Re: "The chain gangs stay. The tents stay. The pink underwear stays."

On Nov 29, 4:55 am, "freakventflyer" <freakventfl...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's apparent pick
for Secretary of Homeland Security, has been praised as "smart, tough and
funny" and "exceptionally talented." She has a record as a pragmatist on
immigration and solid legal credentials as a former U.S. attorney and state
attorney general. But Napolitano has also looked the other way on police
excess when political calculation demanded it, as well as tolerated the
questionable use of local sheriff's deputies to serve as a roving
immigration patrol.

All of this can be traced to her friendship with the media-obsessed Sheriff
Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who would consider it his own personal
failing if you haven't yet heard of him. He is "America's toughest sheriff,"
a man who rose to prominence in the 1990s with such newsmaking stunts as
feeding his inmates green bologna, clothing them in pink underwear, housing
them in surplus Army tents behind barbed wire in the desert, and putting
them to work on chain gangs. This punishment is inflicted equally on
convicted criminals and those who have been convicted of no crime at all but
are awaiting trial and unable to afford bail. Inmates who assault guards are
put on rations of water and fortified bread.

The public devours it, and Arpaio has consistently enjoyed some of the
highest approval ratings of any elected official in Arizona (Maricopa County
includes Phoenix). That inmates have a way of getting killed in Sheriff
Joe's jails, costing Maricopa County millions of dollars in lawsuits, has
not dimmed his star. Nor has a federal judge's order that he provide a
constitutionally mandated minimum level of food and health care, an order
that said Arpaio had inflicted "needless suffering and deterioration" on the
mentally ill.

...........

The Justice Department filed suit and settled with the sheriff the same day
after Arpaio agreed to administrative changes, including limiting the use of
pepper spray and improving inmate grievance procedures. Napolitano stood
with Arpaio at a press conference in which she, according to the Arizona
Republic, "pooh-poohed her own lawsuit as 'lawyerly paperwork.' " Arpaio
called the result a vindication.

...........

http://www.slate.com/id/2205223/

You can always tell there’s a feudal aristocracy afoot, when the
guards are in charge of guarding the guards and you have only their
word as verification that it’s all on the up and up. Cruel and
unusual punishment and punishment prior to any conviction are felonies
for which that sheriff, if all were equal under the law, by all rights
ought to be in prison himself, and whitewashing the matter with
colorable quasi-legal proceedings only aids and abets the infamy.

Obama knows this stuff, and increasingly doesn’t seem to care. Hmmm:
“care” I wonder if Barrack gets to go up to the Bohemian Grove and
crucify care next year… %~\

Sanity Clause RE
.

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