Obama, Clinton Side With Chavez, Castro

In an appalling display of ignorance for freedom and democracy, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both sided with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in condemning Honduras' coup over the weekend. But as Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the WSJ points out, Hounduran President Mel Zelaya was attempting to rewrite Honduras' constitution and Supreme Court and turn his country into a Marxist state like Venezuela and Cuba. The act of forcefully removing Zelaya by Honduras' top military commander was actually done to save the country's democracy and at the order of the Supreme Court.

While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

Once again, Obama and Clinton are on the wrong side of freedom and democracy in a shockingly ill-conceived display of friendship for their Marxist buddies in dictatorial regimes.

*Update*

It seems that Obama actually tried to prevent the ouster of the Marxist Zelaya.