Andy:  I think you are getting carried away here.  "When it suits your purposes, you say the agents have done nothing wrong."  When and where did I say that?  "When cornered, you say they have sinned, but it was a trifle."  I can't recall any awareness of having been cornered, and I believe what I have said about what the agents did has been steadily consistent:  They violated their rules of engagement and tried to cover up the fact of having done so.  Again, if I said something different somewhere, please direct me to it.  Or, if I assigned different gravity to their deeds at different points in our discussion, show me the differences.

I repeat:  I can't imagine that many citizens believe these two guys did anything egregiously awful.  For them to be serving 11 and 12 years is an outrage, a gross miscarriage of justice.  That's what I think, and that's what I've been saying—consistently, as best I can recall; but again, if that's not so, show me.

The rest of your post seems to be saying: "Once events were initiated, the inexorable machinery of the law could do nothing but grind through to this one conclusion."  Well, you're the lawyer; but if that is so, then there is something grossly wrong with the machinery of the law.  Do you mean to say that as evidence is assembled and testimony taken, there is no point at which prosecutors can change course—or just drop the whole thing?  If that is so, then, my God, the law **is** a ass.  May I never come to the attention of a federal prosecutor!

And I say again—because it needs saying again and again—that quite aside from the outrage done to Compean and Ramos, there is the much greater—much more momentous—outrage that the federal government has brought untold resources and effort to bear on the prosecution of these two citizens, while doing very nearly nothing to prevent lawless intruders from entering our country in the tens of millions, or to expel those currently here.  But on this, I think, at least, you and I agree.

What a much better world it would be, and what a much better government we would have, if, instead of you and I flailing away at each other over this stupid and misbegotten prosecution, we were raising our glasses together to toast news of the latest (efficient, peaceful, and humane) deportation of 100,000 illegal aliens and their dependents back to their home countries, where they lawfully belong!  Under this administration, alas, that is only a dream.