Letters to the Editor
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Nice work, Salon
Lou Dobbs is a shlockmeister and his grandstanding on this case was shameless. Why, one had to wonder after a certain amout of Dobb's frothing, did the Bush White House want to pursacute these two noble, innocent cops? The fact that the story was a little shakey once it did arrive is no big shock. No is it surprising that Dobbs didn't want to defend his work to your reporter.
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Hello Dad:
This article clearly describes the problem I have with the virulent anti-immigration bias that has swept this country. I'm convinced that Hispanics have become the new "niggers" in our land of freedom. It's a red-herring for me Dad. The issue is a diversion, a way to get millions of people to avoid looking at the real issues of poverty, lack of equitible health care, the greed of multi-national corporations, the perpetual use of military force and the multitudinous forms of other violence in order to quell the unrest of the poor and marginalized, who are clearly the majority in this sad world of ours. Having lived most of my life as a poor person with privilege, simply because I'm white, I feel extreme compassion for those who are like me but different simply because their skin is brown. I hope you read this article in its entirety, because it addresses not only the misrepresentation of people like Lou Dobbs (he's an opportunistic scum-bag as far as I'm concerned, much like the Bald Eagle our national symbol, which is an opportunistic scavanger that really is a limp dick of an eagle) Any how, I hope you read the entire article. And I really wish you would see how you have much more in common with the typical illegal immigrant, than with Lou Dobbs.
No Matter What,
I Love You Dad,
Rick
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Hard to Care
I began reading wanting to care about this, but after the first quarter of the article, I gave up.
It's not that I'm callous to what these guys did. But a foreign national smuggling weed across the border and getting capped in the ass by overzealous border patrol agents? And they got ten years for that? What about that old saying "If you don't want to be shot in the ass by border agents, don't smuggle illegal drugs across the border and then flee the authorities when you get busted?"
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Mr. Walker
They are law enforcement officers who covered up a crime (thus committing another crime). If they don't go to prison, then there is no rule of law.
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nobody cares about the weed
743 lbs of confiscated weed is about 336,000 grams or 12,000 ounces, the amount that would've taken care of thousands and thousands of people for a whole month.
what about their needs?
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If we're going to get into conspiracies...
After reading this and other stories about the case, I figured that the feds "know" that these agents were connected to other smugglers or cartels. And the shooting may have been contracted, how did they know which van to stop and when?
If they are so innocent, why wouldn't the Bush Dept. of Justice step in to help the agents instead of prosecuting? It would have scored some easy political points right before the 2006 elections or during the US Atty. hearings.
The agents(and the border patrol?) may be regretting all the attention, 10 years may have been compromise to keep quiet about border corruption. Not to mention facing whoever's waiting for them on the other side.
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Dear Frank Rizzo
I just spit tea all over the cat. Thanks very much for the laff.
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Senator Diane Feinstein and the Campean-Ramos case
I've been hearing about this case long before it went to trial almost entirely through newslists. Even progressives assume that the nonsense that's being reported is factual and get very upset about it. But it's clearly a product of conspiracy theorists' minds.
I've also been uncomfortably familiar with some of the loopier behavior of Senator Feinstein since she was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. It was then a far more conservative town than it is today. Thirty years ago I walked in on a hearing regarding a measure to repeal the local prostitution statutes, for instance. She asked,
Won't repeal of this law mean that all the prostitutes west of the Mississippi will come to San Francisco?
Not unless you also repeal the law of supply and demand
I answered from the public gallery.
Feinstein also pressured the then-District Attorney, Joe Freitas, to bring prosecution of a local lefty, radical activist after a bomb was mailed to her home. He had been writing critiques of her in his tiny publication. Police friendly to DiFi raided the man's home and he was arrested and tried on the thinnest of "evidence." Tony Serra was the defense counsel. Harry Low, a Republican judge presided, clearly uncomfortable with the proceedings and the defendant was rightfully acquitted. Many on the jury came to a post-trial celebration at the man's home.
I've seen DiFi on C-Span recently and thought that she'd finally gotten a clue. I guess I was wrong.
Woo-woo!
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Yea, they are punks, and won't hurt their wives or neighbors, fur sure...
So let them out - so they can de-grade to a 'clear and presant danger' to society at large...
...it is good politics
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Irony, at its Finest!
Alex Koppelman writes: "When people seek 'facts' only from sources with which they agree, it's possible for demonstrable untruths to enter the narrative and remain there unchallenged"
Truer words have not been spoken!
Alex, everything about this case was challenged. The Federal Government refused to comply with a Federal Judge's order to disclose what it had on the arrest of these two agents. They had a flimsy case powered purely by politics and these two agents were the scapegoats... and they knew it.
If you had bothered to keep up with this case from the very begining, you'd know how difficult it was to meet the burden of proof in order to have even *ONE* congressman listen... let alone SEVERAL FROM THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE.
Your article attempts to dismiss this solely on partisan principle, not on the premise that these two agents were persecuted because of politics.
You are a hypocrite.
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the problem
The problem with this case, and everything else that gets reported, is you don't know what to believe. Lou Dobb reports one thing. Another journalist reports something completely different. So how to determine who's telling the truth? My money is on the federal prosecutor's side. Prosecutors don't go after police unless they have really crossed the line. Prosecutors need good relations with police officers to make convictions. If they are perceived to be gunho for cops, cops won't trust them and they won't make convictions. Shooting an unarmed person that is running away from them and covering it up, is way over the line. On Sen. Fienstein I believe she thinks what these officers did was acceptable was because it was done to a "drug dealer". All she sees is the label, not the human being. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Fienstein a former prosecutor. Now if that is the case, it's really shocking that she would think it's ok to shoot an unarmed fleeing suspect.