Unfortunately the Times bungles the story of the coup itself:

Honduras had grabbed international headlines starting in June 2009, when its president at the time, Manuel Zelaya, was detained and then sent into exile, based on a fear by other elected officials there that he was scheming to remain in office despite a one-term limit in Honduras’ Constitution.

Mr. Rohrabacher, challenging the stand taken by some Obama administration officials, ridiculed suggestions that Mr. Zelaya's removal was a coup d'état, and used his visit to Honduras to praise government leaders there who played roles in removing Mr. Zelaya, including members of the Supreme Court and the president of the Honduran Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández.

This is pretty typical--presenting the coup from the point of view of coup defenders and promoters, who had "a fear" that Zelaya was "scheming" to extend his term.

If the Times was really interested in what WikiLeaks tells us about Honduras, they could report--as Robert Naiman did here--that U.S. officials in the country had determined soon after the coup that the arguments being made to defend its legitimacy were without merit.

Back to the Times article, which allowed Rohrabacher to portray himself as a guy standing up for freedom and democracy, as he is wont to do:

Mr. Rohrabacher, who was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as the United States financed "freedom fighters" in Central America to challenge a perceived communist threat, has long cast himself as a defender of democratic causes in the region. The turn of events in Honduras offered him a chance to return to that role.

"He warned at the danger of allowing 'caudillos' or strongmen, like Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to assume control," the State Department summary of his visit said, recalling his remarks to the new leaders in Honduras.

So a guy who worked for Reagan is positioning himself as a defender of democratic freedom in Latin America--by supporting a coup against an elected president.  Are readers supposed to be laughing at Rohrabacher's hypocrisy, or at the Times for presenting this drivel without challenging it?

When "the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies"? A little more clarity is needed there. The U.S.--to take two examples--supported a thuggish military government in El Salvador and created a "guerrilla insurgency" to try and defeat a left-wing government in Nicaragua. In other words, while "the region" may have wanted one thing, U.S. foreign policy sought to bolster violent, anti-democratic force. Stating these facts clearly would give readers a better sense of of the context--and demonstrate that people like Otto Reich and Roger Noriega are still on the wrong side.

At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his opponents said would have been the first step toward allowing him to run for another term in office, which is forbidden under the Honduran constitution. Mr. Zelaya has denied any attempt to run for re-election.

An Associated Press report appearing in today's USA Today (9/22/09) was much worse:

The legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation's constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran Constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office.

This is inaccurate, not to mention strange (ousted for a Chavez "alliance"?).  As economist Mark Weisbrot put it shortly after the coup (7/8/09), these pro-coup arguments makes no sense--and the media should say so. By the way, the example he cites is also from the New York Times....

Unfortunately much of the major media's reporting has aided this effort by reporting such statements as "Critics feared he intended to extend his rule past January, when he would have been required to step down."

In fact, there was no way for Zelaya to "extend his rule" even if the referendum had been held and passed, and even if he had then gone on to win a binding referendum on the November ballot. The June 28 referendum was nothing more than a non-binding poll of the electorate, asking whether the voters wanted to place a binding referendum on the November ballot to approve a redrafting of the country's constitution. If it had passed, and if the November referendum had been held (which was not very likely) and also passed, the same ballot would have elected a new president and Zelaya would have stepped down in January. So, the belief that Zelaya was fighting to extend his term in office has no factual basis -- although most people who follow this story in the press seem to believe it. The most that could be said is that if a new constitution were eventually approved, Zelaya might have been able to run for a second term at some future date.

Calling this dominant media narrative "a massive distortion of the facts," Hallinan patiently explains that "all Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention"--which, Hallinan notes, was "a move that trade unions, indigenous groups and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for," since the country's current "one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country."

But things get really interesting when Hallinan spots a "U.S. Connection"--via one of our largest media conglomerates:

While Zelaya is indeed friendly with Chávez, he is at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage....

One of those "little reforms" was aimed at ensuring public control of the Honduran telecommunications industry, which may well have been the trip-wire that triggered the coup....

One of the charges that [right wing Latin America operative Otto] Reich levels at Zelaya is that the Honduran president is supposedly involved with bribes paid out by the state-run telecommunications company Hondutel. Zelaya is threatening to file a defamation suit over the accusation.

Reich's charges against Hondutel are hardly happenstance, as he is a former AT&T lobbyist and served as Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) Latin American advisor during the senator's 2008 presidential campaign.

Writing that "AT&T, McCain's second largest donor, also generously funds the International Republican Institute, which has warred with Latin American regimes that have resisted telecommunications privatization," Hallinan perceives the seeds of Zelaya's fate in the fact that he "was known to be a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization."