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July 1, 2008

The malicious prosecution of Ramos and Compean falls under the "If I hadn't actually seen it, I wouldn't believe it" heading. It's a classic example of political prisoners in America, of all places. Pretty scary.

Former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean went to jail on January 17, 2007 to serve obscenely long 11- and 12-year sentences. The next day, Bush-buddy Johnny Sutton started making the rounds of the news shows to try to hoodwink the public into believing that the agents were the real criminals in the case, while drug-runner Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila was a victim.

Sutton said over and over that he would have "loved to put (Aldrete-Davila) away", but since Ramos and Compean had broken the law, he had to prosecute them, 'cause, well, no one is above the law (except Mexican drug-runners and certain members of the Bush Administration), and he needed the criminal/victim's testimony to further his case against the former agents.

What really made me sick was the love fest between Sutton and Bill O'Reilly on the Factor. O'Reilly: "These are bad guys, right?". Sutton: "Yeah, they're bad guys". What crap. Then, after Ramos had the snot beat out of him by inmates in federal prison in Mississippi (it's pretty clear the inmates are running that place), O'Reilly must have had an attack of conscience, calling out the warden a couple of times to make sure Ramos was protected. Ramos was subsequently moved to another prison.

O'Reilly still hasn't gotten on the right side of this issue and, well, he's not gonna, 'cause it's old news and he'd rather talk about Brittany Spears and out-of-control high school girls. Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck have been on the right side of the issue all along. Unfortunately the story isn't fresh, so there hasn't been much recent follow-up reporting about it on the national news shows.

Members of Congress grilled Sutton, but he adamantly defended his prosecution of the agents even after it was revealed that the DOJ had given Aldrete-Davila carte blanche to cross freely between Mexico and the US. It's believed that while he was able to come and go, he ran an even larger load of marijuana into the US.

Let me be clear: I'm sure Ramos and Compean did some things wrong when trying to apprehend the drug-runner. Perhaps they did break the law. Maybe they even deserved to lose their jobs and go to jail. But the sentences they received are outrageous. No one was killed, and they prevented a large load of marijuana from reaching US

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