Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

A federal report released Thursday finds that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., an advocate for controversial immigration enforcement and detention measures, has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations.”

The Associated Press reports:

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.

The AP adds that federal authorities will continue to investigate, among other complaints, “a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to” Arpaio’s office “but weren’t followed up on or investigated at all.”

In a press release issued Thursday, the Department of Justice states that the ongoing civil rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office found “reasonable cause to believe that MCSO, under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law.”

The department found

a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including:

• Discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos;
• Unlawful retaliation against individuals exercising their First Amendment right to criticize MCSO’s policies or practices, including but not limited to practices relating to its discriminatory treatment of Latinos; and
• Discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services.

Arpaio has said he trains his deputies with federal immigration officials, has the largest group of cross-certified law enforcement men and women (160 of them) and proudly talks about his “tent city,” where about 2,000 detainees live “in Korean War tents” and “sleep in bunk beds, 20 to a tent.”

Asked what he would do if the Supreme Court decides to strike down Arizona’s immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070, Arapio said on CNN this week:

It doesn’t change anything. I do like certain parts of that new law, but I’ll tell you one thing, we’ve been doing it under two other state laws. We have two other state laws, one is the employer sanction that the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. So, it’s not going to change anything I’m doing, regardless of what that decision is.

Arapaio endorsed GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry in late November, saying Perry “has done more to combat illegal immigration and secure the border than any other candidate in the Republican presidential field.”

CARROLL — As he surged to the top of two national polls Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spent nearly three hours at the Santa Maria Winery in Carroll on Monday, speaking with voters, taking questions, signing books and screening a movie he co-developed celebrating Pope John Paul II.

Gingrich also conducted a 10-minute interview with The Carroll Daily Times Herald and La Prensa, an Iowa Spanish-language newspaper, before going on air nationally with Fox News’ Sean Hannity from a makeshift, temporary studio on the west side of the winery.

It was Gingrich’s second visit to Carroll in the campaign cycle, and momentum had turned decidedly in his favor in the hours before he addressed nearly 200 people at John and Rose Guinan’s local winery.

Public Policy Polling on Monday showed Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, with 28 percent support in national GOP primary surveying. Businessman Herman Cain was in second at 25 percent with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney garnering 18 percent, according to the polling firm.

Another national poll of Republican voters released Monday — this one from CNN — had Romney at 24 percent, Gingrich at 22 percent and Cain at 14 percent in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

“This is a year when substance and solutions matter,” Gingrich said. “I think like the conversation tonight, I don’t give them slogans. I don’t try to make them feel better with things that are patently untrue. And I think people are really looking for a leader who will work with them to develop real solutions.”

Newt Gingrich met with GOP caucusgoers at Santa Maria Winery in Carroll.

At one point in the local interview Gingrich described himself as follows: “I’m a genuine, intellectual conservative.”

That considered, Gingrich said the series of nationally televised Republican presidential debates has helped his campaign, resurrected it really, because voters can assess him directly.

“Frankly, without the debates my campaign would have been dead because the news media wouldn’t have covered it, and I couldn’t have raised the kind of money that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry could raise,” Gingrich said.

One of the former House speaker’s major strengths is now coming to the fore with voters, he said.

“I’m the only national candidate running,” Gingrich said. “I’ve led a national movement to win control of the House.”

Gingrich noted that he played a key role with welfare reform and federal budget work in the 1990s.

“None of the other candidates have that type of background,” Gingrich said. “I think gradually it began to sink in to people.”

The Public Policy Polling group’s survey clearly shows that Gingrich’s momentum draws heavily on Republicans who have abandoned Cain, a former Godfather’s CEO who faces allegations of sexual harassment and has stumbled on foreign-policy questions in recent days.

In one instance, Cain clearly did not know that China has nuclear capabilities. The Daily Times Herald asked Gingrich if Cain’s lack of knowledge about a world superpower on a life-and-death military issue should be disqualifying for White House service.

“I think voters have to decide that,” Gingrich said. “It’s not my job to decide it. Different people have different strengths. Herman Cain is a very attractive and very articulate businessperson who has a very impressive background in business. He doesn’t have a background in government. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses.”

La Prensa asked Gingrich’s reaction to an often-repeated line from Cain about constructing a border fence with Mexico so that it can electrocute immigrants, and possibly even snare them in an associated moat stocked with alligators.

“It was a bad idea,” Gingrich said.

He added, “I hope he was joking. I’d like to think he was joking.”

Gingrich then turned to his own immigration plans, calling for control of the border in a way that is “human and practical.”

