It took the federal government three years to figure out what Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had been telling everyone all along.  He doesn’t care for immigrants. He likes pink underwear. He’s not inclined to concern himself much with civil rights. As if he was called “Crazy Joe” because it was a really cool name.

Via the Associated Press :

The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio‘s office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, is a result of the U.S. Justice Department‘s three-year investigation of Arpaio’s office amid complaints of racial profiling and a culture of bias at the agency’s top level.

Shocking stuff.  A scathing report. Scathing.

The Justice Department‘s conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government’s harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field.

What the AP calls the “harshest rebuke” is what Crazy Joe calls his next re-election commercial. If Joe is really lucky, President Obama will make the announcement himself,  somewhere between signing off on indefinite detention of American citizens and empowering the entertainment industry to control the internet.

But surely the feds didn’t waste a three year investigation into the obvious without a purpose, an end goal that would conclude Crazy Joe’s jihad against people with accents and vowels at the end of their names.

If the sheriff’s office doesn’t turn around its policies and practices, the federal government could pull millions of dollars of federal funding.

However will he buy a second tank?  There is enough wiggle room in that demand to drive two tanks through. 

While this may be the first time Crazy Joe has been lambasted by an authority he can’t grab by the neck and toss into a desert tent, the impotence of the government is the only thing shocking about this report.  No one needed a report to announce the Joe was a rampant civil rights violator. That’s his claim to fame as America’s Toughest Sheriff.  He sent his posse into Latino neighborhoods to lasso up whoever they could find and sort ’em out later.  And this is why they elected him Sheriff.

What is breaking news here is that the United States of America, facing down a crazy old man whose bizarre ideas and methods have flouted the Constitution, leaving behind a wake of human beings (most of whom, remarkably, look to be of Mexican descent) who have suffered the indignities that are never supposed to happen in this great nation.  And the best the great nation, the most powerful on the face of the earth, can do is “harshly rebuke” him and threaten to withhold cash? 

In a country with 3,500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations, Crazy Joe remains in office, a job that gives him shields, guns and a tank, after having snatched groups of people off the street without any pretense at lawful basis and imposed his personal brand of punishment for the misfortune of not being “his kind” of people?  Don’t try this at home, folks, because the feds will crucify you.  You are not Joe Arpaio.

If Crazy Joe could have paid for a report from the current administration that would establish, for all the time, his imperial hegemony, this would have been it.  Merry Christmas, Joe. Love, Barack. 

The life and times of Joe Arpaio, the insanity produced by his every move, his every utterance, his every violation of basic precepts of this nation, have been the subject of much discussion and ridicule.  The good people of Maricopa County told us in the very beginning that we didn’t get it, we didn’t appreciate the power this man holds over his desert fiefdom, and the appreciation of the lighter-skinned locals for keeping the darker-skinned one’s down.  They explained that his minions could do whatever they pleased, and no one, no judge, no elected official, no legislative body, could stop him. 

We scorned their cowardice in failing to stand up to this man.

And now he has made the federal government, the full might of the United States of America, bow to him.  The absolute worst they could do is point the fickle finger of shame and tell him to stop being mean or maybe, just maybe, they won’t send him gift cards in the mail.

We were wrong. I was wrong.  Crazy Joe Arpaio wins, and the federal government, its testicles shrinking and being sucked up into its tummy, has proven itself incapable of standing up to an old man who favors pink underwear.