PUBLIC MARKS with tags court & president

A Border Patrol agent sentenced to prison along with his partner for shooting and wounding a man smuggling drugs into the U.S. will appear with a congressman tomorrow at a rally asking President Bush to offer a pardon. Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, were sentenced to 12 years and 11 years, respectively, in October by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, Texas.

One hundred fifty years ago, a Constitutional crisis took place similar to one that we have been threatened with over Roe v. Wade -- one in which no moral consensus could be achieved between the three branches of government. The first constitutional crisis was over the hot-button issue of that day: slavery. The Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, and the president, Abraham Lincoln -- to his everlasting credit -- refused to recognize the Court’s decision.

Seeking to avoid a threatened subpoena by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson revealed the contents of his private phone conversation with President Bush's chief adviser Karl Rove regarding Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers – details that largely became public later.

I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.

President Bush on Monday nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, reaching into his loyal inner circle for another pick that could reshape the nation's judiciary for years to come.