Drug WarRant Amazon Store -- great ideas for your library and gifts for friends. Books, music, video, hemp food, clothing and fun items.
Drug WarRant CafePress Store -- Drug WarRant merchandise including buttons, magnets, coffee mugs, T-shirts, boxer shorts and, our most popular item -- thongs (great gift!)
blogs.salon.com will shut down in December, 2009. Join us on Pete's couch at the new home at http://www.DrugWarRant.com
Monday, January 19, 2009
Bush exit says so much
As his last act as President, George W. Bush commuted the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean.
Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison terms, respectively, for the Feb. 17, 2005, incident near Fabens, Texas.
After a high-speed chase, a smuggler named Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila abandoned his van, which held 743 pounds of marijuana. The agents shot him as he ran away. They didn't report the shooting, and they threw all the shell casings they could find into the river. Only later did they claim they'd spotted a gun.
That's right. They shot at an unarmed man running away, eventually hitting him in the rear, then realized that they were in the wrong, so they let him go and tried to cover up the shooting.
Apparently President Bush was concerned that the sentences were overly harsh. After all, all they did was, under color of authority, shoot at an unarmed man and then cover it up. It's not like they did drugs or anything.
There's a war going on. It destroys lives and families, spawns violence, suspends civil liberties, tramples on the infirm, locks up millions of peaceful citizens, costs billions, and subjugates reason with fear. This blog looks at the front lines of the drug war, with news, analysis, and the occasional rant.
