Last week, the Department of Justice released the results of a three-year investigation into the actions of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, finding the Arizona official had committed rampant abuses and regularly “engages in racial profiling.”

In particular, the study found that Arpaio’s office targeted Latinos both in the workplace and in the streets. “Latino drivers are four to nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers,” read the report, and his office often targeted individuals simply for having “dark skin” or speaking Spanish. In one example, as Ian Millhiser writes, “One inmate was refused new bed sheets, even after she used a fellow inmate to explain in English that her old sheets were soiled, because the jail told the inmate that she had to make the request herself in English.”

Though instances of lawlessness like this have been ubiquitous in Arpaio’s office, conservatives are beginning to rush to the Arizona sheriff’s defense. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) echoed this sentiment on the radio late last week, telling host G. Gordon Liddy that the investigation was a “waste of taxpayer money.” Poe went on to excuse Arpaio, saying the sheriff was simply “doing his job.”

LIDDY: The attack on the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, again by the federal government, accusing him of racial profiling, because apparently Hispanics are more likely to be illegal aliens than anybody else. [...]

POE: [...] Sheriff Arpaio and Maricopa County has the authority under a program called the 287-G program, authorized by the federal government, to investigate people in his jail that are illegally in the United States. He’s authorized by the federal government to do this. Now the federal government is saying, “ahh, we don’t want you doing this anymore,” and has named a bunch of excuses. They’ve been investigating him for three years. It’s amazing. Three-year investigation and they’re still not through. Another waste of taxpayer money. Program authorized by the federal government, approved by this sheriff, and now the federal government is saying, “obviously, he’s doing such a good job we don’t want him doing it anymore and want to take away his ability to even inquire as to people in the county jail as to whether they’re illegally in the country or not.”

The Justice Department’s findings against Arpaio are devastating in their scope. In Maricopa County, there are more individuals – over 540,000 – who primarily speak Spanish than in all but six other counties in the nation, yet Arpaio’s office routinely singled out non-English speakers to target. They even once employed a police operation at a local McDonald’s because they received a letter claiming that one of the workers didn’t speak English. Such racially-motivated targeting has been so commonplace under Arpaio that the Justice Department warned they will “not hesitate to file suit, if necessary,” to end such practices.

Unfortunately, Arpaio will likely continue to dismiss these serious charges – he claimed that it was actually he whose civil rights had been violated by the Justice Department by “calling him every kind of name” – under the cover of defenders like Poe.

Last week, news broke that conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman received tens of thousands of dollars worth of free legal services from a law firm defending him against charges that he ran a deceptive campaign ad in violation of state ethics law. Wisconsin judicial ethics laws prohibits judges from receiving gifts of any kind from someone who is likely to appear before them.

Nevertheless, Gableman did not simply accept these services from a law firm that frequently appears before his court, he cast the key vote in two cases argued by that law firm — including the single most contentious case heard by the state supreme court this year:

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in two cases cast the deciding vote in favor of parties represented by a law firm that gave him tens of thousands of dollars of free legal services, a review of state records shows.

One of those was a high-stakes case this June that allowed Gov. Scott Walker to implement a law that all but eliminates collective bargaining for most public workers. Gableman was in the 4-3 majority that allowed Walker to prevail. Michael Best & Friedrich – the firm that defended Gableman for free in an ethics case – worked for the state and Walker’s administration in the collective bargaining case. [...]

Since the firm started representing Gableman in the ethics case in July 2008, Gableman has participated in nine cases in which the court voted on substantive issues involving Michael Best clients. Gableman ruled in those clients’ favor in five of those cases – more than any other justice.

Gableman joined the state supreme court in 2008 after corporate lobbyists and other right-wing groups spent $1.3 million to elect him to his current job. Wisconsin voters are far from powerless against Gableman’s casual approach to judicial ethics, however. Because Gableman has served more than a year of his current term in elected office, Wisconsin election law allows him to be recalled.

Late last week, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced a bill to restore voting rights for citizens convicted of a felony after they complete their sentence.

Currently, four states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia — permanently disenfranchise any resident convicted of a felony, even after he or she has been released from prison. Another seven states — Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming — permanently disenfranchise people convicted of certain felonies.

If passed, the Democracy Restoration Act would restore voting rights to felons who have finished serving their sentence. Cardin explained the rationale for his bill in a press release Friday:

If we truly want to break the cycle of recidivism, we need to reintegrate former prisoners back into society. When prisoners are released, they are expected to obey the law, get a job, and pay taxes as they are rehabilitated and reintegrated into their community. With these responsibilities and obligations of citizenship should also come the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote.

Felon disenfranchisement is an issue that disproportionately affects African Americans. Of the more than two million Americans barred from voting despite finishing their felony sentence, the ACLU notes that 1.4 million – 70 percent – are black. This is acutely true in states like Virginia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama, where African Americans make up a substantial portion of the voting electorate, yet their power is diminished by state disenfranchisement laws.

Cardin’s bill, which has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, is co-sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

Last week the Justice Department announced the findings of its three year investigation into notorious Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluding that he was guilty of systematic civil rights violations against Latinos. In a searing rebuke, DOJ said Arpaio had relied upon racial profiling and discrimination in his obsessive campaign against undocumented immigrants.

Arpaio was quick to respond that the DOJ probe (which began under the Bush administration) was politically motivated. The man who made his name parading prisoners around in pink underwear and cramming them into inhumane outdoor “tent cities” complained that his own civil rights had been violated because DOJ called him names:

At the same time, the sheriff rejected as false all of the allegations concerning systemic civil-rights violations. He acknowledged isolated incidents of misconduct by deputies or detention officers, but he said those occurred during arrests of 7,000 suspected illegal immigrants and jail contact with 40,000 others.

“You’re bound, with 50,000, to get a few complaints,” Arpaio said.

Likewise, the sheriff denied unlawfully targeting critics for arrest during political protests. “We don’t go after anybody,” he said. “Actually, they go after me. They’re demonstrating in front of my building, calling me every kind of name. If you want to talk about civil-rights violations, what about that?“

Arpaio stalled the investigation for 17 months by refusing to turn over records to federal investigators, forcing officials to file an unprecedented lawsuit against him for breaking the law by not cooperating. And the man who relishes brutally enforcing the law is still acting as if it does not apply to him.

Defiant as ever, Arpaio is pledging to resist the Justice Department’s order that he reach an agreement to reform internal affairs and training and submit to independent monitoring. He said Friday that he will not agree to be “controlled by some federal monitor or something.”

(HT: Adam Serwer at Mother Jones)

Yesterday, two new polls showed Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) emerging as the latest frontrunner in the Iowa GOP presidential caucus. Should the GOP primary electorate ultimately choose Paul as their nominee, however, it would be the clearest possible sign that they want to remake this country into a much meaner and more cruelly indifferent nation than the one nearly all Americans grew up in. Rep. Paul does not simply want to repeal most of the 20th Century, he believes that nearly everything America does is unconstitutional. ThinkProgress compiled video of just a few of Paul’s many claims that basic laws and essential programs violate the Constitution. A short list includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Reserve, income taxes, and even the dollar bill.

To see the new Iowa GOP frontrunner claim that all of these things violate the Constitution — and to learn which seven cabinet departments he also believes are unconstitutional — watch our video here: