

Piece by piece, this is the way the health care industry will be persuaded to come out in favor of health care reform.  The choice Obama, Baucus, and the Democrats now threaten to individual providers who depend on federal reimbursement is, "You're with us, or you may be out of business."  It's easy to see why the  public option is so attractive to Democrats.  It's the vehicle that will give Washington this kind of leverage over an entire industry.