The ballad of Ramos and Compean

Alex Koppelman has a pretty good piece in Salon detailing: How the anti-immigration right — and Lou Dobbs — turned two rogue Border Patrol agents into heroes and got Congress on their side.
The Ramos/Compean saga has always been primarily an immigration tabloid story — a bent tool for drumming up outrage. Where it has been relevant to drug policy is in the publicly voiced assumption that shooting an unarmed drug suspect is somehow uncontroversial (an assumption bizarrely even held by Senator Feinstein). People are so used to drug war exceptions to every Constitutional right, that they are amazed that shooting an unarmed marijuana smuggler in the back is still illegal in this country.