“I’m working on an immigration program which is firm but at the same time has a human aspect to it that I think most Hispanic Americans would appreciate,” Gingrich said.

Earlier, in a question-and-answer session with voters in the winery, Gingrich said he wanted to impose severe penalties for employers who hired undocumented workers. Moreover, he put forward a plan modeled on the Selective Service System used by the military in World War II in which local committees of citizens could help determine the immigration status of a city’s illegal residents based on factors like how long they’ve lived in the area, family roots and contributions socially and in business.

Gingrich said rhetoric about deporting all illegal immigrants isn’t realistic.

“I think it’s very unlikely the American people are going to break up families,” Gingrich said.

In other remarks to the audience, Gingrich said he is “deeply opposed to raising taxes” in a recession. He said opening up offshore drilling in the United States is a way to boost revenue through royalties. Gingrich also had strong comments on education, saying schools too often seek to provide students with unearned self-esteem and academic diplomas or degrees.

“None of the Founding Fathers would think that made any sense because it’s fundamentally a lie,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich, a former history professor at West Georgia College, reminded the audience that President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for Americans to pray on the radio during the hours after D-Day and at other points in World War II.

A president today would be challenged if he took such measures, Gingrich said.

“We’d probably have an ACLU lawsuit against the president,” Gingrich said.

In the interview with The Daily Times Herald Gingrich said he wants to take federal money away from Planned Parenthood and funnel it into an adoption-promotion program.

“I come out of a background where my father was adopted and I was adopted,” Gingrich said. “We have a very deep sense that this culture has made it all too easy to end a life than to find a way to encourage a life.”

Much of the crowd at the winery stayed after Gingrich’s remarks to watch the movie “Nine Days That Changed the World” about Pope John Paul II’s historic nine-day pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 created a revolution of conscience that transformed Poland and fundamentally reshaped the spiritual and political landscape of the 20th Century.

Gingrich and his wife, Callista, a former congressional staffer and graduate of Luther College in Decorah, along with a Polish, American, and Italian cast, explore what transpired during these nine days that moved the Polish people to renew their hearts, reclaim their courage, and free themselves from the shackles of Communism. The film was produced in partnership with Citizens United Productions.

“Now in making this appearance, I should point out that I am taking into consideration a very profound belief, that I have expressed publicly on many occasions, in the vital necessity for the confidentiality of presidential communications,” Nixon said in an opening statement. “It seems to me today that when we pick up the papers, and particularly in recent weeks, and read of former presidents, President Kennedy, for example, President Johnson, even President Eisenhower, being accused of approving or participating in discussions in which there was approval of assassination of other people is very much not in the national interest, and probably it is, of course, not true.”

There were no drones back then targeting untried suspected enemies of the U.S., but there were approved assassination attempts, as Nixon well knew.

Nixon expands on the need for secrecy:

“Nevertheless it makes the point very strongly that I am going to make right now, and that is that in the Office of the Presidency of the United States, the nation, which is, not by choice, but by the destiny of history, the most powerful in the free world and the only guarantee of peace and freedom in the world, it is necessary for the president to have no- holds-barred conversations with his advisers.

It is necessary for his advisers to believe that they can give him their unvarnished opinions without regard and without fear of the possibility that those opinions are going to be spread in the public print. It is necessary for them to feel, in other words, that they are talking to the President and that they are not going to the press and that is the reason why confidentiality, which I know, not perhaps you gentlemen, but some of the members of your staff, and certainly some of the members of the House and Senate, and most of the members of the press think is not important. That is why it is important and, in my opinion, absolutely vital. That is the reason why I have resisted in the courts, unsuccessfully up to this point, attempts to impinge upon the privileged status of such conversations.”

The transcripts are available for Scribd perusing or download here.

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Likely Republican caucusgoers sent a strong message to GOP presidential candidates in an Iowa AARP survey released Thursday, showing they’re strongly opposed to cuts to Social Security and Medicare and would much rather reduce military spending to address the federal deficit.

That message could be made stronger by the fact that more than 20 percent of those surveyed are still unsure who they’ll support in the Jan. 3 presidential contest, the survey found.

The survey of 400 likely Republican caucusgoers by GS Strategy Group shows 64.5 percent are opposed to Social Security cuts, and 67.3 percent to Medicare cuts. Another 86 percent of those surveyed said Social Security benefits are important to their monthly income, and 87 percent said Medicare is essential to seniors’ health care security.

Those surveyed would much prefer withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan to cutting Medicare (67.3 percent to 9.5 percent) or Social Security (65 percent to 8.8 percent).

Of those surveyed, 76.8 percent identified themselves as conservative and 50.5 percent as very conservative.

