Would have preferred pardons, but we’ll take it. I sure that Ramos and Compean will too.

“On his last full day in office, President Bush commuted the controversial sentences of two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug runner in 2005.

The imprisonment of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean had sparked outcry from critics who said the men were just doing their jobs and were punished too harshly. They had been sentenced to 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively.

Their sentences will now expire on March 20 of this year.

Ramos and Compean were sentenced in connection with the shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was shot in the buttocks while trying to flee along the Texas border. He admitted smuggling several hundred pounds of marijuana on the day he was shot and pleaded guilty last year to drug charges related to two other smuggling attempts.

Nearly the entire congressional delegation from Texas and other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle pleaded with Bush to grant them clemency. Conservatives hailed Bush’s decision Monday.

“The whole thing was ridiculous from beginning to end, and two years was way too long for them to serve,” said radio talk show host Laura Ingraham. “Conservatives are very happy across the country.”

Bush has always prided himself on one who keeps the law and might have felt this was really the only way he could right the wrong done these two officers. Yet had Bush upheld existing immigration laws these officers might not have found themselves in this situation in the first place.

Via Robert Stacy McCain responding to this statement of a Senior Administration Official:

“Bush didn’t pardon the men for their crimes, but decided instead to commute their 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.

The action by the president, who believes the border agents received fair trials and that the verdicts were just, does not diminish the seriousness of their crimes, the official said.”

F-U, senior administration official! Their “crimes” were what most Americans would call “doing their jobs,” to protect our nation against invasion by foreign drug smugglers. And if your boss had been true to his oath to uphold our nation’s laws, maybe vile scum like Osvaldo Aldrete Davila wouldn’t have had the idea they had a green light at the border.

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