Fitting end

President Bush today issued 14 pardons and commuted two prison sentences, according to news reports. This is the season for pardons, so none of this was unexpected. However, one pardon in particular stands out as symbolic.

From the Washington Post:

... Leslie Owen Collier, a farmer from Charleston, Mo. He pleaded guilty in February 1996 to two counts of taking bald eagles and one count of using poisoned bait to kill animals on his farm. The victims were three bald eagles, a red-tailed hawk, a great horned owl, a opossum, a raccoon and seven coyotes. Collier was sentenced to two years' probation, barred from possessing a firearm during that period, and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.

Feeling compelled to do whatever he had to do to protect against another attack on the home front, a man took extreme and ill advised measures to knock out his enemy without regard to the consequences. As a result he wound up destroying something precious to this country and violating a law he probably disagreed with in the first place.