No Wonder Hugo Chavez is So Angry

There is an excellent opinion piece today in the Wall Street Journal that also happens to chock full of facts on what is really going on in Honduras. It also happens to back up my own observations of how most of Honduran's government officials attempted to protect and preserve their constitutional system -- including the military -- whereas ousted President Mel Zelaya went out of his way to circumvent it.

And that includes attempting an illegal vote using ballots furnished by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela!

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. 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.

That's a good part of the news that your mainstream press forgot to tell you over the weekend, and certainly not part of the information upon which President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hoping you knew about.

Read, and learn.