Libertarian Leanings

Voting For Trump

I will be voting for Donald Trump next Tuesday. The Big Reason: Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is corrupt, and a vote for anybody but Donald Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton.

No one was surprised to learn that Obama's Department of Justice had no plans to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her “mistakes” in the handling of classified information. The fix was in and everybody knew it. The only surprise was when FBI Director James Comey made his July statement, publicly recommending against prosecution while at the same time laying out, in great detail, all of the ways in which federal laws were violated. He announced,

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.“

Who could have imagined that Director Comey would set the FBI up to take the fall for a political decision by political appointees? Career FBI agents were caught by surprise and they were livid, and now the agency is leaking like a sieve.

“Fox News Channel's Bret Baier reports the latest news about the Clinton Foundation investigation from two sources inside the FBI. He reveals five important new pieces of information...

1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year. 

2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time. 

3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton's secret server on Anthony Weiner's laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature. 

4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is "likely" in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, "barring some obstruction in some way" from the Justice Department. 

5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton's server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.”**

Recent FBI document dumps make clear that, absent some deal, Hillary's conviction for mishandling classified information, or lying to Congress, or lying to the FBI would very likely have been a slam dunk. That is, it would be a slam dunk for anyone not named Hillary Clinton. And now a majority of Americans believe Hillary should have been indicted. How will that majority react on November 9th if it turns out she has won the White House.

It may not happen. As a candidate Hillary has been abysmal. She is the first presidential candidate I know of who is dumb enough to call opposition voters racists. She said,

“[Y]ou could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

Hillary remarks were greeted with chuckling and applause at that high brow fund raiser. I'm sure somebody had to tell her later that she just alienated about half of America. So she tried to walk it back with the usual non-apology. She said she was wrong to say “half.” Should she have said a quarter? Maybe three quarters? Who knows? But now she promises that we're going to be “Stronger Together.” That's sure to work out well.

Calling opponents racist has been the go-to strategy of Democrats for decades. Can anyone remember a Republican candidate for president who was not called “racist” by Democrats? From the Eisenhower administration forward, every Republican presidential candidate has been slandered as a racist, some by innuendo, but for most the accusations have been explicit. But now that Hillary has expanded upon the practice by including the millions of Trump supporters in the smear, as well as the candidate himself, suddenly the magic of the race card is wearing thin. The label is not sticking so well, and instead people are getting really pissed off.

Yet Hillary claims to be the experienced candidate, the steady hand, the one to take the 3:00am phone call. Well let's look at her experience:

One of her first high profile moves as Secretary of State was her reset with Russia, in which she presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a mock “Reset” button but which was actually labeled “Overcharged” in translation. Smart diplomacy.

How about Libya? In an April 4, 2012 email listing Hillary's grand accomplishments, aide Jake Sullivan wrote, “HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings — as well as the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya. She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.” When she learned of the death of Libyan dictator, who had actually been cooperating with the U.S., she giggled and quipped “We came, we saw, he died.” What a sparkling wit. Today, Libya is a failed state and a haven for ISIS.

What more needs to be said about Benghazi? Four Americans died on September 11, 2012, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, despite his repeated pleas in preceding months for additional security. All requests were denied, and the best Hillary ever offered on it was plausible deniability? According to Hillary, consulate security decisions are best left to the professionals, underlings who obviously fell down on the job. Hillary said she takes full responsibility, though. But what the hell does that mean, “full responsibility?”

Among Hillary's other triumphs is Syria which has descended into civil war. Refugees number in the millions. Then there's her reset with Russia. Russia has invaded the Ukraine. Iran is now on a path to acquire a nuclear weapon in ten years, sanctions are off, and the mullahs will have $150 billion, some of which the Obama administration admits will probably go to the financing of terrorists.

But the one that perfectly captures Hillary's flawed character is the discovery of State Department emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop. Hillary assembled a leadership team at the State Department that is in the image of herself, all of them so arrogant that they could never imagine being subject to any kind of oversight, or even subject to the law itself.

So 650,000 State Department emails, emails that were possibly the subject of Congressional subpeona, somehow found their way to Anthony Weiner's laptop to reside there along with his porn. Could you make up a more ridiculous story? Anthony Weiner, the former congressman and estranged husband of Clinton confidant Huma Abedin, was the target of a separate investigation into his “sexting” with a 15-year old North Carolina girl. It was in that investigation that the discovery of State Department emails was made. How did her crack team let that happen?

The election of Hillary Clinton will create a national crisis like nothing we've seen in our lifetimes. The divide in this country will get much worse because Americans reject the notion that certain elite citizens should be above the laws that apply to the ordinary people. Hillary, on the other hand, believes that she is exempt.

Though she harbors delusions of competence, Hillary has only one talent: corruption. Corruption is what Hillary will bring to the White House and she'll bring along her similarly talented leadership team from State, the same talented leadership team that managed to misplace official State Department emails on the laptop of a pervert who is under investigation by the FBI.

America's Former Top Diplomat Hones Her Skills

Hillary Clinton launched a strident attack on Donald Trump's patriotism, the other day, claiming that Trump’s praise of Vladimir Putin was “unpatriotic” and “scary” and implying that his attitude towards Putin could present a threat to our national security.  Here is a flavor of Trump's praise for Vladimir Putin:  

"I think it's inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country."

It's not surprising that Trump would get hammered over his comment.  The press has been suffering through a drought in Trump disciplinary lapses, so even those in media who are not in the tank for Hillary are inclined to make a big deal out of this because controversy is their bread and butter.  So Trump gets hammered, even though he followed up by saying that Putin would not be pushing him around once he's elected.

"And that's going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president.”

I took Trump's comment to be not so much praise for Putin and as much as disgust that Obama and Clinton have been so pathetic by comparison.  I took it to mean that Trump recognizes Putin as a formidable adversary and one that he won't underestimate — even while he hopes to be able to work with him.  In other words, he's not about to bring him a silly reset button, mistakenly labeled "Overcharge", and expect it to pave the way to world peace.

I suppose I ought to be careful in what I say here lest somebody call me racist.  Or sexist. Or maybe unpatriotic.  It's what you get for preferring Trump to Clinton.

Yes.  I side with the deplorables, and Hillary's later statement of regret over her insult to Trump supporters only hardens my opposition and dislike of her.  She said she was wrong to say that half of Trump supporters were her "basket of deplorables," though I'm not sure if she meant that half was too few or too many.  In either case, it was not an apology to millions of voters she doesn't know, and has no interest in knowing.  

For decades the race card has been the go-to strategy of Democrats, but somehow the tried and true hasn't worked this time.  Baffling.  Railing against Trump as a racist, sexist, bigot comes up empty.  So Clinton and the political geniuses in her campaign have broadened their target to include anybody who supports Trump as well as Trump himself.  Presumably she'll shame people away from supporting Trump.  We'll soon find out how well that's going to work, but let me predict that it will be even less effective than calling only Trump the racist.

Hillary is lives in a different world from the rest of us and it seems a disadvantage to her.  Hers is a world of elites.  Listen to the clip and you can hear them chuckling and applauding Hillary's clever insult.  She's one of them, and they're with her, separate from the rest.  

Neither she nor they can imagine that outside of the room, people didn't think Hillary was very funny, since they had just been slapped hard across the face with an insult.  Inside of the room Hillary was too busy parading her virtues to notice.  Inside her world she was basking in the applause.

It was only later, probably after somebody told her, that she realized her swipe might have hit somebody who didn't deserve to be hit.  No matter.  Those others, they're never going to be on the inside.  So Hillary went on to repeat her insult in a clumsy explanation that was intended to refocus it on a smaller target.  It was as if she said, "No no, not you.  You," pointing at some other supposed bigot.

"I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign," Clinton said.

She also noted her comments about empathizing with other Trump supporters.

"As I said, many of Trump's supporters are hard-working Americans who just don't feel like the economy or our political system are working for them," Clinton said. "I'm determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top. Because we really are 'stronger together.'"

Clinton.  Contempt, condescension, and delusions of competence.

The Clinton Strategy - Revisited

Byron York wonders, is Bill Clinton really trying to help the Democrats?

The problem was, it wasn't entirely clear how much Clinton really wanted to help Democrats, and especially Obama, win next week's elections.

[...]

The event began like any other Clinton appearance: he was late, first a half-hour, then an hour, then 90 minutes. As a crowd of several hundred party activists, volunteers, and labor organizers milled around a ballroom at the posh Palmer House Hotel, a woman in the audience tried to breathe a little life into a group that had nothing to do but wait.

"Fired up!" she shouted.  "Ready to go!"

A few people scattered around the room joined in. "Fired up!  Ready to go!"  After several more turns, perhaps half the crowd was chanting.  But the enthusiasm never spread all around.

Dissatisfied, the woman tried again a few moments later.  "Yes we can!" she yelled.  "Yes we can!"

This time, maybe a half-dozen people joined in before it fizzled out altogether.  Nobody cared; they were too busy with other things.

Update:  I wondered about Clinton's real objectives myself, some time ago.  I thought he was driving the left into the ditch in order to bolster Hillary's chances for a pesidential run in 2016. 

Unhappiness with Obama and the other leading Democrats is so high that a national tea party movement has virtually brought the Republicans back from the electoral grave. The president’s job approval numbers have been in a year-long slide. In almost every election since he took office, Democrats have gotten trounced.

Yet he continues to push extraordinarily unpopular policies. Could it be the advice he’s been getting?

In the face of this disastrous performance by President Obama and the Democrats, the Clinton team has been actively advising that they keep doing what they’re doing. It’s as if Bill Clinton has just discovered that his beloved party is firmly in the clutches of the extreme left, and he’s decided to encourage their leaders to drive themselves into the proverbial ditch.

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial prefers the cliff metaphor.  In the WSJ version the 1960s liberals in congress are behind the wheel.

The larger lesson is that we are learning for the fourth time in 45 years that America can't be governed from the left. Democrats exploited the recession and the accident of 60 Senate seats to push the agenda of their dreams, and the American public has recoiled at the effrontery and the results. Repairing the damage of the 111th Congress will take years, and perhaps decades, but the first step is ousting the liberals who once again drove their party off a cliff.

Ditch?  Cliff?  Who cares!  Hand me my Slurpee, I'm enjoying this!

Update II:  Confirmation of my "ditch theory" comes from Hillbuzz!  Some Hillary Clinton Democrats are waging war on the Democratic party.  

We will not forget those Obamacare votes.  We will not forgive being called a racist because we don’t support this terrible man and his awful agenda.  We will not be silenced.

We will not give up.

It’s going to be years, if ever, before the lamestream media ever catches up to any of this, and realizes that a large swath of people who used to be Democrat loyalists are now doing everything they can to destroy the party.  Some of them are out and open, like me and my friends here at HillBuzz, but many are doing their part quietly.  They just stop writing checks.  Or maybe now they write checks to Democrat opponents.  They might continue to attend events and fundraisers, but now they call up Republican sites and give them all the dirt on what they heard in those meetings.  The Democrat Party alienated so many people who are now working to bring it down that I could go on for pages and pages more on this topic.

It’s very Sidney Bristow, Rush.  And if you watched that show Alias, you’d know she not only won in the end, but looked damn good kicking ass while doing it.

THAT, El Rushbo, is what your “Hillary babes” are up to.

That little excertp is from an open letter to Rush Limbaugh -- a long open letter. 

Update III:  Toby Harndon of The Telegraph (UK) says Bill Clinton is on a 'retribution tour' against Barack Obama. 

My hunch is that the Clintons smell Obama’s blood in the water right now and, political predators that they are, they are positioning themselves to take advantage (and, frankly, who could blame them for doing so?). We know from 2008 what they really think of Obama. Despite Hillary’s loyal service as Secretary of State, her scathing critique of Obama during their bruising primary still stands – and now looks prescient.

Primary Challenge in 2012?

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell thinks Obama may face a primary challenge Obama in 2012. I can't say I'd be surprised.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell predicted on Tuesday that if the president escalates America's military involvement in Afghanistan he could very well face a primary challenger in 2012.

In an overlooked "Morning Joe" segment on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Democrat offered his distinct brand of eccentric, conversation-driving political foresight. He couched his statement about the possibility of a primary challenge by stressing that if Obama sticks to his current plans for Afghanistan -- a reduced military presence beginning in July of 2011 -- there would not be political insurrection within the party.

If Rendell's analysis is correct, and unhappiness among Democrats arises from a delayed withdrawal from Afghanistan, the challenge would most likely come from the left.  On the other hand, if Dan Reihl is on the money the challenge will come from Hillary.

The wedges for a deep Democrat split are in place. A disaster in 2010 isn't going to do much to dislodge them. Grab your popcorn. We may not have seen the last of Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Obama has been forced to rely on Bill Clinton for some very visible help. No one is better positioned to hurt Obama than political iceberg Bill Clinton. They may well be beginning to re-arrange the deck chairs on Obama's sinking ship of state, aka the Titanic. Wow. What a bouyant thought!

I've had my money on Hillary since last February.

If Democrat leaders diligently follow the Clinton team prescription, by the time November 2010 rolls around they will be intensely unpopular. The tea party faithful will be incensed and motivated, and the left can expect to get an historic shellacking on Election Day.

But Hillary will have no connection to that defeat. She stands ready to step in as that New Democrat Lanny Davis is looking for. By opposing the far left of her party she might even tap into tea party outrage at the leftist assault on our liberties, our health care, and our free market economy. She could offer herself to tea party independents as the New Democrat alternative to a return to Republican rule.

Hillary Clinton will be running for president.

Bill and Hillary

The following post was originally published on Pajamas Media.

It’s bizarre. Why does President Obama insist upon driving public option health care legislation through Congress when voter opposition to it is at an all-time high?

Unhappiness with Obama and the other leading Democrats is so high that a national tea party movement has virtually brought the Republicans back from the electoral grave. The president’s job approval numbers have been in a year-long slide. In almost every election since he took office, Democrats have gotten trounced.

Yet he continues to push extraordinarily unpopular policies. Could it be the advice he’s been getting?

In the face of this disastrous performance by President Obama and the Democrats, the Clinton team has been actively advising that they keep doing what they’re doing. It’s as if Bill Clinton has just discovered that his beloved party is firmly in the clutches of the extreme left, and he’s decided to encourage their leaders to drive themselves into the proverbial ditch.

The one exception has been Lanny Davis, former special counsel for Bill Clinton, who on the day after Martha Coakley lost to Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the left was to blame for her defeat. What, he wondered, had become of the party of Bill Clinton?

We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama — a party that is willing to meet halfway with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions.

Why is Davis the only former Clintonista to take aim at the left? You might think the others would join in, including Bill Clinton himself, especially since he has so much in common with Barack Obama. But that just isn’t happening.

Like Obama, Bill Clinton won his presidency by campaigning as a centrist. Clinton called himself a New Democrat, but once inaugurated he veered left, and for the first two years of their “co-presidency” the Clintons promoted Hillary’s health care reform plan. That lasted from 1992 until the 1994 midterm elections, at which time voters, for the first time in decades, elected a Republican majority to Congress rather than hold still for nationalized health care.

Those midterm elections were cataclysmic in their impact, causing the Clinton administration to dramatically switch gears. HillaryCare, which had been the primary Clinton administration focus for two years, was shoved aside and forgotten. Bill Clinton turned on a dime, very suddenly becoming the centrist president his campaign promised he would be.

Transformed, he went on to enjoy two very successful terms in the White House as a New Democrat — passing landmark welfare reform, signing the North American Free Trade Agreement, and balancing the budget for the first time in decades.

Sixteen years later, as history stands poised for a repeat, the former president has advice to offer the current president. This time around, it’s ObamaCare that has people so stirred up they put a Republican into the Massachusetts Senate seat that had been held for 46 years by Democrat Ted Kennedy. The irony of it is priceless. Massachusetts voters elected Scott Brown because he promised to be the 41st vote, the vote that torpedoes Ted Kennedy’s lifelong dream of nationalized health care. And in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin, it was not a close vote.

In similar circumstances, Bill Clinton listened to the voters. But in late November Bill Clinton paid a visit to Senate Democrats and urged them to pass President Obama’s health care reform bill. He told them the political consequences for Democrats would be grim if they didn’t, and the rewards would be great if they did.

Addressing the Democrats at their caucus luncheon, Clinton noted the grim consequences of his own failed reform effort in 1994: Democrats lost control of Congress in the November midterm elections, health-care costs skyrocketed, and the uninsured rate continued to rise.

The worst thing would be to do nothing, he said. Granted, this was well before Scott Brown rocked the political landscape, but as the dust settled from the Massachusetts aftershock there was no moderation of the Clinton message — and in fact Clinton team members were moving to reinforce it.

Within a few days former Clinton political consultant Paul Begala wrote an article for the Huffington Post that urged Democrats: “Pass the Senate Bill, Please.” It was a challenge. Man up, you wussies.

