Newspaper clips: July 2009

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The So-So Sotomayor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002179_pf.html

By Richard Cohen
Monday, July 20, 2009 8:44 PM

A political ad that lucky New Yorkers get to see on television begins with "A million lawyers in America" and goes on to wonder about certain no-bid contracts in nearby New Jersey that will not concern us today. But every time the ad runs, I cannot help thinking about Sonia Sotomayor: A million lawyers in America, and Barack Obama chooses her for the Supreme Court.

Don't get me wrong. She is fully qualified. She is smart and learned and experienced and, in case you have not heard, a Hispanic, female nominee, of whom there have not been any since the dawn of our fair republic. But she has no cause, unless it is not to make a mistake, and has no passion, unless it is not to show any, and lacks intellectual brilliance, unless it is disguised under a veil of soporific competence until she takes her seat on the court. We shall see.

In the meantime, Sotomayor will do, and will do very nicely, as a personification of what ails the American left. She is, as everyone has pointed out, in the mainstream of American liberalism, a stream both intellectually shallow and preoccupied with the past. We have a neat summary of it in the recent remarks of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who said he wanted a Supreme Court justice "who will continue to move the court forward in protecting . . . important civil rights." He cited the shooting of a gay youth, the gang rape of a lesbian and the murder of a black man -- in other words, violence based on homophobia and racism. Yes. But who nowadays disagrees?

What, though, about a jurist who can advance the larger cause of civil rights and at the same time protect individual rights? This was the dilemma raised by the New Haven firefighters' case. The legal mind who could have found a "liberal" way out of the thicket would deserve a Supreme Court seat. As an appellate judge, Sotomayor did not even attempt such an exercise. She punted.

She was similarly disappointing on capital punishment. She seems to support it. Yet it is an abomination. It grants the government a right that it should never have, one that has been abused over the years by despots, potentates and racist cops. It is always an abuse of power, always an exercise in arrogance -- it admits no possibility of a mistake -- and totally without efficacy. It is not a deterrent, and it endorses the mentality of the killer: Human life is not inviolate.

From Sotomayor, though, came not one whimper of regret about the current legality of capital punishment. Innocent men may die, the cause of humanism may stall, but she will follow the jot and tittle of the law, with which she has no quarrel anyway. Little wonder moderate conservative senators are enamored.

Contrast her approach to this and other problems with what Antonin Scalia has done with issues close to his own heart. Where in all of Sotomayor's opinions, speeches and now testimony is there anything approaching Scalia's dissent in Morrison v. Olson, in which, alone, he not only found fault with the law creating special prosecutors but warned about how it would someday be abused? "Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing," he wrote. "But this wolf comes as a wolf."

My admiration for Scalia is constrained by the fact that I frequently believe him to be wrong. But his thinking is often fresh, his writing is often bracing; and, more to my point, he has no counterpart on the left. His liberal and moderate brethren wallow in bromides; they can sometimes outvote him, but they cannot outthink him.

This is the sad state of both liberalism and American politics. First-class legal brains are not even nominated lest some senator break into hives at the prospect of encountering a genuinely new idea. The ceiling is further lowered by the need to season the court with diversity, a wonderful idea as long as brilliance is not compromised. The result has been the rout of sexism: The women are as mediocre as the men.

From all we know, Sotomayor is no Scalia. She is no Thurgood Marshall, either, or even a John Roberts, who is leading the court in his own direction. She will be confirmed. But if she is not, liberalism will not have lost much of a champion or a thinker. A million lawyers in America and something Jimmy Carter used to say comes to mind: Why not the best?

cohenr@washpost.com

The U.S. Steers Left on Honduras Why would Hugo Chavez expect Obama to help him?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124804541071763577.html#printMode

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

The Americas in the News

Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.

Mr. Zelaya was trying to use mob rule to undermine Honduras's institutions in much the same way that Mr. Chávez has done in Venezuela. But as Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on July 10, Mr. Zelaya's actions were expressly forbidden by the Honduran constitution.

"Article 239," Mr. Estrada noted, "specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection 'shall cease forthwith' in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any 'infraction' of the succession rules constitutes treason." Congress had little choice but to take its next step. It convened "immediately after Zelaya's arrest," Mr. Estrada wrote, "condemning his illegal conduct, and overwhelmingly voting (122-6) to remove him from office."

Mr. Zelaya was shipped out of the country because Honduras believed that jailing him would make him a lightning rod for violence. Interim President Roberto Micheletti promised that presidential elections scheduled for November would go forward.

