PJ Media

Funny you should bring that up.

I’m not a lawyer so I couldn’t say specifically why the accusation of Minutemen “intimidation” was not prosecuted. However, the folks at MMFA (i.e., Media Matters for America … or, you can use it as an acronym for something else, like I do) imply that the Bush DOJ’s decision not to go after the Minutemen was political. There’s just one problem with that theory, and it’s a big problem: Bush hated the Minutemen.

The incident outside an Arizona polling station to which the MMFAs breathlessly refer occurred on Election Day, November 2006. Nearly a year and eight months earlier, Bush sneered at the Minutemen as “vigilantes” in a joint appearance with Vicente Fox, then the President of Mexico. Bush did everything he could to prevent a groundswell of support for a border fence or any show of force by American law enforcement that might actually discourage illegal immigrants from crossing the Southern border. Bush fought off popular opinion supporting a new border fence by proposing the “virtual fence” that saw hundreds of millions shoveled to Boeing in exchange for absolutely nothing. And the Bush Admin prosecuted with vigor a case brought by a Mexican drug smuggler against two Border Patrol agents (Ignacio Ramos & Jose Compean) who shot him as he was fleeing across the border. A U.S. Attorney who is a personal GWB friend (Johnny Sutton) sent each of the agents to hard time in federal prison in amongst illegal immigrant criminals who didn’t take kindly to Border agents. Bush ignored calls to pardon the officers, but commuted their sentences on his final day as POTUS.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if George W. Bush thought he possibly could lock up (or at least enjoin) the Minutemen based on that case, he would have done so. Barack Obama and Eric Holder had the NBBP in a video vise, and let them loose.