I'm updating my position - partly in terms of the information I obtained from a two hour congressional committee hearing on the matter.
Unfortunately, the crucial question I askd in my first post remains unanswered after hundreds of posts here of for that hearing, what the constitutional process is for dealing with the situation when a President violates the laws this President is accused of violating, how his guilt is to be determined and what the removal process is.
Here's the situation:
This president developed large political opposition based on his policies. His creation of the minimum wage angered the business owners; his vetoing of elgislation to ban the morning-after pill angered the Catholic church.
It was this political environment that he further tried to raise the issue of having the people express an opionion on allowing the president to run for more than one term.
Here's the second key question I have: his effort was for a *non-binding resolution on opinion*, not a vote to actually make any change to the law. Does simply poling opinion count as 'attempting to change the constitution', since his referendum would not have had any effect on the law?
The Congress and Supreme Court voted his actions were illegal - but was that a vote on the merits, or on the political situation, just as we had a President in the 19th century impeached over what were more political differenes than real charges?
An actual trial - whether in government or the court - would help get to the answer, but that did not happen.
Finally, it appears that the process he was removed by was not in the constitution. Everyone seemed to agree on that in the hearing, and even the business community (who had hired a former Clinton official as their representative, in the same sort of sickening revolving door government we are all tired of) agreed that what was done was a mistake.
The bottom line seems to be this:
There is a question whether his actions towards the opinion vote on a second term were illegal. The first question is, what are the constitutional processes for addressing that.
When the Supreme Court goes around voting his behavior is illegal, voting for his arrest, are *their* actions legal under the constitution?
Whatever the constitution calls for, those actions should be followed, and the charges that he violated the law should be addressed as fairly as possible in a situation where he's become so politically weak. Those who are wanting to ensure that the constitution is enforced and he is accountable for any wrongdoing are right to do that.
It's possible that he should have been arrested and held for trial - we need the info from the constitution to determine that.
However, it appears that his being flowin by the military in the night out of the country was not based on any constitutional authority or process and was an illegal act by the military.
That is a reason why every other nation in the region and the US have opposed what happened and demand corrective action.
On my second question above, I can see arguments on both sides whether his holding an opinion referendum crosses the line - but the bottom line is that the Supreme Court said it did cross the line, and there's an issue there with his violating the order. Before people simply say he always should, you have to consider a constitutional crisis when the President beleives the Supreme Court has given him a wrong order. What if five Justices ordered Obama to give up his presidency tomorrow when it was *clear* it was trumped up charges based on politics - should ge follow an order that violates our democracy, on the grounds of preserving our democracy? It's a dilemma. But it's not clear to me that the Honduran President had any such clear-cut case on his side justifying ignoring the order, and it seems to me he should have followed it.
Now, one last point - most of this is now moot, because the situation is being addressed in the negotiation. It's going to have to do something very difficult in addressing the fact that the entire government has supported his removal from office, and how difficult that makes it for him to return to power, with not setting a precedent that illegal coups - even ones at least partly approved by the Supreme Court (I haven't seen the order, but it apparently does not say anything about sending him out of the country, and they apparently do not have the authority to do that) - are not acceptable. It's not going to be easy to address both the illlegality of flying him out of te country, and his own allegedly criminal behavior, where he has such a weak position now.
He only has six months left in his term. Hopefully they can come up with something addressing all these issues. And maybe I can even get answers to the two questions above at some point. It was pretty disappointing that the panel member who was a former member of the Honduran Supreme Court did not say what the constitutional process is.
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