That might have been the end of it if the U.S. had supported the Honduran rule of law, or simply refrained from meddling. Instead President Obama and the State Department joined Mr. Chávez and his allies in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power. This has emboldened Venezuela.

On July 5, Mr. Zelaya boarded a plane manned by a Venezuelan crew bound for Tegucigalpa, knowing full well that he would not be allowed to land. It didn't matter. His intention was to incite a mob on the ground and force a confrontation between his supporters and the military. It worked. One person was killed in clashes near the airport.

Yet the tragedy did not produce the desired condemnation of the Micheletti government. Rather, it empowered Honduran patriots. Perhaps this is because the airport violence reinforced the claim that Mr. Zelaya is a threat to the peace.

He was not the only one to lose credibility that day. OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza had encouraged the fly-over stunt despite its obvious risks. He even traveled in a separate plane behind Mr. Zelaya to show support. The incident destroyed any possibility that Mr. Insulza could be considered an honest broker. It also proved the charge that by insisting on Mr. Zelaya's return the U.S. was playing with fire.

The next day Costa Rican President Oscar Arias offered to act as a mediator between Mr. Zelaya and the new government. Mr. Arias would seem to be far from an impartial referee given that he is a supporter of Mr. Zelaya. Yet it is also true that Central America has the most to lose if Honduras descends into civil war. It follows that the San José venue offers better odds for the Honduran democracy than, say, the auspices of the OAS.

Other influential Central Americans have expressed support for Honduras. Last week the Honduran daily El Heraldo reported that Salvador's OAS ambassador said he hopes to see the resolution that suspended Honduras from the group revoked under the new permanent-council president. Catholic Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has condemned Mr. Zelaya's violent tactics and says that Honduras does not want to emulate Venezuela.

Mr. Chávez understands that Mr. Zelaya's star is fading, which is why he called Tom Shannon, the State Department's assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at home at 11:15 p.m on July 9. Mr. Shannon told me that Mr. Chávez "again made the case for the unconditional return of Mr. Zelaya, though he did so in a less bombastic manner than he has in the past."

Mr. Shannon says that in response he "suggested to him that Venezuela and its [allies] address the fear factor by calling for free and fair elections and a peaceful transition to a new government." That, Mr. Shannon, says, "hasn't happened."

Nor is it likely to. Yet the U.S. continues exerting enormous pressure for the return of Mr. Zelaya. If it prevails, it is unlikely that Mr. Zelaya's mobs or Mr. Chávez will suddenly be tamed.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Friday, July 3, 2009

Preventing a Honduran Bloodbath

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/carlos_alberto_montaner/2009/07/preventing_a_honduran_bloodbat.html?hpid=talkbox1

Madrid, Spain

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States.

The United States Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, an extremely competent diplomat, tried very hard to keep Honduras's Congress from ousting President Manuel Zelaya. After his arguments and pressures were exhausted, and faced with something that seemed inevitable, he did what he could: he sheltered the president's son at his residence to save him from any violent outcome.

Fortunately, Zelaya's expulsion from the presidency and from his country was bloodless. It wasn't exactly a military coup: the Army acted on orders from the Supreme Court after Zelaya's continued violations of the law. The ousted president seemed intent on getting reelected, even if it meant violating the Constitution, and on dragging the nation into Hugo Chávez's "21st century socialism" camp against the will of the Honduran people.

Nevertheless, if there is still something worse than the depressing spectacle of a freely elected president forced to leave his country at gunpoint, it is that same leader trying to force his way back in. If Zelaya returns, he will be arrested and charged with an array of crimes. His imprisonment will embarrass any who decide, irresponsibly, to accompany him on such a mad adventure.

This is most grave. Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega are already talking about invasions and resorting to force. That could unleash a bloodbath and would certainly destroy the weak political institutions that Honduras labored to achieve three decades ago, when the era of military dictatorships mercifully ended. Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, put it this way: "Zelaya is fighting with all the institutions in the country. He is in no condition really to govern."

And that's the truth. According to Mexican pollster Mitofsky's April survey, Zelaya was Latin America's least popular leader. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Another survey found that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. Why? Because the Hondurans attributed to him a deep level of corruption; because they assumed he had links to drug trafficking, especially drugs originating in Venezuela, as former U.S. Ambassador to the O.A.S. Roger Noriega revealed in a well-documented article published in his blog; and because violence and poverty -- the nation's two worst scourges -- have increased dramatically during his three years in power.

