Earlier today, the Department of Justice filed a formal legal complaint against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) alleging widespread constitutional violations and lawless mistreatment of Latinos. According to the complaint, Arpaio and his staff engaged in widespread, violent and demeaning mistreatment of Latino residents of Maricopa County, often targeting individuals solely because of their race:

1. Forcing Women To Sleep In Their Own Menstrual Blood: In Arpaio’s jails, “female Latina LEP prisoners have been denied basic sanitary items. In some instances, female Latina LEP prisoners have been forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation because of MCSO’s failure to ensure that detention officers provide language assistance in such circumstances.”
2. Assaulting Pregnant Women: “[A]n MCSO officer stopped a Latina woman – a citizen of the United States and five months pregnant at the time – as she pulled into her driveway. After she exited her car, the officer then insisted that she sit on the hood of the car. When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times. He then dragged her to the patrol car and shoved her into the backseat. He left her in the patrol car for approximately 30 minutes without air conditioning. The MCSO officer ultimately issued a citation for failure to provide identification.”
3. Stalking Latina Women: “In another instance, during a crime suppression operation, two MCSO officers followed a Latina woman, a citizen of the United States, for a quarter of a mile to her home. The officers did not turn on their emergency lights, but insisted that the woman remain in her car when she attempted to exit the car and enter her home. The officers’ stated reasons for approaching the woman was a non-functioning license plate light. When the woman attempted to enter her home, the officers used force to take her to the ground, kneed her in the back, and handcuffed her. The woman was then taken to an MCSO substation, cited for ‘disorderly conduct,’ and returned home. The disorderly conduct citation was subsequently dismissed.”
4. Criminalizing Being A Latino: “During raids, [Arpaio's Criminal Enforcement Squad] typically seizes all Latinos present, whether they are listed on the warrant or not. For example, in one raid CES had a search warrant for 67 people, yet 109 people were detained. Fifty-nine people were arrested and 50 held for several hours before they were released. Those detained, but not on the warrant, were seized because they were Latino and present at the time of the raid. No legal justification existed for their detention.”
5. Criminalizing Living Next To The Wrong People: “[D]uring a raid of a house suspected of containing human smugglers and their victims . . . officers went to an adjacent house, which was occupied by a Latino family. The officers entered the adjacent house and searched it, without a warrant and without the residents’ knowing consent. Although they found no evidence of criminal activity, after the search was over, the officers zip-tied the residents, a Latino man, a legal permanent resident of the United States, and his 12-year-old Latino son, a citizen of the United States, and required them to sit on the sidewalk for more than one hour, along with approximately 10 persons who had been seized from the target house, before being released.”
6. Ignoring Rape: Because of Arpaio’s obsessive focus on “low-level immigration offenses” his officers failed “to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of girls.”
7. Widespread Use Of Racial Slurs: “MCSO personnel responsible for prisoners held in MCSO jails routinely direct racial slurs toward Latino prisoners, including calling Latino prisoners ‘paisas,’ ‘wetbacks,’ ‘Mexican bitches,’ ‘fucking Mexicans,’ and ‘stupid Mexicans.’”
8. Widespread Racial Profiling: “[I]n the southwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are almost four times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . In the northwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are over seven times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . Most strikingly, in the northeast portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are nearly nine times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct.”
9. Random, Unlawful Detention Of Latinos: “MCSO officers stopped a car carrying four Latino men, although the car was not violating any traffic laws. The MCSO officers ordered the men out of the car, zip-tied them, and made them sit on the curb for an hour before releasing all of them. The only reason given for the stop was that the men’s car ‘was a little low,’ which is not a criminal or traffic violation.”
10. Group Punishments For Latinos: “In some instances, when a Latino [Low English Proficiency] prisoner has been unable to understand commands given in English, MCSO detention officers have put an entire area of the jail in lockdown—effectively preventing all the prisoners in that area from accessing a number of privileges because of the Latino LEP prisoner’s inability to understand English, inciting hostility toward the LEP prisoner, and potentially placing MCSO officers and other prisoners in harm’s way.”

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the Georgia lawmaker who once described the Civil War as the “Great War of Yankee Aggression,” offered an amendment to a spending bill at 10pm last night that would have stripped the Department of Justice of its ability to enforce Second Five of the Voting Rights Act. Section Five requires certain areas with a history of race discrimination to “pre-clear” its voting policies with DOJ or a federal court in order to ensure that those laws do not target minority voters, and it was the basis for a few recent DOJ decisions to block voter ID laws.

Fortunately, it soon became clear that Broun’s attack on voting rights lacked support after Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a hero of the Civil Rights Movement who still bears visible scars from when he was beaten by Alabama state troopers for marching in favor of voting rights, reminded the gathered lawmakers why we have a Voting Rights Act:

It is hard, and difficult, and almost unbelievable that any Member — but especially a Member from the state of Georgia — would come and offer such amendment. There’s a long history in our country, especially in the 11 states that are old Confederacy — from Virginia to Texas — of discrimination based on race, on color. Maybe some of us need to study a little contemporary history dealing with the question of voting rights.

Just think, before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was almost impossible for many people in the state of Georgia, in the state of Alabama, in Virginia, in Texas, to register to vote, to participate in the democratic process. The state of Mississippi, for example, had a black voting age population of more than 450,000, and only about 16,000 were registered to vote. One county in Alabama, the country was more than 80 percent [black], and not a single registered African-American voter. People had to pass a so-called literacy test. . . . one man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. Another man was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar.

It’s shameful that you would come here tonight and say to the Department of Justice that you must not use one penny, one cent, one dime, one dollar, to carry out the mandate of Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. . . . . People died for the right to vote. Friends of mine. Colleagues of mine. I speak out against this amendment. It doesn’t have a place.

Watch it:

Broun withdrew the amendment after Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Dan Lungren (R-CA) also chastised him for trying to sneak it into a late-night vote, rather than using the normal committee hearing process.

During New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first year in office, the New York Police Department stopped and interrogated 97,296 people on the streets. By 2007, with the Bloomberg administration pushing the a stop-and-frisk strategy, police made more than a half a million stops. Last year, the figure rose to a record 685,724 people. And according to a New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) report, the vast majorities of stops — about 87 percent — were of blacks and Latinos. Despite robust defenses of the tactics, they appear to be less effective than the Bloomberg administration and NYPD claim.

Most troubling, the NYCLU report seemed to bear out charges of racial profiling in stop-and-frisk situations. In precincts where blacks and Latinos are least represented among the population (14 percent or less), blacks and Latinos were nonetheless the target of 70 percent of stops. Perhaps most staggeringly, the the Wall Street Journal highlighted that the number of stops of black men between the ages of 14 and 24 (168,126 ) exceeded the total city population of black men in that age range (158,406).

Along with the wildly disproportionate stops, blacks and Latinos were more likely to get frisked. Yet they yielded a smaller percentage of weapons than whites. The NYCLU produced these charts demonstrating the disparities:

On Bloomberg’s weekly radio show last month, Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the stop-and-frisk strategy, whose increased application they credit with a 50 percent drop in the city’s murder rate, but it’s not at all clear how this strategy produced such an outcome. Comparing 2003 and 2011, stops increased by more than half a million while only 172 more guns were found. That’s a jump of finding one gun for every 266 stops versus one gun per every 3,000 stops.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) talked a big talk when he was preparing to take over as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2010. He promised “hundreds of hearings” intended to “measure failures” by the federal government under President Obama. His office was inundated with resumes from conservative lawyers looking to make a name for themselves as Obama killers. Issa even changed his Twitter avatar into a braggadocious image of himself as a stick-figure policeman sternly keeping watch over the Capitol.

A year and a half later, all those eager young lawyers who took jobs under Issa might be reconsidering their career choice. As Oversight Chair, Issa’s proved far more adept at booking himself on Fox News than he has at actually uncovering real scandals. He’s used his media celebrity status to tout bizarre conspiracy theories, such as a claim that a series of botched law enforcement operations begun under the Bush Administration were actually secret Obama plot to undermine the Second Amendment. His highest profile hearing to date was an all-male panel on contraception that did far more to embarrass conservatives than it did to provide government oversight. Issa’s compared himself to Martin Luther King, Jr. in response to criticism of how he wields his gavel. And he turned oversight of one of the few legitimate scandals his Committee has focused upon — the botched “gun running” operations along the Mexican border that rightfully led to several Justice Department officials losing their jobs or being demoted — into a baseless campaign to pin blame for these operations on Attorney General Eric Holder.

Indeed, Issa’s overreach has become so apparent that even the House leadership appears to be losing faith in his judgment:

Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California have decided to slow Rep. Darrell Issa’s drive to hold the attorney general in contempt over the controversial Fast and Furious program, a move that could infuriate conservatives who have been calling for Holder’s resignation.

The delay could be a month or even longer, according to lawmakers and aides familiar with the issue.

Some within House GOP leadership circles would like Issa to abandon his plan for a committee and floor vote, which was sparked by a 64-page memo last week, which laid out the case for contempt.

This is not the first time Issa’s self-promoting approach to his job sparked tension between himself and other top House Republicans. Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) publicly disagreed with Issa’s hostile approach to an agreement between the Obama Administration and the auto industry over emissions standards. And Issa “ruffled the feathers” of fellow committee chair John Mica (R-FL) after Issa appeared to push Mica out of the spotlight once a scandal involving the General Services Administration started to receive media attention.

Nevertheless, the most recent disagreement over whether to move forward with Issa’s anti-Holder crusade appears to be the first time the House’s most senior leaders publicly made their disagreement with Issa known, and that alone is significant. When even Eric Cantor thinks you are overreaching, it’s a good sign that you might need to dial it back a few notches.