Border Bungles
Lee Emmerich Jamison
Re: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009579
In no area of their commentary is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal so persistently and perniciously wrong than on border issues. In today's commentary over the furor over the imprisonment of former border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean the editors pretend all the complaints over the mysterious case simply don't exist. They speak of the "plain facts" of the case, though transcripts of the trial have not been available even to congressmen. They wonder not at all of the fact both lawyers for the defense and the defendants themselves are under court order not to discuss aspects of the supposedly public trial. They fail to mention sealed indictments of witnesses for the prosecution- and that these indictments were not disclosed to the jury. They fail also to mention other possibly exculpatory evidence withheld from the defense even after conviction, though the evidence may be important to appeals.
In a radio interview this morning Texas congressman Ted Poe, a twenty-one year former criminal trial judge called this case "very unusual". Pressed a little further he admitted he had never given a sentence to a defendant at a trial involving such uncertainties.
The Journal editorializes as though the hayseeds of the radical right had lit off on an ideological bender in this case. Far from it. It is not hard to believe that a sharp legal mind like that of Ted Poe can discern between the stench of deal making and corruption that appear to waft over this prosecution and the odor of simple criminality the Journal would have us believe we should smell. From their perch which, seeing as it is in the far south of Manhattan, must overlook the southern border as easily as it does the financial district, they authoritatively tell us it is all in our minds.
There IS something on our minds in Texas (from whence I am perplexedly unable to see the offices of the Wall Street Journal, even from their lofty southern location). We hear of incursions by the Mexican military in support of drug shipments. We hear of forward reconnaissance positions set up in support of drug shipments. We hear of human smuggling operations set up to provide human cover for drug and other smuggling. We seek, and regularly receive substantiation of these and other illegal cross-border activities through our congressional representatives. Nothing is done and even supposedly objective (if business-biased) news sources like the WSJ ignore these serious threats to our national sovereignty by our southern neighbor.
Ronald Reagan famously said that a nation that does not protect its borders is no nation at all.
The apparent determination of the current administration and the business class as represented by the Wall Street Journal to make this nation no nation at all is deeply disturbing to many in America. The people, out of the deepest possible suspicion of the motives involved in this unique prosecution, want to be assured Ramos and Compean are at least getting a remnant of what used to be U.S. justice, not some version creeping up via the considerable influence of our powerful neighbors to the south.
