Orange County Congressman Dana Rohrabacher likes to fancy himself as this country's real secretary of state regardless of who is put in the position by a president.
It's a comical stance for a man who who skipped Vietnam War duty, champions U.S. tax dollar bribes to Afghanistan warlords as the solution to end terrorism and once angrily lobbied on behalf of the Taliban while it harbored Osama bin Laden in the years before 9-11.
And you do recall that Rohrabacher repeatedly guaranteed that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the answer to California's woes if voters elected the actor to be the state's governor?
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Now there's a new report that the Costa Mesa Republican inserted himself in a violent coup to topple “democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya,” according to Erin Rosa, a reporter at Narcosphere.com.
While president, Zelaya gave free public education to kids, increased the minimum wage, expanded access to electricity to his country's poor and reduced the interest rates banks could charge. If those achievements weren't enough to anger Rohrabacher, Zelaya's alliance with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela probably did the trick.
Rosa says that four Republican members of congress used about $25,000 in public funds to fly to Honduras in an effort to back the rise of Roberto Micheletti, the choice of that country's oligarchy, rightwing military and Rohrabacher. Once in power, Micheletti's government enacted anti-democratic measures including banning the right of citizens to assemble and protest.
Later, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo replaced Micheletti in what Rosa calls a questionable election and won the nod of Rohrabacher, who traveled to Honduras in January to, according to his DC press flack, “let the newly elected government know that the Republicans supported them.”
He won his seat in 1988 in part by campaigning on the merits of term limits. Staying in office too long tends to corrupt career politicians, he argued. We can now assume that he wanted term limits to apply to other elected officials, probably just Democrats. This November he's seeking his 23rd and 24th years in Washington, D.C.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
