Crisis atmosphere returns to Honduras with Zelaya's return from exile

Demonstrators returned to the streets of Tegucigalpa on Monday after ousted leftist President Manual Zelaya returned to Honduras for the first time after a June coup forced him from office. Zelaya was forced to sneak back into the country and took refuge in Brazil's embassy under threat of arrest by the new conservative government, according to the Reuters international news service. Thousands of protesters defied a curfew and stayed outside Brazil's embassy in a peaceful show of support of Zelaya, who was forced into exile by the military in a dispute over term limits. Conservative legislative leader Roberto Micheletti, who was chosen to lead the interim government, has resisted worldwide calls to restore Zelaya to office. The United States, the Organization of American States and the European Union have refused to recognize the Micheletti government and have called for the restoration of Zelaya to power. "I am the legitimate president chosen by the people and that is why I came here," Zelaya told Reuters by telephone from inside the embassy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Zelaya and the coup leaders must find a way to avoid violence in Honduras, Reuters said. "It's imperative that dialogue begin ... (and) there be a channel of communication between President Zelaya and the de facto regime in Honduras," Clinton said after a meeting with President Oscar Arias of nearby Costa Rica. But Micheletti wants Zelaya arrested on corruption charges and called on Brazil to turn him over to the de facto government. "A call to the government of Brazil: respect the judicial order against Mr. Zelaya and turn him into Honduran authorities ... The eyes of the world are on Brazil and Honduras," Micheletti said. Zelaya was due to leave office in January but his opponents accused him of trying to change Honduras' constitution to permit him to stay in office. In New York, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Reuters he hoped Zelaya's return to Honduras would start a new stage in negotiations to end the crisis.

Revolving Interior Department door comes as no surprise

Is there anyone who would be surprised to learn that a top Bush administration environmental official is under investigation for possibly breaking ethics laws? Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the first interior secretary under former President George W. Bush, allegedly discussed future job opportunities with Royal Dutch Shell, the giant oil company, while she was considering awarded shale oil exploration leases to a Shell subsidiary, the New York Times reported today. The Times said officials of the department's inspector general's office confirmed the existence of an investigation, as did a Shell spokeswoman. The investigation was first reported in the Los Angeles Times, the New York newspaper said. Investigators have already turned over their findings to the Justice Department after a yearlong investigation into allegations that an award of three leases in Colorado to the Shell subsidiary might have been tainted by Norton's job search. She is now Shell's general counsel in the United States for unconventional fuels, the Times said. "We are aware of an investigation, the Shell spokeswoman, Kelly C. op de Weegh, told the New York Times. "However, we are not in a position to comment.” Norton also declined to comment, the New York paper said. Of course, the mere appearance of impropriety is not in itself improper. But while she was in office, Norton was an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney in the administration's push to open more federal land to energy exploration, the New York Times said. The government has long sought a way to extract oil from shale, which is common in the west. If Norton was looking for a job with a company that was seeking and was awarded government contracts, she could be soon facing a federal indictment.

U.S. wants additional two-month delay in terror trials

With the second of two U.S.-requested 120-day delays in the start of military trials for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Obama administration says it will request an additional two-month postponement, the Reuters international news service reported Wednesday. In a legal filing in a challenge brought by accused Sept. 11 conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors asked for the delay on the grounds that the Military Commissions Act, under which the trials are being conducted, "may be substantially amended" in the next two months and because, Reuters said, the government may decide "to prosecute [Binalshibh] in federal court." Binalshibh is accused of being a go-between between al-Qaida leaders and the Sept. 11 hijackers. He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and held by the CIA four years before being sent to Guantanamo Bay. He is scheduled for a competency hearing on Sept. 21 before a miltitary judge at Guantanamo to determine if he is mentally competent to stand trial and to represent himself, as he has requested. The federal appeals court filing was in response to Binalshibh's effort to block the competency hearing scheduled and to have the military commissions system declared unconstitutional. In it, the government contends that the appeals court cannot intervene in Binalshibh's case because there has not yet been a decision and, even if there was, he first must appeal through the system of military commissions set up by former U.S. President George W. Bush. Congress is considering proposals to overhaul the commission system to bar statements made under harsh interrogation and to limit to use of hearsay evidence. Of course, the legal moves reflect more than the usual maneuvering in court proceedings. They actually represent what is perhaps the most difficult task faced by the Obama administration -- maintaining the continuity required in federal prosecutions while trying to reverse the Bush administration's most ill-advised policies.

Announcement on Europe missile shield sounds like appeasement

Is anyone else troubled by the latest moves by the United States to appear impotent in its dealings with Russia? That's the effect of the Obama adminstration's impending decision to scrub plans to build a missile-defense system protecting Poland and the Czech Republic before Russia fulfills its treaty obligations in Georgia. The White House will announce its decision to forego the Bush administration-proposed system as early as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal newspaper. Moscow apparently was outraged by the proposal, which it believed was directed at its intercontinental ballistic missiles despite U.S. assurances that it was intended to counterbalance the perceived threat from an increasingly radicalized and militarily sophisticated Iran. The Iranians are developing nuclear technology and are expected to have missiles capable of reaching European capitals and close U.S. ally Israel by 2015. But Washington needs Moscow's cooperation at the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions against Iran if Tehran refuses to give up its nuclear program at six-nation negotiations planned in October. The Obama adminstration denies such linkage, the Journal said, and maintains that it is dropping the missile shield after a reassessment of the Iranian threat. Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech last month that the missile programs of Iran and North Korea "are not there yet," according to the Journal. "We believed that the emergence of the intercontinental ballistic missile would come much faster than it did," Cartwright said. "The reality is, it has not come as fast as we thought it would come." The Bush administration-proposed system would have included a radar installation in the Czech Republic and 10 missiles in Poland.

UN report says Israel and Hamas committed war crimes

What are we to make of yesterday's UN report finding both Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza committed war crimes during Israel's three-week incursion that ended in January? The report, released Tuesday by South African Judge Richard Gladstone, head of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, found Israel responsible for "war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," and called on the Palestinian organization to investigate alleged war crimes, respect human rights and release an Israeli soldier captured in 2006, according to the Cable News Network (CNN). We know what the combatants think -- Israel and Hamas immediately rejected all findings of wrongdoing by their own fighters. Israel's Defense Ministry released a statement saying it had refused to cooperate with the investigation because it expected the Fact Finding Mission, and its findings, to be "one-sided." A Hamas spokesman applauded the report as "evidence of the crimes committed" by Israel but rejected any suggestion that its conduct also violated international law. The report highlighted what it termed violations by Israel, including using the chemical agent phosphorous in civilian areas, even though it is not proscribed by international law, firing shells at hospitals, which is, and failing to properly warn citizens before attacks. If Israel did these things, there is no excuse and leaders of the Jewish state should explain themselves beyond standard denials. We know Israel is trying to defend itself from hostile regimes in the Middle East yet attacking defenseless civilian populations only exacerbates the conflict and makes it even more difficult to resolve. But Hamas should likewise be required to take responsibility for its indiscriminate firing of missiles into population centers in southern Israel, near the border of the Gaza Strip, which precipitated Israel's attack. The Palestinians have to solve their governmental crisis and unify their leadership before they're going to be able to figure out what they want and reach a meaningful and beneficial peace with Israel.

House vote on Wilson highlights historic hostility directed at new president

At least most of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives remember what an insult is when they hear it directed at someone else. That someone else, of course, is President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was interrupted by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) on Sept. 9. The House voted 240-179 on Tuesday -- largely along party lines -- to pass a resolution of disapproval against Wilson, who shouted "you lie" during Obama's speech, according to Cable News Network (CNN). No matter what anybody thinks about Obama, the financial crisis or the health care debate, this was clearly an insult and a violation of common sense. He is the president of the United States, and a measure of respect is called for. Nobody in government interrupted George W. Bush while he was speaking, and he was probably the worst president ever. In fact, nobody in government has ever blatantly interrupted a speech by the president in the country's 220 years, according to the House historian, CNN said. But what does it mean that our elected representatives treated even this as a partisan matter, except possibly for the 12 Democrats who voted "no" and the seven Republicans who voted "yes?" Do the House Republicans think their organized opposition to whatever the Democrats -- and Obama -- propose is reason enough to abandon rules that have kept debate at the Capitol civil over all these decades? Hasn't the Republican Party done enough to polarize the country by trying to demonize Democrats who opposed the last president and who supported Obama? The disapproval resolution was the mildest punishment the House could levy on Wilson, who apologized to Obama right after the speech but refused demands from Democrats to apologize to the entire chamber. "In my view, by apologizing to the president, the most important person in the history of the world, that applied to everyone," Wilson said during Tuesday's debate on the resolution in the House, CNN reported. But Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Wilson's refusal to apologize to the House merited punishment, whether Wilson apologized to Obama or not.

Federal judge cuts through the bailout rhetoric in New York courtroom

Think it's been awhile since there's been any straight talk about last year's $700 billion taxpayer rescue of the nation's financial system? Well, the wait is over. A federal judge in New York has issued a scathing ruling rejecting a proposed $33 million settlement of a lawsuit arising out of Bank of America's regulator-arranged takeover of the failing Merrill Lynch brokerage house, according to the New York Times. The ruling by U.S. Judge Jed Rakoff accuses the government's chief regulator, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, of being too lenient and blames BofA officials for failing to tell their shareholders that Merrill Lynch had paid as much as $4 billion in bonuses to its employees just before the merger. The lawsuit was filed by the SEC against BofA, but the judge said the SEC and the bank came up with the settlement to absolve themselves of any further responsibility. “The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger,” the judge said, according to the Times, and “the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.” The judge ordered the parties to trial in February, pending what is likely to be numerous appeals of the ruling. The decision came on the same day that President Barack Obama told Wall Street banking executives in New York that "we will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis.” Obama has proposed an overhaul of the federal government's financial regulatory system. The Times said the BofA case was one of several active investigations of the $50 billion merger, including one by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that is expected to result in a criminal complaint later this month. An investigation by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform also is underway, the Times said.