Maybe it’s a lost cause, but maybe not. While most of the blawgosphere continues to pat itself on the back for shining light from a distance on Sheriff Joe’s domain in Maricopa County. the first indications of a more substance home grown response are surfacing.
From Brian Tannebaum, there is an email circulating around the county:
From Brian Tannebaum, there is an email circulating around the county:
On Monday, December 21, 2009, at 12:15 p.m., I would like to rally as many people as we can to the patio in front of the Central Court Building to protest the illegitimate, despicable, and cowardly actions of Andy Thomas and to demand that he be suspended from the State Bar of Arizona. Please circulate this email to as many people as you see fit.
The question isn’t whether this is the most effective approach, or why the judges, the politicians, the United States Attorney, et al., aren’t locking arms, One step at a time. It’s something. It’s a sign that the local lawyers have had enough and have decided to take a huge risk by going public. They are doing something. Granted, it’s against the County Attorney, Andy Thomas, rather than his boss, Crazy Joe, but it’s still something. Every journey begins with a single step.
At the same time, Chandler, Arizona, criminal defense lawyer Matt Brown has begun to see the light as well.
At the same time, Chandler, Arizona, criminal defense lawyer Matt Brown has begun to see the light as well.
I doubt that anyone outside of Maricopa County has the power to make a difference. The feds have more firepower than Sheriff Joe, but what makes people think the DOJ is willing to do anything meaningful about it? I’d love to see a national opinion poll on what Sheriff Joe is doing. The DOJ can start as many hotlines as it wants, but it’ll just incite people to write things like this and this. It’ll rally the troops behind Sheriff Joe.
Matt wrote that I’ve started losing interest in Maricopa County. That’s not quite the case. Talk is cheap, and all the grandiose talk about light shining and injustice and Kafkaesque-ity either serves a purpose or is the murder of words to no end. What I’ve lost interest in doing is keeping up the good fight when none of the Maricopa players was willing to do anything to help themselves.
But as Windypundit notes,
The good news is that Joe Arpaio will probably not be Sheriff of Maricopa County for much longer. The bad news is that’s because he’s currently leading the polls for the Arizona Governor’s race.If Crazy Joe was to run for governor of Arizona, polls show that he would beat the likely Democratic candidate by 12%, a huge mandate. My fellow blawgers may be full of their self-importance about shining lights and all, and how their inspirational words must continue to sing throughout the land, but I’m a bit more practical.
The good people of Arizona love Crazy Joe and his usurpation of basic rights and law; they think he’s the only who’s got it right. They think the rest of us are nuts, and the noise we’re making is foolish. If this isn’t met with a substantive response, rather than another dozen blawg posts from lawyers in the comfort of far off places watching Maricopa County through a telescope, then the voters are right. We are nuts.
My attempt to recognize, and explain, the limitations of what we in the blawgosphere are doing fell on deaf ears. Not a single comment reflects an understanding of the point, some nipping at tangents about newspapers writing about Crazy Joe and others inflexibly insisting that we, blawgers, must continue because that’s all there is. Here’s the deal. Writing about Maricopa County isn’t a way to keep blood circulating through blawgs, or gain readers, or generate cross-links and comments. It’s about Maricopa County. There’s real bad stuff happening down there. If you saw a child attacked, would you jump in to stop it or write about it? The former accomplished something. The latter, not so much.
Up to now, there’s a been great deal written about Crazy Joe and Maricopa. But there has been no massive outcry across the nation for the federal government to step in and restore the rule of law, the honor of the Constitution, the assault on the judiciary and the end of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror. The feds haven’t taken up arms. The newspapers aren’t interested (and please don’t comment about a meaningless “balanced” article; it changes absolutely nothing) in calling for change. The government officials charged with keeping “warlords” like Crazy Joe in check have remained under their desks, hiding from him.
It’s only been a bunch of blawgers patting each other on the back for being he-men calling out Crazy Joe from a safe distance. I’m as inclined to wraps myself in the mantle of righteousness for my efforts as the rest of the blawgers, but I also try to remember that real people have live with what is happening on the street. Our words may bring some comfort, but they need more.
Having digressed, I return to the point of this post. The lawyers of Maricopa County have chosen to take a huge risk by calling for a rally against Crazy Joe’s henchman, Andy Thomas. It may not seem like a huge risk to those unaware of Arpaio’s inclination to do his enemies harm, coupled with his near absolute power to achieve whatever he wants, but the lawyers in Maricopa are surely aware of what it means to confront Joe (even if via Thomas) directly. They have finally decided that they’ve had enough of his subversion of law and are prepared to do something to take charge of their lives and their court system.
