A valuable (but disconcerting) perspective on the border case

Andrew C. McCarthy has this must-read article in today’s National Review Online about the border patrol agent case (background here and here).  The article includes lots of great insights, but also some troublesome rhetoric.  Here’s a taste:

Myopic border-enforcement activists seem unconcerned about any of these facts [which shows the border agents’ misdeeds] — for them, much like anti-death penalty obsessives, the cause is a higher calling.this case rankles ordinary Americans, too.  That’s understandable given the severity, the equities, and the potential ramifications of the punishment.

There is broad recognition that bad agents should be weeded out of any police force. Compean and Ramos, however, have not just been terminated; they were socked with sentences of twelve and eleven years, respectively.  This, in connection with an incident that arose out of a job which — their appalling conduct aside — is undeniably dangerous; an incident instigated by a drug dealer who was not prosecuted for crimes worth at least as much jail time as the agents received — an illegal alien felon who may end up with a big cash windfall premised on the absurdity that his purported American “civil rights” were violated….

[D]id the indictment really have to be this severe?  After all, the sentences are extremely harsh.  Here, the agents have mainly themselves to blame. The government offered them very generous plea deals.  Compean and Ramos spurned them. If defendants decline to plead guilty and insist on proceeding to trial, it is standard operating procedure for the Justice Department to bring its best case — which includes charging the offense that carries the highest penalty among all readily provable crimes. Indeed, it is common for the government to insist on the most severe, readily-provable offense even at the plea-negotiation stage — something Sutton’s office did not do.

Talk about an interesting example of blaming the victims (of overly harsh sentencing practices).  The two border agents opted to exercise their constitutional rights to force the government to prove its case to a jury, and now the National Review‘s columnist says they have “mainly themselves to blame” for their harsh sentences. I wonder if anyone at the National Review is actively urging Lewis Libby to cop a plea, since he will have only himself to blame if he ultimately gets convicted and receives a tough sentence.