It's Presidential Pardon Season

By any measure President Bush has been miserly with his pardons. I prefer to characterize him as being appropriately prudent. His judgment will no doubt be tested by the much-publicized case of Border Patrol agents Ramos and Campeon. Groups have been lobbying the White House for their pardon, arguing among other things, that an injustice has been done where two border patrol agents charged with enforcing immigration laws are in jail while an illegal immigrant scofflaw is free. Here's my take.

As I understand it, the border patrol agents were convicted of, essentially, committing a bad shooting and covering it up. Whether or not the shooting was justified is another issue, but it has nonetheless become THE issue for those advocating a pardon of the agents. I think law-and-order types ought to take a critical look at what's going on here. These guys became vigilantes when they committed the very serious offense of covering up the use of lethal force by a law enforcement officer (which lethal force was also judged to be unjustified, incidentally). They abused their badge to mete out their own justice without the critical review that justifiably accompanies such shootings. None of us want to see that sort of thing happen to anyone, even if the victim of the shooting is an illegal alien in the act of breaking immigration laws. And here we have to confront our own prejudices: we ought to be just as offended at the actions of these officers irrespective of the victim because the victims of vigilantism are all of us.

In other words, no pardon for these clowns. I know the irony of the situation--officers in jail and illegal alien free--is red meat to conservatives, but remember that policy by emotion is the province of our left-leaning friends. Let's not fall into that trap.