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.