This drives one crazy:
The House on Wednesday approved a move by conservative Republicans to try to set free two Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug dealer.
After a long, emotional debate, the House voted by voice to block the Bureau of Prisons from keeping former agents Ignacio Ramos and Alonso Compean in federal prison. Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year federal prison sentences, respectively, for the 2005 shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila on the Texas border near El Paso.
The case has caused a furor among conservative lawmakers and on talk radio across the country.
The agents shot him in the buttocks as he fled, but got rid of crucial evidence and failed to report the incident as required. They later found a load of marijuana in the van but U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said there was no proof to tie the drugs to Aldrete so he could not prosecute him.
It was amusing enough when kneejerk conservative types [to ridiculous levels] had their usual selective approach to law and order, but now the Democratic controlled House has to join in? Even if the idea is that the Senate will not agree, so the measure won't pass, this is simply not the job of Congress. As an opinion piece noted, apparently not quite aware of the irony, it also is bad on the facts:
Then Bush reiterated, as he has done on previous occasions, that "these men were convicted by a jury of their peers" and that "people need to look at the facts." ... Nor has there been any change in the law under which Ramos and Compean were tried, convicted and sentenced. It's still a crime for officers to shoot an unarmed suspect and then lie about it.
Meanwhile, on the Canadian border:
Mr. Schornack is filing suit against the president, on the ground that Mr. Bush had no authority to fire the head of an autonomous international agency. The case is expected to be heard in Seattle this week. Representing Dennis Schornack will be Mike McKay, who is familiar with the you-work-for-the-White-House speech. His younger brother, John, was one of the United States attorneys dismissed last year by the Justice Department.
The problem arose when a retired couple decided to build a wall on their property that straddles the U.S.-Canada border. A member of a binational international commission discovered it encroached -- by a few feet -- into a buffer zone. This it could not do, even if (as they noted) local property officials did not tell them there was a problem. The trivial nature of the problem ultimately does not matter ... you cannot wrongly build a wall on my property because it only encroached a tiny bit. Likewise, rightly so, the official saw it as a test case.
What if it was allowed? Why not a few yards? Or more? What if it the precedent was used by smugglers and the like? Such an issue already arose in the very area in question. Well, they got a libertarian property rights organization -- one with more funding than the tiny border commission in question -- on their side. The Bush Administration asked the official to settle. As noted, he didn't think he could, this setting a precedent. His political loyalty was questioned (in fact he is a loyal Republican, his nomination held up because a senator thought him too partisan) and then he was summarily fired.
The ability of the Bushies to do this given his international role (and I'd think him doing his job ... like a "for cause" issue) and such is now under litigation. It's a small thing really, but it underlines what we are dealing with these days. A lack of credible government. As Media Matters noted today:
Fast-forward a few years. We have a president who has lied to the country in order to take it to war against a nation that didn't attack us, created a network of secret prisons, embraced torture, held people without trial or access to lawyers or even being charged with anything, used the government to spy on its own citizens, used "signing statements" to declare that he will not follow the very laws he is signing, and presided over an administration that is routinely described as "lawless" and that generally behaves as though the United States Congress has no more authority than the Ridgemont High School student council. Among other transgressions against the truth, the law, the Constitution, and human dignity.
Isn't it time news organizations devote more resources to exploring these issues -- even if it means fewer stories about cats and cleavage?
Well, that is some cat story ... got to admit.