toledoblade.com --

As I write this column, Manuel Zelaya, the Hugo Chavez wannabe who the Obama Administration wants to install as president of Honduras over the objections of the overwhelming majority of its people, is holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.

In an interview with the Miami Herald published Thursday, Mr. Zelaya claimed he is being tortured by “Israeli mercenaries” who are attacking him with radiation beamed through the embassy’s walls.

Mr. Zelaya sounds as if he is a few tacos short of a combination plate. His odd statements make President Obama’s support for him all the more puzzling and despicable. Mr. Zelaya was elected Honduran president in 2005, and wanted to serve another term. But the Honduran Constitution permits the president a single term.

Mr. Zelaya thought he had a way around that. He’d hold a referendum on changing the constitution. But referendum to change the constitution may be proposed only by a two-thirds vote of the Honduran Congress. The attorney general ruled Mr. Zelaya’s proposed plebiscite illegal, and the congress voted to bar printing ballots for it.

So Mr. Zelaya had ballots printed in Venezuela, but these were seized when they were brought into Honduras. On June 25, Mr. Zelaya organized a mob to take the ballots from where they were stored on a military base. The attorney general asked the Supreme Court for a warrant to arrest the president on a charge of treason, which a unanimous Supreme Court granted.

The army executed the warrant the morning of June 28, and the Honduran Congress voted 122-6 to approve the arrest. Roberto Micheletti was chosen to replace Mr. Zelaya until a new president is elected Nov. 29.

But the army made a mistake. Instead of jailing Mr. Zelaya pending a trial for treason, the army put him on a plane to Costa Rica. This is what prompted reports he had been ousted in a coup. It was no coup, says our Congressional Research Service in a recent analysis. The army was acting on a warrant issued by the Supreme Court at the request of the attorney general, which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the Honduran Congress. The army at once turned power over to a civilian selected in a constitutionally approved manner. It was Mr. Zelaya who had attempted the coup.

President Obama has joined Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez into trying to bully Honduras into restoring Mr. Zelaya to power. The President has imposed economic sanctions on the tiny democracy — a step he is only now contemplating with regard to Iran — and though the administration has granted a visa to a Burmese mass murderer, the State Department is denying visas to Honduran democrats. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that even if the elections Nov. 29 are free and fair — as everyone expects them to be — the United States will not recognize the victor.

With Mr. Zelaya back in Honduras inciting violence (but attracting only a few thousand supporters in a country of 7.5 million) and making statements that call his sanity into question, the sanity of U.S. policy toward Honduras is ever more sharply being called into question. The reputation among his supporters that President Obama has for being a really, really smart guy is based chiefly on the first of his two autobiographies, Dreams From My Father, published in 1995, which admirers and critics of Mr. Obama agree is beautifully written. I received a lot of hate mail last fall when I wrote a column about Jack Cashill’s suspicions that Mr. Obama received substantial help in writing the book from former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, a neighbor in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

In his new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, journalist Christopher Andersen writes that at Mrs. Obama’s urging, Mr. Obama did solicit help from Mr. Ayers.

“In the end, Ayers’ contributions to Barack’s Dreams From My Father would be significant,” Mr. Anderson said, “so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’ own writing.”

Jack Kelly is a columnist for The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Contact him at: jkelly@post-gazette.com