Editorial: "Sometimes people must bend the rules"

This piece is so incoherent I'm having a hard time parsing it, but I think the unnamed Courier editor may be trying to find a way to sympathize with Van Bateman's deflection of guilt for burning up over 400,000 acres of forest and a couple of small towns. Following the law here is "acting against common sense"!? Someone in the editor's office is smokin' crack.