To the extent that the support of the blawgosphere has helped to empower the local lawyers, wonderful. But what they are starting is real, not mere words. They are putting their butts on the line, and that’s something worthy of real support. Whether it’s going to work, or the best tactic, isn’t necessarily important at the moment. It would seem that far more will be needed, but it has to start with something. And that something must be real, and this rally is real.
It’s unlikely that the voters of Maricopa County, or the entire state, will have a sudden epiphany and realize that Crazy Joe isn’t just a folk hero. But the judges, the other elected officials, the Feds know better. They know very well that Crazy Joe has become a law unto himself, and they know exactly why this can’t be permitted to happen, even if the voters love his shenanigans. They all learned the phrase “tyranny of the majority” in school, and if they had the guts, they would join the rally with the lawyers of Maricopa County.
I won’t physically be in the plaza in front of the County Courthouse of Maricopa County on December 21, but I will be there in spirit. I applaud the lawyers who show, willing to take the chance to regain control of their world. A small step, perhaps, but real.
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“Granted, it’s against the County Attorney, Andy Thomas, rather than his boss, Crazy Joe, but it’s still something.” I am reasonably sure you know that the Sheriff is not Mr. Thomas’s boss. It is this type of misstatement that leads me to believe you have no factual support for your allegations against the Sheriff.
As to the DOJ hot-lines: it has been investigating the Sheriff for 10 months, the fact that it is now resorting to this indicates (to me) that they have not found any substantial evidence of wrong-doing.
When someone hides their head in the sand, sand is all they can see. Your assumptions are ignorant, and when Crazy Joe decides that you’re next, remember how you enjoyed watching him break the law when it came to other people.
“My attempt to recognize, and explain, the limitations of what we in the blawgosphere are doing fell on deaf ears. Not a single comment reflects an understanding of the point . . .”
If your point was “the limitations of what we in the blawgosphere are doing”–that we are doing nothing for freedom in Maricopa County while sitting on our butts in Houston and Long Island, consider that it may have been too obvious a point to be worthy of a blog post, much less discussion.
But no, here you go again, executing another thousand words talking about some (imaginary? if not, then how about a link?) bloggers patting themselves on the back, without proposing better action—other than being there “in spirit.”
Nope. Not the point. I have obviously done an exceptionally poor job of expressing myself.
Afterthought: If my posts are too obvious to be worth reading or writing, you should let me know. It would be shame for both of us to waste our time.
How does it go: Pound the facts; pound the law; pound the table? What laws has the Sheriff violated? What facts support those allegations? I assume, ignorantly perhaps, that you know Arizona has no common law crimes, so please provide citations to the Arizona Revised Statutes (or USC). Or just go on pounding the table.
It’s not about crimes, but denial of constitutional rights. We’ve been writing about this over and over, and you’ve managed to miss it all. Crazy Joe is a sheriff. Crazy Joe doesn’t get to invent and reinvent how to use and abuse the process, power, authority he posseses. I understand that you don’t grasp anything beyond the commission of a crime, but that deficit isn’t shared by the rest of us.
It never ceases to amaze me how some people can not understand how “Crazy Joe” has completely abolished the constitution in his county. It appears that Maricopa County has seceded from the state and the United States right under our noses . Maybe those who support Joe should take a good long history course on why we have civil rights and how our ancestors fought to see that we kept them.
I am in full support of the lawyers who are doing something about this or at lest trying. After reading some of the comments it is apparent how Joe has pulled off his dictatorship and abduction of justice for so long.
Sorry, I guess what threw me was: “remember how you enjoyed watching him break the law when it came to other people.”
The Constitution is the law.
“What laws has the Sheriff violated?” “The Constitution is the law.” So, I will ask again: please provide some specific examples with supporting facts. I haven’t been reading the blog for a year, but given that you have been writing about this for that long, it shouldn’t be too much effort to provide the information.
For what it is worth, I don’t know if the Sheriff has violated the law or not. But when I am subjected to insult for my failure to rise up in rebellion or unwillingness to flee the county, I think it not unfair to ask for proof of the allegations against him.
