Showdown in Honduras

It would be difficult to imagine a more fascinating political scenario than what may play out in Tegucigalpa on Sunday. I'm a bit surprised the U.S. media haven't paid more attention to it — resources are limited, I guess, and all the staff is busy covering Michael Jackson's upcoming memorial service.

Will the coup in Honduras succeed in ousting President Manuel Zelaya?

In any case, the gist of it is the Honduran president, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was removed last weekend in either a coup or a lawful constitutional action, depending on which side you're on. The United States and numerous other countries (including the U.S. nemesis Venezuela) call the action unconstitutional and are demanding his reinstatement. Hoping to force the issue, Zelaya is planning to return to Honduras on Sunday to resume his duties as president, but the not-internationally-recognized authorities in Honduras say they'll place him under arrest if he does. Hoping to forestall that, Zelaya is planning to return to his country flanked by the president of Argentina and various other international figures.

As an outsider, I find it difficult to how firm of legal ground the unrecognized Honduran government has. On the face of things, though, it doesn't seem like the open-and-shut case that the U.S. (among many others) is making things out to be: Zelaya has defied orders of his Supreme Court and his Congress, and if that happened in the U.S. (yes, difficult to imagine), we might view it as justified to physically remove him from the White House.

My guess is that Zelaya won't have a successful return. He'll probably be arrested. And what happens after that — whether Zelaya is treated fairly and if the new government goes ahead as it promises to hold elections later this year — will determine whether the new government has a chance of being seen as legitimate.

What was Sarah Palin thinking?

If Sarah Palin indeed is planning on running for president, her abrupt withdrawal from her job as governor of Alaska seems a strange way to do it.

But even stranger is her explanation of why. According to her own account, she decided first that she wouldn't run for re-election. That's reasonable enough — once the GOP presidential contest begins in earnest after the 2010 elections she'd be free to devote her time to the context. But her explanation as to why she would then abandon her governorship only a year and a half into her term just doesn't pass the smell test (or any other test).

As she put it, once she announced she wouldn't seek re-election, she'd become a lame duck. That's a fair enough description. But then she described what lame ducks do — things like go on trade missions — and suggested that whatever it is that lame ducks do is a waste of taxpayers' money, so she's quitting the job in order to protect the taxpayers.

Puh-leeze.

Why not be just a bit more straightforward? No, she doesn't have to be this straightforward: "I like the attention of being on the national political stage and don't like the nitty-gritty of running a state government in a state that nobody pays attention to." But even something like this would have been a more believable explanation: "My run for the vice presidency has given me a passion to make a difference for the United States, and I'd rather devote my energies to making not just Alaska better, but the whole country."

At least that would have been credible. Palin has some big leaps to make if she's ever going to be taken seriously by anyone but her admirers, and this doesn't help.

Areps.at a Facebook phishing scam

Here I am about as experienced of an Internet user as anyone, and security conscious as well. But I think I may have fallen into a Facebook fishing scam. The culprit: an e-mail from a Facebook friend that said merely this:

"Check areps.at"

The subject line said merely "hello."

And now I can't get into Facebook to try to fix the damage, if I still can.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Updates: Apparently the domains bests.at and kirgo.at are also being used. Despite the Austrian domain, it appears that whoever behind this may be in Russia.

The phishing attack apparently shut down Facebook for a few minutes. In the meanwhile, Facebook send me an e-mail (a legitimate one) so I could reset my password.

There's also a good update here.

How our language may affect how we think

This feature by Robert Krulwich points to an interesting study by a Stanford professor in which native German and Spanish speakers were asked to give words that describe bridges. The Germans describe used words such as "elegant" and "fragile," while Spanish speakers used words such as "strong" and "stury."

Why the difference? The theory of the prof, Lera Boroditsk, is that the German speakers have one image because German noun for "bridge" is feminine, while in Spanish the noun is masculine.

I don't know what to make of the argument, but it is interesting.

Spell checkers: Use with care

Here's my pick for the typo of the week. I wish I could say I've never made similar mistakes, but fortunately mine haven't been so conspicuous to so many.

Why is the selection of Rick Warren so surprising?

Sometimes people are taken by surprise when politicians do what they say they're going to do. And that seems to be the case with the furor from the gay community and Proposition 8 opponents over the selection of megapastor Rick Warren to say the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration.

From the beginning of the campaign, Obama said he would seek to reach across divides. What does that mean? What can it mean other that he would on many occasions reach out to Republicans and conservatives? So why should the selection of Warren — who, by the way, is liberal by the standards of the evangelical political mainstream of the past decade — be so surprising? Writer Lee Stranahan, an apparently supporter of gay marriage, stated this quite well recently in the Huffington Post:

I don't understand how anyone who listened to Obama during the campaign would be shocked that Obama lets Warren give the invocation. It's vintage Obama. It does not signal agreement with Warren's political positions, some of which are clearly at odds with Obama's. Warren isn't making policy or even giving a sermon. He's saying a prayer and then possibly dancing later at some inaugural parties. ... Obama said it in the abstract time and again during the campaign. Now he's showing us. Seeing the things that Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joseph Lowery (a civil-rights activist saying he benediction) have in common is more important than seeing the things that separate them. America needs to see that. It's a step down the road where a majority of us see the things that straight Americans in love want are the same things that gay Americans in love want, too.

I'm not the biggest fan of Warren, for we come from a different theological framework. But, to his credit, he hasn't been content to follow the "party line" on a host of issues, and he has demonstrated the ability to work with those who disagree with him.

He joined the fight against AIDS well before that was a thing to do among evangelicals. He has expanded the evangelical view of politics beyond the traditional issues of abortion, sex and gambling, and he has been unwilling to adopt the blind militarism present in much of the religious right.

Unlike some on the religious right, Warren has refused to let his political perspective take precedence over his spiritual role; his best-selling books aren't focused on politics, but on living a Christian life. But more importantly in the political context, Warren has been able to practice civility in his endeavors. Not only shouldn't it be surprising that Warren is performing the benediction, he in fact is the obvious choice.

Court rejects ban on assisted suicide

Two states where doctor-assisted suicide is legal have gone that route with voter approval. Now, it appears, a third state could join that exclusive club via court decision.

In a decision that hasn't received a lot of attention outside the state yet, a district court in Helena, Mont. (the state capital), ruled Friday that the privacy and human dignity provisions of the Montana Constitution prevent the state from prosecuting doctors who help their terminal patients end their lives. Ironically, the terminal patient who has among the plaintiffs in the case died Friday, the day the decision was issued, without knowing about the ruling.

In Montana, there is no appellate level between the district or trial courts and the state Supreme Court, so chances are that the case (or one similar to it, if it is found that the plaintiff-patient's death makes this particular case moot) will end up before the state's high court. Since federal courts have upheld the right of states to allow assisted suicides, and the trial-level decision was based on the state's constitution, a decision of the Montana Supreme Court likely would be final.