Free Ramos and Compean!

President Bush has seen fit to pardon gamblers, embezzlers, car thieves, moonshiners, dope pushers, and various varieties of fraudsters. Why won't he pardon former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean?

These are the men who were convicted when an encounter with an illegal alien drug smuggler went south. The stinking piece of human garbage criminal was granted immunity while the agents went to jail. Only in America...

The only good news in this story is that Mr Davila, Ramos and Compean's "victim," was too stupid to exercise his new lease on life wisely, and is now sitting in prison:

In El Paso, Texas, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila is now behind bars serving a 57 consecutive month sentence on charges of smuggling a ton of marijuana into the United States. The ruling comes more than three years after Aldrete-Davila was given immunity to testify in the case against Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

The case of these two men is not clear cut. Perhaps they did indeed act wrongly, but they were putting their lives on the line protecting our very dangerous borders. The Federal Government ignored all that and treated them like common criminals. They are serving minimum 10 year sentences "for using a firearm in the commission of a felony," a sentencing guideline never intended for law enforcement agents. In the interest of fairness, here are links to two articles,

Rep Dana Rohrbacher, Republican of California, argues that the President should pardon these men.

Andrew McCarthy argues that these are bad men who deserve to stay where they are.

Here's the weirdest twist of all, from the El Paso Times:

EL PASO -- A candidate for assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement urged President Bush in an open letter to pardon ex-Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

Miguel Contreras, a retired federal investigative official, said he wrote the letter in hope the president will grant the two El Pasoans a pardon or reduce their sentences.

"I reviewed everything I could find related to their cases, and based on my extensive experience, Compean and Ramos should be released and reinstated to their former jobs," said Contreras, who lives in Yuma, Ariz., and retired as a federal supervisory criminal investigator. "I have not received a response."

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team recently notified Contreras he is being considered for a high-level job with ICE, and his first act after learning that was the case, he wrote the letter for the ex-Border Patrol agents.

Could President Obama, with the support of prominent lawmakers like Senator Diane Feinstein end up doing the right thing after President Bush, savior of robbers and dope peddlers, refused?