THE FOUNDATION: JUSTICE

“Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.” —John Adams

OPINION IN BRIEF

“When President Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby… he explained that he respected ‘the jury’s verdict, but I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.’… By that standard, Bush also should commute the sentences of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean… The feds’ decision to charge the agents for committing a crime with a firearm… meant a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence on that one charge alone. Hence the very harsh sentences for men who served their country in the military and at the border. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a former U.S. attorney, observed that the federal firearms law ‘is designed to deal with criminals who carry firearms in the commission of felonies and crimes of violence.’ Whereas, ‘These officers came to work with no criminal intent, no mindset to commit any crime.’ Asked Wednesday whether Bush will grant clemency, White House spokesman Tony Snow explained that the Libby commutation is special because there are disputes in legal circles about Libby’s sentence. Well, there are disputes as to whether the federal firearms charge should have been used against law enforcement officers who are required to carry guns to do their jobs and did not premeditate shooting a fleeing drug smuggler. Snow also noted that the Libby pardon let stand the ‘significant punishment’ of probation and a six-figure fine. Try this for ‘significant punishment’: Ramos and Compean have spent six months in prison—that’s no picnic in that they are serving time among the very types of criminals they once helped put away. In February, Latino gang members attacked Ramos in Yazoo City Federal Correctional Complex in Mississippi. Since then, officials have had to put both men—Compean is in a different prison—in solitary confinement for their protection. If Ramos and Compean were crooked agents, they would deserve hard time. But at worst, they fired their guns in the heat of pursuit, when they should not have. If Bush wants to show Americans that he stands for true justice—and not justice for his inner circle only—he should set Ramos and Compean free.” —Debra Saunders

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“You attributed the Quote of the Week in Friday’s Digest to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (D-CA), but he is in fact a Republican.” —Issaquah, Washington

Editor’s Reply: Though one often cannot tell the difference between the two parties, in Rep. Rohrabacher’s case, we actually do regret the error!

“It is my pleasure to support The Patriot. Of the many conservative publications I read, The Patriot is of most value. I circulate it far and wide to my friends and to the Marxists I know masquerading as Democrats. Keep up the good work. God bless you, and your staff. Job well done.” —San Antonio, Texas

“The President already has a plethora of those that wish him ill. I wish that he would act affirmatively in this gross miscarriage of justice, and in so doing throw at least a crumb to those who desperately want to be his conservative supporters. And while he’s at it, fire that self-serving, political hack, Sutton.” —Lakeside, Arizona

“Thank you, thank you, thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this petition! As the wife of a law enforcement officer, I was horrified that Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean were treated worse than the criminals they protect their communities from. There’s not much we have ever agreed with Dianne Feinstein on, but we welcome her support for justice in these two cases and pray that these men will be freed soon.” —Los Angeles, California

FREE THE BORDER PATROL AGENTS - NOW!

Please take a moment to sign Free the Texas Three and Secure our Borders, a national petition calling on President Bush to commute the sentences of both former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, and their colleague, former Sheriff’s Deputy Guillermo Hernandez; asking Congress to insist that the DEA prosecute Mexican national Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila on felony drug distribution charges; and demanding that Congress and the Bush administration secure our borders.

INSIGHT

“Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.” —Ayn Rand

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

“This notion of giving both emotional and monetary support to a neighbor only with regard to the recipient’s will is precisely why man needs church to lead a moral life. I am tempted to ask some of these indiscriminant do-gooders whether they would loan Charles Manson a knife under the principle of always helping a fellow human in need. But, instead, I will take a few moments to quote Jesus of Nazareth who said it best as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and Prophets.’ Two things are important, here. First, the commandment to love God comes before the commandment to love our neighbors. Second, the two great commandments are ‘like’ one another but they are not one and the same… Life is full of uncertainty but without God two things really are certain: We will make a mess of our lives, and we will help others do the same.” —Mike Adams

FAMILY

“In London last week, the Optimum Population Trust called for Britons to have ‘one child less’ because the United Kingdom’s ‘high birth rate is a major factor in the current level of climate change, which can only be combated if families voluntarily limit the number of children they have.’ ‘Climate change is now widely regarded as the biggest problem facing the planet,’ says Professor John Guillebaud. ‘We’re nearing the point of no return and people are feeling increasingly desperate and helpless. The answer lies in our own hands… We have to recognize that the biggest cause of climate change is climate changers—in other words, human beings, in the UK as well as abroad.’ As the professor sees it, having fewer children is ‘the simplest, quickest and most significant thing any of us could do to leave a sustainable and habitable planet for our children and grandchildren.’ The best thing we can do for our children is not to have them.” —Mark Steyn

LIBERTY

“Free markets are simply millions upon millions of individual decision-makers, engaged in peaceable, voluntary exchange pursuing what they see in their best interests. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.” —Walter Williams

THE GIPPER

“As a former Democrat, I can tell you [that]… back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party… down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England.” —Ronald Reagan

GOVERNMENT

“There is a reason we celebrate living in ‘the land of the free’ and that is, presumably, that the government designed by the Founding Fathers was supposed to leave us alone. The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to determine what or how much we eat, whether or not we become obese, whether we smoke, whether attending too many rock concerts can harm one’s hearing or any other aspect of our presumably private lives. But the government interferes everywhere it can, often to our detriment and even death. The demand for higher mileage from a gallon of gasoline completely ignores the fact that there is a finite amount of energy to be secured. The only way to get more is to lighten the vehicle and that leads to people in tiny cars getting squashed like bugs if they encounter an 18-wheeler truck or just a telephone poll.” —Alan Caruba

RE: THE LEFT

“For six years, the Bush administration has kept America safe from another terrorist attack, allowing the Democrats to claim that the war on terrorism is a fraud, a ’bumper sticker,’ a sneaky ploy by a power-mad president to create an apocryphal enemy so he could spy on innocent librarians in Wisconsin. And that’s the view of the moderate Democrats. The rest of them think Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. But now with the U.S. government—as well as the British and German governments—warning of major terrorist attacks this summer, the Treason Lobby is facing the possibility that the ‘bumper sticker’ could blow up in their faces. The Democrats’ entire national security calculus is based on the premise that ‘we have no important enemies,’ as stated by former senator Mike Gravel. He’s one of the Democratic presidential candidates who doesn’t know he’s supposed to lie when speaking to the American people. Ironically, the Democrats’ ability to sneer at President Bush hinges on Bush’s successful prosecution of the war on terrorism, despite the Democrats. It’s going to be harder to persuade Americans that the ‘war on terrorism’ is George Bush’s imaginary enemy—the Reichstag fire, to quote our first openly Muslim congressman Keith Ellison—if there is another terrorist attack. So naturally, they are blaming any future terrorist attacks on the war in Iraq.” —Ann Coulter

POLITICAL FUTURES

“I want to present a hypothetical here. I know this would not happen, but I’ll offer a compromise, the Limbaugh compromise, to the Democrats in the Senate and in the House… I will agree to pull our troops out of Iraq if you Democrats will agree to my conditions after the defeat… When al-Qa’ida celebrates after we pull out, after we admit defeat, every TV image of al-Qa’ida celebrating must be a split screen. On one side, al-Qa’ida celebrating; on the other side, I want pictures of Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and Carl Levin smiling and congratulating themselves. When al-Qa’ida slaughters Iraqis after we pull out and we see the pictures of this on TV, every TV image must show a split screen. On one side of the screen, the bloody slaughter scenes; on the other side of the screen, pictures of smiling Harry Reid, smiling Chuck Schumer, smiling Carl Levin congratulating each other with big laughs… I think that’s a reasonable compromise, and I’ve offered it here in all sincerity. If the left will agree to this compromise, I will join them in calling for a pullout from Iraq.” –Rush Limbaugh

FOR THE RECORD

“Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression [contains] lessons for our times. FDR needed a foil, and he elected the businessman. His rhetoric was sharp and persuasive… He turned the government into competition the private sector could not match. Fear froze the private economy. What often gets lost in the mythologies of the New Deal is that it was World War II, not the New Deal, that ended the Depression; the Dow-Jones Average did not rise to pre-Depression levels for at least a decade after FDR died in the early spring of 1945. The president changed the meaning of words, too. Before FDR assumed office in 1933, the word ‘liberal’ identified someone who championed the rights of the individual. FDR changed ‘liberal’ to mean someone who champions rights and advantages of groups. The individual wouldn’t any longer count for very much…Roosevelt raised group rights to an art, creating constituencies of labor unions, senior citizens, teachers, farmers and others. The election year 1936 saw a landslide for FDR and the first time short of war that federal spending outpaced the spending of the towns and states. All those political constituencies showed their appreciation with votes for Roosevelt… The year 2007 is nothing like 1936, but the attitudes that polarized the country then are with us still, occasionally exacerbated by ambitious politicians like John Edwards and his reprise of class-warfare rhetoric.” —Suzanne Fields