Cop shooting drives Republican to threaten Bush w/ impeachment

Posted by Joshua Holland at 4:17 AM on February 9, 2007.

If the unfortunate task of keeping tabs on the Right-wing Outrage Chamber isn't part of your routine, you may not be familiar with the story of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean; they've become the latest great causes célèbres among wingnuts everywhere.

In a nutshell, their story goes like this. While guarding the border near El Paso, the two patrolmen saw a suspicious-looking van that later turned out to contain hundreds of pounds of weed coming in from Mexico. The driver, realizing he was in ho water, bailed out of the van and hoofed it towards the border. The two patrolmen later testified that they both looked at his hands and confirmed that he had no gun -- he was a fleeing, unarmed suspect. But that didn't stop 'em from popping off 15 shots at the guy's back. They wounded him -- shot him in the ass -- but he got over the border nonetheless. Knowing they weren't supposed to shoot at an unarmed man on the run, they collected all their shell casings and filed a false report that covered up didn't report the shooting as they were required to do.

They were caught. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton gave the wounded man, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity for the drug charges in exchange for his testimony. Sutton offered the two cops 18 months in a plea deal, but Ramos and Compean rejected it and got themselves 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively, for their efforts.

Bien. A fairly typical story about bad cops getting busted -- happens all the time. In fact, it was one of five incidents of police committing serious crimes around drugs that same week.

But, as you might imagine, the Right didn't stop to reflect on the fact that the border patrolmen were convicted of breaking U.S. law, covering it up to U.S. officials, obstructing U.S. justice, etc., and instead focused on the victim's Mexican nationality, his illegal status and those Hefty bags full of ganja (which the patrolmen didn't know were in the van when they opened fire).

So the wingnuts have taken to calling Johnny Sutton an "agent of the Mexican government," demanded that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez step into the case and generally made a big stink on right-wing talk radio, blogs and on their fake "news" sites like Townhall and WorldNetDaily. It's all gotten conflated with the rank-and-file rebellion against the Republican Party over immigration. To many on the right, the two dirty cops are "illegal immigration heroes."

What's striking is how they've expressed their displeasure over the issue, especially towards Bush. For years, the right's vilified and delegitimized their liberal opponents, suggesting that not only are their opinions not valid, but that their very existence threatens America. Now, they're doing the same thing with Bush; apparently, they're no longer able to approach a political dispute in any other way, even one within their own coalition.

An editorial in the San Diego Union-Trib described the scene …

The convictions have been sucked into the wind tunnel of the immigration debate and turned GOP hard-liners into bleeding hearts. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., wrote a resolution demanding that Bush pardon Compean and Ramos. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., has called Bush a "disgrace" and someone who is "on the side of our enemies." And Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif. -- who used to be a lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nativist organization that wants to limit even legal immigration -- quipped that, since Bush wants amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants, he should simply add two more names to the list.

The story took yet another turn last weekend, when one of the convicted patrolmen was beaten by fellow inmates in a Mississippi prison.

That sent Rohrbacher -- the House is hard to rank, but I'd judge him the 5th or 6th dumbest representative -- to go off the rail …

"I tell you, Mr. President, if these men -- especially after this assault -- are murdered in prison, if one of them lose their lives, there's going to be some sort of impeachment talk in Capitol Hill," he told a press conference in Washington D.C.

When Ramos and colleague Jose Compean began their sentences ... Rohrabacher said of the president for not pardoning the men, "This is the worst betrayal of American defenders I have ever seen." "It's shameful this was done by someone who is in the Republican Party," Rohrabacher added, saying Bush "obviously thinks more about his agreements with Mexico than the lives of American people and backing up his defenders."

Tagged as: police violence, wingnuts, immigration, hunter, rohrbacher

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.