That two names didn't make outgoing President George W. Bush's list of presidential pardons and commutations announced today has Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) steaming mad, although he noted Dubya “still has time to do the right thing.”
Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who are currently in prison for shooting and wounding a Mexican drug smuggler, are no-shows on the Bush list. Freeing the agents has been Rohrabacher's great cause ever since the shooting. And so the following bulletin is posted on his congressional website.
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“President Bush still has time to do the
right thing and commute wrongly imprisoned Border Agents Ramos and
Compean. If he doesn't, while at the same time pardoning blatant
criminals, then he will be remembered for the personal persecution and
values that decision reflects.“The fact that the President has neglected
to free these men from their imprisonment while freeing drug dealers,
embezzlers and other criminals is insulting to the American people who
have been begging and pleading for the President to release the agents
whose prosecution was unjust from the beginning. For the sake of
justice, let's hope this is not the last round of pardons and
commutations.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.