"Baring Its Fangs"

Today's Washington Times editorial insists that what happened in Honduras "was not a military coup." Al Giordano is fed up with such assertions, especially after yesterday's news:

The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti, as the coup "president" today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country's constitution:

1. The right to protest.

2. Freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.

3. Freedom of association.

4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.

5. Freedom of transit in the country.

The coup defenders are afraid, they say, of Honduras becoming another another Cuba, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, of losing their "freedoms" and their "democracy." But today, in one fell swoop their leaders erased those very freedoms, atop all the other ones they've already burned alive - freedom of the press, freedom to elect their own president, among them - and buried democracy with it.

(Updated: Title changed for spelling error)

-- CB