Not sure if you guys have heard of the efforts to get two border patrol agents, Compean and Ramos, a pardon. The word on the wack job talk radio circuit is that these two guy were attacked by an illegal that was smuggling drugs, fired open, returned fire, and are now going to serve 11 and 12 years because they broke BP procedure. The were charged by an out of control US prosecuter who gave immunity to an illegal allien that was a known drug smuggler.

After hearing about some bandwagon congressman that was trying to get them a congressional pardon I dediced to look into the situation. Here is the story from the DOJ website that prosecuted them and secured a conviction.

The facts:

Compean and Ramos pull over a van for an ID check.

The guy runs.

Compean and Ramos fire approximitaly 15 rounds at the fleeing suspect.

They try to pick up all the brass they can find.

They deny that there was any physical contact between themselves and the suspect.

They at no time file a report stating that they discharged their weapons while on duty.

Never mentioned seeing any weapon on the suspect.

The suspect was a legal US resident.

Compean or Ramos used a second officer to return to the scene to collect the remaining brass that was left behind.

It was not until after they returned to the van that they discovered 700lbs of weed.

The government was able to put together a story cooraborated by BP testistomy and other witnesses that one of the defendants attempted to strike the suspect with the but of a shotgun when he had his hands raised, but slipped on the side of a wash while another agent was yelling "hit him, hit him". As the suspect fled they fired 15 rounds, one of them reloading once. Hit the suspect, cleaned up the scene and then did not report the incedent.

It really pisses me off when these talk radio guys are too damn lazy to even do a fucking google search. Laura Ingram had Tony Snow on yesterday asking her about a pardon and Tony's answer "look at the case". She replied " oh so you are not ruliing out a pardon" Tony "Laura, you are a lawyer, look at the case" " so there could still be a pardon"

UGH........ this is the shit that gives people like me a bad name. Fortunately Rush and Dennis Pregger have not jumped on this bandwagon.

Link to the DOJ report

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txw/press_rel ... iction.pdf

Beavis, I hadn't seen this story before, thanks for the link.

Btw, for people who don't read all the way to the end of the link (like I didn't), it's a pdf file so takes a while to load.

FWIW, I don't think any of this gives "people like you" a bad name at all. It gives a bad name to some crazy right-wing Republicans, but not you. (Hmm, that didn't come out quite right. )

The difference is that some of the crazies (on both the right and the left, of course) don't care about the truth, so long as the spin can confirm their biases. I've never seen that from you. Super glad to have you on the board here to talk about this stuff.