Uncategorized

The Ballad of Ramos and Compean Comes To An End

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | January 19, 2009 | +

President Bush has commuted the sentences of the two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were convicted over the shooting of a Mexican drug dealer. Over the last couple years, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean have became martyred folk heroes on conservative talk radio, for seal-the-borders activists and for CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Bush met the folk singers half way. From the Associated Press story, “Bush didn’t pardon the men for their crimes, but decided instead to commute their prison sentences because he believed they were excessive and that they had already suffered the loss of their jobs, freedom and reputations, a senior administration official said.”

Related Topics: Uncategorized

  • Latest on Swampland

    Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
    Closeup May 25, 2012

    Political Picures of the Week, May 18-25

    TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week from the Beltway and beyond.

    From our Partners

    Obama Administration Blocks Global Health Fund To Fight Disease In Developing NationsHuffPost Politics

    From left: AP; ABACAUSA
    2012 Election May 25, 2012

    The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

    More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

  • ivb3016

    Oh dear, one less thing for Dobbs to fuss about. Guess he’ll have to turn that attention on the failings of Obama’s financial plan now.

  • Dee in Columbia MD

    Well I guess that’s something, I’m surprised that Bush even bothered to recognize that these two border control agents broke the law. I just hope that in the end Bush will have an opportunity to learn the same hard lesson that the border patrol agents had to learn — we are a nation of laws and criminal will be prosecuted.

  • http://rodeomati.blogspot.com pattonmat89

    Yes, because shooting an unarmed guy as he’s running away, then covering it up is a very heroic thing to do. Doesn’t Lou have anything better to do?

  • ymmartin

    I wonder what Dobbs would have thought if this had happened at the Canadian border to a white Canadian…

  • sevenoaks07

    This is absolutely terrible: it deprives Lou Dobbs and his Amen Chorus of their raison d’etre. They wanted these guys in jail; fantastic for ratings. I switched off Dobbs – bad for my digestion.

    ymmartin: he would have checked if the border cops were French Canadians. There’s WHITE and white in Canada.

  • ymmartin

    @sevenoaks07 – LMAO, too funny. Thanks for that.

  • FlownOver

    Note to commenters in London, Ont. – Don’t try this at home.

  • ivb3016

    BTW, According to NPR, Bush’s office announced that there will be no more pardons or commutations.

  • FlownOver

    ivb – I’ll believe this at noon EST tomorrow.

  • ivb3016

    FO, I agree, it just seemed a little hopeful. (Will also show how good NPR’s WH sources are!)

  • newfloridian

    Somewhere in television land America’s greatest racist Lou Dobbs is sobbing because he has no border cause to pursue. He is rendered irrelevant.. Anyone hear the tick tock of a career going down the tubes and televison execs looking about for a replacement? Sweet!!!

  • 53_3

    I guess that that’s the end of Three Strikes then?
    .
    For murder, you get fired and talked about.
    .
    Now if one was a hit-man, what then?

blog comments powered by Disqus