The country’s supreme court disagrees, but oh well. The One hath spoken. Regarding the lip service he pays here to “democratic traditions,” does the fact that Honduras’s congress blessed Zelaya’s ouster and installed Micheletti as president factor at all into the calculus about how democratic this was? What about the fact that Zelaya was organizing his referendum towards anti-democratic ends, as a first step towards installing himself as a Chavez-esque strongman? And since Obama’s so worried about setting “terrible precedents,” how about the precedent of piping up in support of a Chavez stooge instead of simply staying out of this? He goes so far here as to say that Zelaya’s still the president of Honduras, which risks forcing an impossible situation where he’s returned to power despite all other arms of the government — military, legislature, and judiciary — being openly hostile to him. What could go wrong?

After thinking about this for 24 hours, I can’t see any reason for a strong reaction from the United States here except as a way for The One to prove he’s different from all the other yanqui presidents in the past. And if that means he has to side with Hugo Chavez, so be it. Exit quotation from Micheletti: “‘We can’t allow that this government take us to communism or socialism.”