You’re going to get the attack anyway, you may as well get the accomplishment. I don’t mean to be rude, but if health care is the kiss of death, you’ve already been kissed.

On that very same day the Financial Times carried an editorial by James Carville, chief political strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. He advised Democrats to just blame George W. Bush for all of their problems.

Democrats would not be playing the blame game with one another for the loss or for the health care debacle if they had only pointed fingers at those (or in this case, the one) who put Americans (and most of the world) in the predicament we’re in: George W. Bush.

Blaming Bush is just what President Barack Obama has been doing for his entire first year in office, and it isn’t working anymore. While paying lip service to bipartisanship, Obama has restated his promise to keep pushing his own brand of health care reform — opposite of what Bill Clinton himself had done.

Why? Hillary.

Bill Clinton has been engaged in the kind of politicking that would have been considered unseemly not so long ago. Former presidents just don’t do politics after serving two terms in the White House, but Bill Clinton is not like other former two-term presidents. It’s still possible, though not necessarily probable, that he could be back for another two terms at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this time as first gentleman to the first woman president of the United States.

In the Clinton strategy for getting there, three elements emerge. First is to attack the left. Lanny Davis launched the first wave, blaming the left for Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts and calling for the more centrist New Democrats to save the party.

The second element of the strategy is to goad the leading leftist Democrats into ramming their policies down American throats. Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, and a host of others are pressuring Obama, Reid, and Pelosi to keep pushing that health care legislation, and don’t worry that the majority of voters oppose it. Those tea party Americans are too dumb to know what’s in their own best interest, and it’s up to the left to impose it on them.

The third piece is Carville’s finger of blame. After more than a year listening to Obama blaming George W. Bush for all of America’s problems, the message is losing its potency. It’s just another way for the left to insist that it bears no responsibility for anything ever. The laser-like focus on avoiding their own blame for past problems convinces more and more people that Democrats haven’t the slightest clue and even less interest in really solving problems. Instead, any legislation to make its way through this leftist dominated Congress is designed first and foremost to strengthen their grip on power.

If Democrat leaders diligently follow the Clinton team prescription, by the time November 2010 rolls around they will be intensely unpopular. The tea party faithful will be incensed and motivated, and the left can expect to get an historic shellacking on Election Day.

But Hillary will have no connection to that defeat. She stands ready to step in as that New Democrat Lanny Davis is looking for. By opposing the far left of her party she might even tap into tea party outrage at the leftist assault on our liberties, our health care, and our free market economy. She could offer herself to tea party independents as the New Democrat alternative to a return to Republican rule.

Hillary Clinton will be running for president. A challenge to Obama in 2012 is not outside the realm of possibility, but it would be very risky. Failing to win the nomination in 2012 would most likely kill her chances for a run at it in 2016. She’ll do it only if Obama’s poll numbers continue to slide.

The Clinton team is helping those numbers along.

Driving The Left Into a Ditch?

My latest article is up on Pajamas Media.

The Clintons' legendary penchant for triangulations takes a Machiavellian turn as the midterms approach.

Read more...

A Meaningless Distinction

Hillary Clinton says the Iranian theocratic dictatorship is being supplanted by a military dictatorship.

She said the Obama administration believes that the Guard is supplanting the government of Iran. "That is how we see it. We see that the government of Iran, the Supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," said Clinton, who arrived Sunday in Qatar, where she spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

Clinton expanded on her Iran remarks before the students as she flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday afternoon. She told reporters traveling with her that she believed the current civilian leadership was too "preoccupied" by the opposition protests to recognize the creeping coup by the guard, and it was unclear if the clerical and civilian leadership could "begin to reassert itself."

Among the signs of a military dictatorship that she saw, she said the current government "is a far cry from the Islamic Republic, which had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle. "

Right.  That's the same Iranian theocracy that called in the snipers when confronted with a differing point of view back in September.  What's really happened is that the Obama administration has finally awaken to the fact that trying to negotiate with Iran was always a useless exercise.  The "creeping coup" is a better explanation for Obama than admitting to the creeping realization that he was wrong from the start.

Key Excerpts

In November 2007 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a National Intelligence Estimate entitled, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.  Its most prominent Key Judgment was this:

A.  We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.

This set the liberals atwitter.  Lefty star blogger Matthew Yglesias quoted his favorite candidate:

Barack Obama says:

By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy.

