Little was made of President Bush's last day in office, after all a living saint was taking over at noon. But Bush did a classy thing in my opinion, and dare I say, the right thing. He commuted the sentences of of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. You might remember these were the two Border Patrol officers implicated and convicted of the shooting and wounding an unarmed illegal immigrant -- suspected of drug smuggling at the time -- and then covering it up.
Commuting rather than pardoning their sentences was proper because what these guys did was wrong when they attempted to cover it up. A cover up will always get you in more trouble than the act ever will. Had they not tried erase their tracks that day they would be, in my mind, a pair of heroes. Clearly the punishment for their crime was far too harsh.
The thing that frosted me and so many others was the zeal with which federal authorities went after Ramos and Compean. Traveling to Mexico to track down the drug smuggler and bringing him to the U.S. with full immunity to testify was just too much to take. Listen, there is something drastically wrong when we have a real problem at the border with illegal immigration and drug running and OUR government gleefully takes down 2 of the men whose job it is to stop these illegal activities. Again, what they did was ultimately wrong, but 11 and 12 year sentences was cruel and unusual punishment.
Good luck to these two men in putting their lives together again. They will forever be felons but I should hope someone will put them back to work. Mistakes were made but President Bush corrected one of them as he left Washington DC for Crawford.
CW
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