Zelaya’s Useful Idiot – by Jamie Weinstein | FrontPage Magazine

Zelaya’s Useful Idiot – by Jamie Weinstein | FrontPage Magazine: "During the Cold War, Congressional Democrats compiled a long history of being useful idiots for leftist causes and regimes in Latin America. Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois seems to be trying to revive the tradition for the 21st century.

Last week, Schakowsky became the first Congressional Democrat to visit Honduras since Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from the Honduran presidency in June. Zelaya’s removal was authorized by the country’s Supreme Court and legislature in response to multiple attempts by Zelaya to violate the Honduran Constitution. It is widely suspected that Zelaya was seeking to change the Constitution in order to extend his presidency, which is limited to one term by Honduran law.

In a hastily arranged conference call just hours after she returned from her three-day trip to Honduras last Thursday, Schakowsky claimed to speak for Congressional Democrats and the U.S. government when she stated “the coup against President Zelaya is illegal and, along with every other nation in the region and the world, we don’t recognize the coup regime as the legitimate government of Honduras.”

It is true that the international community condemned Zelaya’s removal as an illegal coup, a position with which the Obama administration has concurred. But Schakowsky’s statement that the coup was illegal is in conflict with an August report by the Law Library of Congress on the situation in Honduras. The report reviewed the relevant Honduran law and ultimately concluded that

“available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system.”"