On the other side John Bolton highlighted the NIE and warned:

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

Candidate Obama is now President Obama, and we now get to see how his strategy of less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy has worked out.  The Washington Post reports today:

The accumulating evidence of Iran's nuclear momentum emerges as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Monday that the White House has little to show for nearly a year of diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton told reporters.

The internal documents and expert analysis point to a growing Iranian mastery of disciplines including uranium metallurgy, heavy-water production and the high-precision explosives used to trigger a nuclear detonation. Although U.S. spy agencies have thought that Iran's leaders halted research on nuclear warheads in 2003, European and Middle Eastern analysts point to evidence that Iran has continued to hone its skills, as recently as 2007.

Funny how it was the Bush administration that was always accused of cooking the intelligence.

So Goes the U.S.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton perseveres with Obama administration efforts to topple a Latin American democracy by forcing Honduras to accept its former president Manuel Zelaya as dictator.  Meanwhile a legal review of the facts surrounding Mr. Zelaya's removal, recently filed by the Congressional Research Service, concludes that Honduran judicial and legislative actions were consistent with the Honduran constitutional and statutory law.  This cuts no ice with Hillary who has sanctioned the country's independent judiciary.

The upshot is that the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution and is also using its international political heft to try to interfere with the country's independent judiciary.

Hondurans are worried about what this pressure is doing to their country. Mr. Zelaya's violent supporters are emboldened by the U.S. position. They deface some homes and shops with graffiti and throw stones and home-made bombs into others, and whenever the police try to stop them, they howl about their "human rights." 

[...]

In its actions toward Honduras, the Obama administration is demonstrating contempt for the fundamentals of democracy. Legal scholars are clear on this. "Judicial independence is a central component of any democracy and is crucial to separation of powers, the rule of law and human rights," writes Ahron Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel and a prominent legal scholar, in his compelling 2006 book, "The Judge in a Democracy."

Obama's contempt for the fundamentals of democracy was already apparent here at home.  All we need to do is look at his intrusions into the marketplace.  Massive bailouts and stimulus packages have given Obama leverage to fire the CEO of GM, to dictate executive pay in the financial sector.  And now he wants to take over the nations health care industry.

If more evidence is needed, there are those connections to ACORN, the organization which has racked up several convictions for voter registration fraud.  Obama's 2008 presidential campaign paid an ACORN subsidiary $800,000.00 for get-out-the-vote services.  This was originally misrepresented in campaign reporting to the FEC as payment for as "polling, advance work, and staging major events."  ACORN's get-out-the-vote activities were intended to rig our elections, which is what Manuel Zelaya hoped to achieve in Honduras with his unconstitutional referendum.  How sad that he continues to enjoy the full support of the Obama administration in his efforts to do it.

Legitimizing The Abuse of Power

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone votes to confirm Arturo Valenzuela as assistant secretary of state, and Thomas Shannon as U.S. ambassador to Brazil.  DeMint is unhappy with U.S. policy on Honduras.  He and 16 other Republican senators wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ask that the administration to reassess its stance on Honduras.

The group said it worried that Washington's pro-Zelaya stance would legitimize "abuses of power" and "violations of the Honduran constitution" by Zelaya before he was ousted by the army on June 28.

Efforts to broker an end to the Honduran power struggle collapsed on Sunday, after interim leader Roberto Micheletti rejected a proposal to reinstate the overthrown president.

Clinton spoke to Micheletti by phone after the talks fell apart and warned him he could face cuts in economic aid unless he strikes a deal with his rival.

DeMint and other Republicans have said they believe Hondurans were acting lawfully when they ousted Zelaya after he had sought to hold a referendum on overhauling the constitution to allow his re-election.

A spokesman for DeMint said on Tuesday the senator was also displeased at Valenzuela's refusal to discuss Honduras at length during his nomination hearing.

At the hearing, DeMint asked why Washington would want to be on the same side as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro, in the Honduran crisis.

"President Obama rushed to side with Chavez and Castro before getting the facts. Now it's clear that the people of Honduras were defending the rule of law," DeMint said on Tuesday, through his spokesman.

I can't help but notice that Obama invariably sides with leftists, or any other totalitarians for that matter, while they assert control by whatever means possible.  Look how he refused to stand up for the people of Iran.  And now Honduras.