(Via Dan Collins of POWIP) Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) is back from Honduras - despite the best efforts of the Democrats to stop him from going - and he’s unkind about what has been pretty obviously an attempt by the American government to admit that we made a mistake and picked the wrong side of the Honduras issue:

[American policy re: the Zelaya ouster] was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.

[snip]

In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.

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When you’re rich, really eight-figure inherited/married wealth rich, a recession means you might opt for the pre-owned Gulfstream IV over the new. If only to let the little people know that you feel their pain.

When you’re poor, bad times threaten your job, your family, your health, or your life. Bad times hurt people at the margins.

The liberal ruling class displays an astonishingly callous disregard of the human cost of bad economic times on the huddled masses whose interests they claim to safeguard.

But even the most clueless patrician among our elected elite would never suggest that a recession is a good thing.

Would he?

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(Via Jen Rubin) Let’s review (I almost did this using an extended metaphor of a fencing match, but I didn’t want actual fencers wincing):

• Sen. John Kerry is the Democratic point man in Foreign Relations for this administration’s messed-up Honduras policy.  He is, in fact, the Foreign Relations chair… which tells you how seriously the Democrats take this committee (i.e., they don’t).
• Sen. Jim DeMint is the Republican determined to wreck Sen. Kerry’s day - both on this administration’s messed-up Honduras policy, and on general principles.
• This administration has a messed-up Honduras policy.
• DeMint therefore slaps a couple of Senatorial holds on some State Department appointments until the administration stops messing up on Honduras policy.
• Kerry responds by denying DeMint the plane that he’d need to go down to Honduras and see for himself how messed up our Honduras policy is.  This is one of those steps that prudent Senate chairs usually don’t take, because it makes it easier for it to happen again, and nobody controls Congress forever.
• DeMint talks to Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell.
• McConnell talks to the Pentagon.
• The Pentagon is, of course, filled with people who didn’t come back from Vietnam and promptly announce that we were worse than the Mongol Horde.  Which is to say, people not like Kerry.
• The Pentagon gives Kerry the Hawaiian good-luck symbol, and DeMint a plane.  DeMint may now go to Honduras and see how messed up our policy is down there.
• DeMint then links this mess to the State Department.
• The State Department promptly disavows themselves of this mess.
• So: Kerry establishes a precedent, doesn’t accomplish his goal of keeping our messed-up Honduras policy off the radar, and doesn’t even get the State Department backing him up.  For a Democrat, that takes skill.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what one motivated Senator can do to mess up another Senator’s day.

Moe Lane

PS: Bear this in mind when the reconciliation question comes up regarding the Democrats’ messed-up health care rationing bill.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Senator John Kerry has thrown the joke he told Tuesday about Governor Sarah Palin under the bus. Or in Kerryspeak, he obviously voted for the joke before he voted against it.

Just one day after Gov. Palin stood up to the liberal Senator and returned fire, he has apparently calculated that his joke went too far, not to mention that he has lousy timing.

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One would think Sen. John Kerry (D-Cambodia) would have realized by now that his idea of humor doesn’t go over very well. It must be because he’s a nasty person, and his pathetic attempts at being funny just turn out to be… well, nasty.

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(Via NTCNews‘ sidebar) Good luck with getting that resolved, Senator:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has filed a $819,848 tax lien against Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, but Kerry on Wednesday blamed an IRS clerical error for the claim and said his campaign owes no tax penalties.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the IRS mishandled payroll tax forms that he said were correctly filed by his campaign in 2005.

Apparently the junior Senator from Massachusetts is finding it impossible to make the IRS see reason on this issue. For the record, I believe him; there’s precisely the “But we jumped through those hoops already” puzzled/confused/warily exasperated tone coming from his staff that one associates with dealing with a government bureaucracy with the bit in its teeth.  The truly interesting part?  Usually a Senator has enough power to get an honest-to-God mistake rectified; which might say something about the validity of Kerry’s case, but probably says rather more of the Senator’s influence.

I would like to think of this as a teachable moment for Senator Kerry about various aspects of our tax code: only, well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Proving his tin ear on foreign policy is still as tinny as ever, the hapless John Kerry (D, Mass.) said recently that he believes that Pakistan is “transforming” and “taking terrorists head on.” Yet, only a day or so later, Pakistan announced that it was releasing the notorious nuke trader Abdul Qadeer Khan from house arrest claiming he is innocent of charges of running a nuclear proliferation network.

By releasing one of its most notorious bad actors, it sure doesn’t sound as if Pakistan is getting any more serious about taking terrorism “head on” than it ever did before, does it?

Not only did Pakistan release Khan free of all charges, but the state is also supplying a state funded security team for his protection for his travels about the country.

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