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By Gregory Taggart, January 16, 2010 2:29 pm

Last night my wife and I were watching the talking heads–can’t remember who–and someone quoted someone else about how we need to raise taxes to pay for the war in Afghanistan, and my wife says, and I quote (loosely):

I am so sick of this! How dare they! Why should they raise taxes on us to pay for the one thing that our Constitution very clearly says our government is supposed to do? The tax revenue they already have should pay for the common defense first. So cut other programs if you have to, but don’t tell me you have to raise my already-high taxes to do the one thing the Constitution says our government is supposed to do.

Hard to argue with that, especially if the person saying it is a babe–my wife.

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By Gregory Taggart, October 9, 2009 10:19 am

Hey, I’m running to Kmart to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize. Want me to pick one up for you?

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By Gregory Taggart, August 4, 2009 11:20 am

Well, it’s been what, over a month since the State Department started the process to determine whether the events in Honduras amounted to a coup, legally speaking, as opposed to, you know, Presidential or Secretary of State speaking.

The answer, as of the August 3rd Daily Briefing at the Department of State, is:

QUESTION: Do you acknowledge that it was a coup, a military coup? 

MR. CROWLEY: Well, there are legal issues there that we have chosen not to exercise at this point. But clearly, in every way possible, we have said that what happened in Honduras is a violation of the OAS Charter, which is why we took action against Honduras. It’s a violation of the Inter-American Charter, the Inter-American Democratic Charter. And we continue to work intensively to try to resolve the situation. 

Stay tuned for further updates. In the meantime, I can assure you of one thing: This gang couldn’t shoot straight if they owned a gun in the first place.

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By Gregory Taggart, July 5, 2009 4:41 pm

This is maddening. In a July 1, 2009, State Department “Background Briefing,” an unidentified “Senior Administration Official One” responded to a reporter’s question/statement that “earlier this week, Secretary Clinton gave us to understand that you were holding off on a determination on whether [the removal of President Zelaya] was indeed a military coup. . . . that the Legal Advisor’s Office has begun the process of determining whether [the removal] was a military coup . . .” by saying:

In regard to the first question, both the President and the Secretary have described events in Honduras as a coup, which they certainly were once the current claimant to the presidency swore – was sworn in before the congress after the forcible removal of the legal and constitutional president, Mel Zelaya. 

Fine, so “this is properly classified as a military coup, right?

“Senior Administration Official One” again:

Well, I mean, it’s a golpe de estado. The military moved against the president; they removed him from his home and they expelled him from a country, so the military participated in a coup. However, the transfer of leadership was not a military action. The transfer of leadership was done by the Honduran congress, and therefore the coup, while it had a military component, it has a larger – it is a larger event.
 

. . . as I believe it was answered earlier, the review is ongoing.

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By Gregory Taggart, July 3, 2009 12:19 pm

I just wrote Edward Schumacher-Matos about the so-called “coup” in Honduras, so called, because the State Department has yet to decide if, legally speaking, it was actually a coup. Below is my correspondence with Mr. Schumacher-Matos, a writer syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, who, by the way, says the Hillary Clinton “declined to call the action a coup.” Not if you believe what she said on Monday, June 29 at a State Department Briefing. 

Per the former Senator, in response to a reporter’s question: “Well, we do think that this has evolved into a coup.” 

Any way, here’s my correspondence: