† What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe: The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Arizona alleging in a 10-page complaint (PDF) that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his staff have obstructed their investigation into whether the sheriff’s office “is discriminating based on national origin in its police practices and jail operations,” reports The National Law Journal:

 

So far, the department alleges, Arpaio’s staff has responded to the investigation with only a handful of documents. “Despite notice of their obligation to comply in full with the United States’ requests for information, Defendants have refused to do so,” the complaint says.

 

Robert Driscoll, a partner in the Washington office of Alston & Bird who represents the sheriff’s office, said in a statement that he has tried to cooperate with the Justice Department. He said he met with DOJ officials on Friday, telling them the sheriff's office would cooperate with "all reasonable document requests" and would schedule interviews with senior staff.

 

"We were awaiting a response from DOJ, and this lawsuit is apparently it," Driscoll said in the statement. "Clearly DOJ is more interested in filing its third lawsuit in as many weeks against Arizona defendants than in looking into the allegations that purportedly gave rise to its investigation."

 

In a press conference, Arpaio denounced the suit as "harassment" and said his office has turned over thousands of pages of documents to federal prosecutors, The Washington Times reports:

 

"These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this sheriff, is Washington's new whipping boy. Now it's time to take the gloves off," he said.

 

"As for today's lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit."

 

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division for the Obama administration, said the sheriff's office declined repeated requests to turn over documents or meet with investigators. …

 

But Sheriff Arpaio's attorneys, Robert Driscoll and Asheesh Agarwal, both former deputy attorneys general in the Civil Rights Division at Justice during the Bush administration, said federal investigators were politically motivated, citing a news conference in March at which Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was quoted as saying he expected the Justice inquiry to "produce results." …

Mr. Driscoll said the DOJ suit speaks loudly by what it does not say.

 

"It does not allege that Sheriff Arpaio or the MCSO have discriminated against anyone because the DOJ, after 18 months of soliciting allegations against Sheriff Arpaio, has come up empty," he said.

 

Byron York, chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner explains why DOJ investigators haven’t been able to get Holder the results he wants:

 

[I]n September 2008, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, did its own investigation of Arpaio's office - and gave it a clean bill of health. Arpaio's lawyers recently got a copy of the ICE report through the Freedom of Information Act.

 

ICE officials evaluated how the sheriff's office performed under a law that allows specially trained local law enforcement officers to enforce parts of federal immigration law. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which is the largest sheriff's office in the Arizona, has 189 officers who have been trained by ICE to enforce federal immigration statutes. …

 

[O]fficials from the Homeland Security Department's Office of Investigation (OI), along with officials from the Detention and Removal Operations office (DRO), concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO), in its handling of illegal immigrants, acted in a professional manner and complied with a memorandum of agreement (MOA) under which the government gave them the authority to enforce federal law. That agreement included a ban on racial profiling.

 

ICE investigators also interviewed top federal officials involved in illegal immigrant cases in Arizona. They found an "excellent" working relationship between the sheriff's office and the feds. ICE talked as well to federal prosecutors in Phoenix, who described the cases brought by Maricopa County as "high quality."

 

In all, it's a quite positive assessment of an operation that just six months later would come under the Justice Department's microscope for alleged civil rights violations. It also lends indirect support to Arpaio's contention that the Justice Department investigation is politically motivated.

 

York also points out that the results of the ICE investigation also cut the legs out from under Holder’s lawsuit against SB 1070:  

 

The much-publicized suit against the new immigration law is based on the possibility that it might result in future discrimination, but at the same time the department is struggling to find evidence of civil rights violations in Arpaio's office, which uses enforcement techniques similar to those outlined in the new law. There's a real chance that in the end Obama's war on Arizona will come to nothing.

 

But Obama shouldn’t worry: Soon after the midterm elections, there will be plenty of other states for Holder to go after.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century, with many Americans putting off starting or adding to their families until the economy improves, reports The Associated Press:

 

The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show. …

 

The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That's down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.

 

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation's history. The recession began that fall, dragging down stocks, jobs and births.

 

"When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we're seeing that in the Great Recession today," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

 

"It could take a few years to turn this around," he added.

 

The birth rate dipped below 20 per 1,000 people in 1932 and did not rise above that level until the early 1940s.

 

† The Uniter: Part III: Get-out-the-vote pitches by unions on behalf of Democrats are going to fall on deaf ears amongst the white working class, reports Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson:
 

"When our canvassers call on our members on their doorsteps, they hear Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly in the background," says Dan Heck, who heads a massive union-sponsored program in Ohio devoted to persuading its members to vote this November for candidates who would mightily displease Beck and O'Reilly.

 

Heck's organization, Working America, was created by the national AFL-CIO in 2004 to reach out to white, working-class voters in key swing states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. "Right now, we talk to 25,000 people every week," says Karen Nussbaum, the program's national director, "and we'll knock on a million doors in the next two months. The people we talk to are the volatile 40 percent in the middle of the electorate. They're angry, and they're not sure who to blame or what to do about it."

Myerson has this piece of advice for President Barack Hussein Obama:

 

If Obama and the Democrats are to have a fighting chance against Beck, O'Reilly and the Republicans, they need to acknowledge how our power elites have betrayed Main Street America, and how Main Street America is right to be enraged. Nearly 80 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt did just that - railing at the "money changers" of Wall Street who had defiled the nation, even as he crafted programs that created jobs and regulated finance. The Becks and O'Reillys of his day - chiefly, radio demagogue Father Coughlin - railed at the New Deal's secularists and Jews subverting the nation, but Roosevelt, with an ascendant labor movement going door to door for him, beat them back.

 

Like Roosevelt, Obama has created jobs (if nowhere near enough) and regulated finance, but the empathic anger seems beyond his capacities or inclinations. That may be one of the biggest obstacles confronting labor's canvassers this fall.

 

Never mind that Obama and the Dems are the power elites; that Wall Street and trial lawyers gave more money to Dems in 2008 than to Repubs, as did media executives and on-air talent; that the wealthiest people in America are Dems, as are the ultra wealthy; that the jobs Obama “created” are mostly in the public sector and that the rest of us are paying the salaries (sixth item) and generous benefits packages of these workers; and today it's Dems who are railing against Jews for subverting the Mid-East peace process (meaning, give Israel “back” to the Palestinians). No matter how fast and furious Obama and the Dems spin, Americans know exactly who has betrayed Main Street and they will be shown the door come Election Day.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”): After botching a controversial early-release program that put scores of felons back out on the streets after serving just days behind bars, IL Corrections Director Michael Randle announced that he is resigning as of September 17^th, reports The Associated Press:

 

He will return to Ohio, where he had been assistant director of the state prison system, to run a community correctional facility in Cleveland for a not-for-profit agency. He will be taking a huge pay cut.

 

Randle's departure comes after a review last month of the early release program that found the Corrections Department didn't consider possible dangers to the public when it tried to save money by letting prisoners out early, including some who were violent.

 

Thanks to the controversy over the early release program, Quinn barely squeaked past Comptroller Dan Hynes to win the Dem primary in February so Randle’s resignation must be a quite a relief. It wasn’t just the danger to the public posed by violent felons running loose in the state that concerned Quinn, but the danger to his political viability in the general election.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II): One step forward, one step back for over-taxed NYers. While the city's schools chancellor Joel Klein has put an end to pedagogues being investigated for breaking the rules or breaking the law being paid to do nothing until the charges against them are resolved, he has chosen to continue the practice of assigning teachers laid off when their schools are shuttered to an Absent Teacher Reserve pool - where they get paid full salary while sporadically working as substitute teachers, reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

New York is the only city in the country where teachers are guaranteed pay for life even when their school closes and they are put out of a permanent job. In Chicago, teachers get a year to find a new job. In Washington, D.C., highly rated teachers get a year or a buyout option, while low-rated teachers are dismissed.

 

The employment guarantee costs New York's [Department of Education] more than $100 million a year in salary and benefits for teachers who don't have permanent teaching jobs, the agency says. ... The DOE says the average teacher in the ATR pool earns $82,000 a year, and some make more than $100,000. Some teachers have been in the pool since 2006. …

 

For Mr. Klein, forcing teachers into vacancies would go against his philosophy of giving principals market-based autonomy and accountability. For the UFT, putting a time limit on ATR teachers' ability to find jobs threatens the tenets of seniority and tenure, the sacred hallmarks of teachers unions.

 

It’s such a cushy gig that the city’s DOE says 59 percent of the 1,800 teachers currently in the ATR pool had not applied to fill 1,200 vacant positions or attended any recruitment fairs.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing): Doctors serving in Congress have weighed in on ObamaCare. Now, it's the turn of doctors in the trenches. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Hal Scherz, an Atlanta pediatric urological surgeon and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare, is “enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action …  posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms … [that] states in unambiguous language what [ObamaCare] means” because “America's doctors … intend to use the political power we have] by working to defeat those who have disrupted and gravely endangered the best health-care system in the world”:

 

"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world." …

 

Our doctor's letter points out that, in addition to "badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage," ObamaCare will bring "major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery." …

 

The letter's final lines are the most important:

 

"Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever."

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Is Hillary Clinton Campaigning For President?): Well, at least one of her supporters, Chicago dentist William DeJean, hopes for a change at the top of the ticket in 2012 and has spent $5,000 to create and air an ad touting her credentials for the presidency, reports CNN:

 

"She has more experience working in and with the White House than most living presidents. She is one of the most admired women in our nation's history. Let's make sure the president we should have elected in 2008 will be on the ballot in 2012. Hillary 2012: Hillary Clinton for President. Start now. Where there's a Hill there's a way," says an ad that began running on television in New Orleans Wednesday. 
 

 

When asked why he put the ad up, DeJean told CNN Thursday that "I'm a dentist and I don't think this country is headed in the right direction."

 

Regarding Clinton, DeJean says "I think she is the most qualified."

 

DeJean adds that he thinks people are having buyer's remorse about President Barack Obama and says the current administration is ruining the Democratic Party. … [B]esides New Orleans, the ad will run in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and possible [sic] Houston.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Do You Swear To Tell The PC Truth, The Censored Truth And Nothing But The Truth That Will Set The Defendant Free?): The five foreign-born Muslim men from PA who are serving prison time for concocting a plot to kill U.S. soldiers stationed at Fort Dix, NJ, - four of them given life terms - filed an appeal in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to have their convictions overturned.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): After the CA Senate narrowly approved (21-16) a bill to make it a misdemeanor to openly carry a handgun in a public place, the measure failed in the state Assembly. Residents of the state are currently allowed to carry a rifle or a handgun in a holster if it is not loaded.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, “Clunkers” Is Another Edsel): Wonder why used cars are going for a pretty penny these days? Boston Globe Columnist Jeff Jacoby explains:  

 

According to Edmunds.com, a website for car buyers, a three-year-old automobile today will set you back, on average, close to $20,000 - a spike of more than 10 percent since last summer. For some popular models, the increase has been much steeper. In July, a used Cadillac Escalade was going for around $35,000, or nearly 36 percent over last July’s price.

 

Why are used-car prices rocketing? Part of the answer is that demand is up: With unemployment high and the economy uncertain, some car buyers who might otherwise be looking for a new truck or SUV are instead shopping for a used vehicle as a way to save money.

 

But an even bigger part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System - or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. …

 

“Influencing the timing of consumers’ durable purchases is easy,’’ Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl wrote a few days ago in a blog post looking back at the program. “Creating new purchases is not.’’

 

Want proof? Compared to August 2009, sales of new cars in August 2010 have plunged 34 percent for Toyota, 33 percent for Honda, 25 percent for GM and 11 percent each for Ford and Hyundai, The Washington Post reports:

"This month's sales figures are the worst in the last 28 years," said Jesse Toprak, vice president for industry trends at TrueCar.com, which tracks auto sales. "If you adjust for population, it's the worst since World War II."

 

The average age of a trade-in car has risen from 5.6 years last summer to 8.7 years, according to Edmunds.com. …

 

Most of those declines probably resulted from the effect of "cash for clunkers." Designed to revive the economy by stimulating auto sales, the $3 billion government program offered the owners of older cars $3,500 or $4,500 if they turned in their vehicles to buy a new, more fuel-efficient ride.

 

That dramatically boosted sales.

 

Toprak estimates that if you removed the effects of the program from last year's numbers, this year's sales would have been up 10 percent.