Too bizarre: Library of Congress Research Service Consults Coup Supporter, Slants Finding.

[EFerrari]

Library of Congress Report on Honduran Coup Filled with Flaws
Written by Dr. Rosemary Joyce
Friday, 25 September 2009

The following letter was sent to the Library of Congress regarding the very serious errors in the report issued in their name yesterday.

(Excerpted but go read the whole letter (not a long one) written by Joyce, the Anthropology Chair at Berkeley)


Dear Librarian Billingsley and Director Mulhollan,

I write to bring to your attention serious errors of fact in a Congressional Research Service report written by Ms. Norma C. Gutierrez. Given the damage this erroneous report has already done as it circulates in Honduras and the US, I urge you to immediately issue a public correction and withdraw the report, notifying members of Congress that it is unreliable and based on faulty courses and inaccurate information.

snip

1) She cites a single Honduran legal analyst as a source of personal communications "confirming" conclusions she draws. Her source is a known supporter of the de facto regime in Honduras, Guillermo Pérez-Cadalso, who testified on behalf of the de facto regime in July's hearings in the US Congress.

This is not a disinterested source. There are numerous Honduran law professors, as well as constitutional law authorities in the US and Spain, on record in writing finding the Honduran Congress exceeded its legal authority in claiming to remove President Zelaya from office on June 28. None of these authorities is cited.

snip

(3) In fact, on May 7, 2003, the Honduran Supreme Court had nullified the claimed power of the Congress to interpret the Constitution. Thus, it is not surprising that the Honduran Congress made no such claim on June 28, since they no longer could assert such authority, which the Supreme Court had rejected.

snip

There are more points that are disturbing in this CRS report. For example, footnote 43 offers a characterization of a forged resignation letter attributed to President Zelaya, backdated to June 24, as being explained as a true letter written for nefarious purposes; the source for this claim, again, is the same supporter of the coup, Mr. Pérez-Cadalso. Yet his claim is widely discredited; the back-dated letter is widely viewed as a forgery produced when the coup was originally scheduled to happen, an event delayed in part by US diplomatic action.

* * *

So, how did this golpista wind up steering this finding for the

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RESEARCH SERVICE?

:shrug:

How deep is OUR GOVERNMENT into this coup? :shrug:

DUer struggleforprogress put this up in the LatAm forum but I thought DUers might like to know that the Library of Congress tried to write an alibi for the coup or that someone did. :shrug:

[Wilms]

1. That really is over the top.

I've had times where I wondered if they'd blundered but this makes you ask what is the criteria for this.

[EFerrari]

2. What are the chances this researcher just stumbled on this guy?

I'd say slim to none.

:shrug:

Here's a bit I was gifted with at BoRev on the opinion of a real authority:


Speaking of that so-called study cited by Elizabeth Ferrari, we have Former Zelaya Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, appellate magistrate, Administrative Law judge, long-time high government official in many administrations, and Congressional deputy Edmundo Orellana writes just days ago in La Tribuna on the inconstitutionality of the "Constitutional Succession" as claimed by the de facto regime and the courts.

"...No es sucesión ni es promoción el acto ejecutado por el Legislativo el día 28 de junio. El Congreso Nacional, sencillamente, acortó, sin facultades para ello, el período para el cual el pueblo eligió al Presidente de la República, suplantando, con ello, la soberanía popular; además, usurpó un poder constituido, porque removió, careciendo de potestades constitucionales, al Presidente de la República, que es, por mandato constitucional, el titular del Poder Ejecutivo."

Or

"...What the Legislature did the 28th of June was neither 'succession' nor 'promotion' . The National Congress, simply, cut, without the faculties to do so, the period for which the people had elected the President of the Republic, supplanting, with this act, popular sovereignty; furthermore, it usurped a Constituted power, because it removed, lacking the Constitutional powers, the President of the Republic, that is, by Constitutional mandate, the title-holder of Executive Power."

http://www.latribuna.hn/web2.0/?p=42800

[struggle4progress]

3. This appears to have originated with a request from rightwinger Aaron Schock (R - IL - 18)

You can download the document from his House webpage

Typically this stuff isn't part of the public record, so we don't know exactly what Schock asked CRS to provide or what CRS communicated to the Law Library in forwarding the request to them: perhaps, for example, he asked for the best case to be made for the legality of the coup? Then again, maybe Norma just decided that instead of doing real research for real research, she could take the easy way out by calling a coup supporter and asking for his take

I would add that the Honduran Constitution is almost unreadable: it is long, disorganized, and inconsistent

[EFerrari]

5. The thing is, Joyce's objections don't rest on the legibility of the constitution but on the finding

of the Supreme Court and, to a lesser extent, on the appearance of impropriety.

The coup supporters here lost no time in getting it into the press. :)

[malaise]

4. WTF?????????

I have no doubt they are involved.

[Judi Lynn]

6. You wouldn't expect something this slipshod from these people. It's so disappointing. n/t