Simply put, a huge majority of the country -- including the two major political parties (including Zelaya's), the Christian churches, the other branches of government and the armed forces -- do not want him as president. All agreed that he should finish his mandate and leave power in January 2010, but no one wanted him to break the law to keep himself in the presidency. Hugo Chávez has already done that, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Bolivia's Evo Morales and probably Ecuador's Rafael Correa are also trying to do the same. The Hondurans, without question, do not want to go down the path of Hugo Chavez's collectivist and anti-Western "caudillismo," allied to Iran, Cuba and North Korea.

What to do under these circumstances? The worst idea is to resort to force. The government of interim President Roberto Micheletti already is summoning reservists and the Army is preparing to defend the nation's sovereignty. The nationalist discourse is heating up with talk of "defense of the motherland" against foreign enemies. They worry about foreign aggression, shrewdly propelled by Chavez and his crew, in which -- inexplicably this time -- the Americans have sided with the enemies of democracy and the rule of law.

If a conflict explodes, one of the Western hemisphere's poorest countries will suffer the bloodletting that Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua experienced during the Cold War.

The solution is to move forward with the general elections planned for November. It's a solution within everyone's reach: the candidates are already there, freely elected in open primaries, and both enjoy much popularity. Why plunge this society irresponsibly into a maelstrom of violence? Once the new government is selected, a government that enjoys the legitimacy generated by a democratic process, the Honduran people can push this lamentable episode into the past.

That will be best for almost all parties in the conflict. Zelaya may lose the game, but Hondurans will not pay with their blood for the mistakes and misdemeanors of a maladroit ruler.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8104362.stm

Obama refuses to 'meddle' in Iran

US President Barack Obama is resisting pressure to side with Iran's opposition as mass protests continue over the nation's disputed presidential poll.

In a TV interview on Tuesday Mr Obama said there might not be much difference between the policies of President Ahmadinejad and rival Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Mr Mousavi's supporters have continued street protests despite the threat of government force and earlier bloodshed.

BBC correspondents in Tehran say the mood in the city is tense and angry.

Tough new restrictions have been imposed on foreign media in Iran.

But despite government attempts to control the flow of information out of the country, Iranians have been using the internet to send images and personal accounts of the protests around the world.

GUARDIAN COUNCIL

Iran's most powerful body, currently controlled by conservatives

Includes six theologians picked by Supreme Leader and six jurists approved by parliament

Half the members change every three years

Approves bills passed by parliament and can veto them if deemed inconsistent with the constitution or Islamic law

The council can also bar candidates from standing in elections

Mr Obama said he believed Iranian voices should be heard, although he added that he did not want to be seen to be "meddling".

"It is not productive, given the history of US and Iranian relations to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections," he said.

"But when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed… it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people."

Speaking later in the television interview, he downplayed the importance to the world of the struggle for power in Iran.

"The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised," he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the US state department said it had asked the social networking site Twitter to delay maintenance work so that Iranians could keep using it as a communications tool.

Result in question

The BBC's Justin Webb, in Washington, says Mr Obama is wary of the US becoming sucked into a protest movement in favour of Mr Mousavi, particularly as some intelligence reports suggest that Mr Ahmadinejad might have genuinely won the election.

Mr Obama has been under pressure from some conservative politicians in the US to openly support the protesters, who claim Mr Ahmadinejad's re-election is the product of vote rigging.

Republican John McCain, Mr Obama's defeated 2008 election rival, said: "He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election."

Iran's powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to recount some votes from the poll. A spokesman for the council, Abbas Ali Kadkhoda'i, told the state broadcaster Irin that the council had met representatives of the presidential candidates and would look into their allegations.

But opposition candidates have demanded a full re-run of the election.

President Ahmadinejad was declared the easy victor of the presidential poll on Saturday, with results giving him 63% of votes against 34% for Mr Mousavi.

Widespread anger at the result brought hundreds of thousands of Mr Mousavi's supporters on to the streets on Monday and eight protesters died when a rally ended in violence.

A witness told the BBC that Tuesday's rally in northern Tehran was even bigger than Monday's - though this cannot be independently confirmed - and the state Press TV also described it as large.

Witnesses described demonstrators walking in near silence towards state TV headquarters - apparently anxious not to be depicted as hooligans by the authorities.

Thousands of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's supporters staged a counter-rally in Vali Asr Square in central Tehran - some bussed in from the provinces, correspondents say.

A BBC correspondent in Tehran said that protesters also blocked roads with their cars, and police set up roadblocks to control gatherings of demonstrators.

As night fell, residents took to the roof-tops of their houses to shout protest messages across the city, a scene not witnessed since the final days of the Shah, our correspondent says.

Update 19 June 2009: an earlier version of our caption was incorrect. We wrongly stated that this was a pro-Mousavi rally when in fact it was a pro-Ahmadinejad rally.