You’re operating under a double misconception. There is nothing here that is personally directed toward you, and if you were a more adept reader, no one called for anyone to either rebel or flee the county. The insurrection is by Crazy Joe. It’s tricky, but it’s there for the astute observer.
Secondly, you assume that your lack of understanding about the Constitution, not a surprise since you’re not a lawyer and think, as do most non-lawyers, allows you to interpret the law in accordance with your lay sensibilities. You expect those more knowledgeable to both educate and persuade you, as if being ignorant gives you special rights. It doesn’t. Crazy Joe, in his capacity as a government official, must adhere to the rigors of the Constitution. His violates have been catalogued ad naseum, and yet you don’t see them. It’s not for lack of proof of violations, for which the evidence is overwhelming, but for your lack of comprehension.
You’ve had all the information available to you from the outset. It’s now your job to understand it.
ABC will interview Arpaio on niteline tonight at 11:35. There’s a quasi negative article about Crazy Joe on the abc website. Shockingly, Maricopa County’s website is having ‘technical difficulties’ with their Maricopa County in the Headlines section.
I do hope this doesn’t strain the friendship between Mark and Scott because, IMAO, they’re both right..and both very wrong at the same time.
Scott is right when he says that bloviating about the issue will accomplish nothing.
Mark is right when he says this is a constitutional crisis.
But when each of you describe this as a problem in Maricopa County, you are terribly wrong.
The trouble is, Maricopa County is no more than the visible buboe on a completely infected national corpus. Lancing the boil there will not cure the disease..if indeed it IS curable at this point. Frankly, I don’t think it is, but y’all run a bit more optimistic than I do.
The worst thing that could happen, from my point of view, is that Crazy Joe gets indicted/arrested/removed from office. Because then, just as with Nifong, everyone will go home and congratulate themselves on fixing the problem; when in fact they have done nothing whatsoever to resolve it. Instead they’ve obscured both the scope and nature of the problem and allowed the infection to burrow even deeper.
When enough people are motivated to conduct the thorough and sweeping overhaul of government that will be needed to actually change things, then maybe it can be done. Right now, I don’t see us being anywhere near the critical mass required. But maybe, just MAYBE, in time Crazy Joe and his uniformed counterparts will inflict themselves on the people who created them to such an extent that they’ll finally realize what they created.
If it’s not too late.
I agree about the scope of the problem. This could have happened almost anywhere in Texas, and does.
Hey, I said it was a constitutional crisis first! A little credit, please.
You’re right that constitutional deprivations are pervasive, not just a Maricopa County problem. But Crazy Joe is a special case, and there is no other place in this nation where the conflict is so acute. Is it unique? In that sense, yes, it’s unique.
Here is lots of credit where credit is due, Scott. And then some 🙂
Actually, almost anywhere in the U.S. Maricopa just happens to be where it is.
We’ve been through this before. Eisenhower had to send in troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings. Lester Maddox, when he was Governor of Georgia, stood in the schoolhouse door with an axe threatening violence to any black person who tried to enter a white school. Jackson flat out ignored the Court’s order prohibiting the relocation of the Cherokee to what was called Indian Territory. The list goes on.
The rule of law is always on shaky ground. That’s why it’s so damn important to keep working at propping it up.
Thank you.
1. “and everybody from the voters to the judges in Maricopa County seems to be either effete or complicit” As a voter (not a judge) I did see it as directed at me (and I took it as an insult.)
2,” We can either officially declare Sheriff Joe Arpaio the King of Maricopa, or his subjects can rise up against him, take a chance, maybe even take a bullet, and put an end to his reign.” Then
Jameson Johnson wrote: “So… are you proposing an armed insurrection?” And then: JDog wrote; “The obvious answer is: the same thing anybody reasonable would do if they found that they were living in a banana republic with an unguarded border. There are six adjacent counties and, at present, there are no checkpoints preventing exit.” So belittle me all you want, but this is from your blog.
3. “You expect those more knowledgeable to both educate and persuade you, as if being ignorant gives you special rights. “ Educate no, but persuade, yes. You are making allegations and I thought you would be willing to provide factual information to back them up. Obviously, I was mistaken.
As I said before: keep pounding the table.
1. You are one of millions of voters. It’s not all about you.
2. Am I Jdog?
3. I couldn’t care less whether you are persuaded. Again, it’s not all about you.
You’ve wasted enough of my time and bandwidth, and proven yourself terminally stupid. Go waste someone else’s time.