“Opposition to these benefit cuts among Republicans across the ideological spectrum confirms what AARP has been hearing from Iowans throughout our campaign to protect Social Security and Medicare:  Whether Republican, Democrat, Independent or Tea Party supporter, voters overwhelmingly oppose cuts to these programs,” said AARP Iowa State President Tony Vola.

Businessman Herman Cain led all GOP presidential candidates in the survey, with support at 25 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had 21.5 percent support, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had 8.3 percent.

But more than 22.8 percent of those surveyed were still undecided, suggesting the race for the Republican nomination is still wide open, at least in the Hawkeye State.

The margin of error for the survey, conducted Oct. 17 and 18, is 4.9 percent.

Choose Liberty will take place in Orlando on Nov. 12 as part of a series of events organized by conservatives to “start our march towards November 2012 and taking our country back from the hands of the progressives.”

Joe Arpaio states on his website, “I have asked my deputies to train with the federal government so they may help in the fight against the illegal immigration. Today, I am proud to say I have the largest contingency of cross certified law enforcement men and women (160 of them) who are out patrolling in an intensified effort to bring illegal immigrants to justice.”

He adds:

An illegal immigrant breaks the law – local police bring them to jail and charge them with the crimes they committed on the streets. My detention officers take things a step further. They are now trained to follow up with each of those arrested and, if the arrestee is found to be in the country illegally, my officers charge him/her with that crime as well.

Arapaio, who created “Tent City,” writes:

Today, there are about 2000 men and women living in Korean War tents that we received for free from the U.S. military. Inmates sleep in bunk beds, twenty to a tent. They have full access to showers and port-a-johns.

We supply fans and ice water in the summer because temperatures inside the tents can reach as high as 140 degrees. In the winter, when it’s cold, inmates are issued an extra blanket.

A 2009 Time magazine article points out that Arpaio — who this week called on President Obama to release his birth certificate microfiche — “has faced numerous complaints from Amnesty International, the ACLU and other rights groups. His office is being investigated by the Justice Department for alleged discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

Americans for Prosperity, which helped organize Choose Liberty, “is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state, and federal levels.” The group has received millions of dollars from the controversial Koch brothers.

According to Florida Political Press, founded by Florida tea party activists, “the left is planning to keep us in bondage with increasing debt, excessive spending and tougher regulations on individuals and companies.”

“I certainly support the need to prevent certain sensitive, personal, classified, or law enforcement information from being disclosed under FOIA,” Udall wrote in his letter. “But I also believe it is extremely important that we do not attempt to protect our citizens by lying to them.”

Under the new regulation, government officials could simply tell citizens that the records they’re looking for don’t exist, when in fact the records do exist. A “no record” response, writes Udall, is very likely to head off any further inquiry. Yet all parties would know that the “no records” response could well be a lie. The regulation would erode trust and rightly lead to legal action on the part of skeptical investigators of all stripes.

Udall suggests an alternative approach drafted by government watchdog and civil liberties groups– the ACLU, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Open The Government– where government agencies could instead simply inform requestors that the documents they seek, if they exist, “are not subject to the disclosure requirements established by the Freedom of Information Act.”

Such an approach would be effective as well as “truthful and informative,” writes Udall.

Concerns expressed among the public, media and watchdog organizations prompted the justice department to keep the comments period on the proposed regulation open longer than planned. That period closed last week. Udall’s letter is a personal response aimed to throw additional weight behind calls to rethink the new regulation.

The history behind the debate is one of tug of war between the right to information and the need to protect government sources and secret investigations. It’s also a history of the battle to ensure that checks and balances between branches of government can operate effectively.

Criminal organizations, for example, have worked the FOIA system for years. They submit information requests and, based on the varied responses of the government agencies, try to uncover the identity of informants. A “No records exist” kind of response regarding, say, a “Johnny Fingers” would mean Fingers was no snitch. A “Will not confirm or deny” kind of response regarding, say, a “Leftie Knuckles” would suggest Knuckles couldn’t be trusted.

Yet, in the post-9/11 era, government agencies have become increasingly brash in denying information to all sorts of requestors– including those with no intention of whacking informants– and in flatly lying to requestors and to judges tasked with reviewing paper trails meant to detail the reason for request denials.

In a case heard this past spring titled Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, et al. v. FBI, the FBI lied to the plaintiffs about the existence of documents and then lied to the district court judge as well. When the fact came out that the documents did exist, it was clear that judicial review of national security document hoarding had been seriously eroded.

As the judge in the case put it, the information the FBI delivered to the court was “blatantly false.” It was a fundamental breech in accountability laws, he said.

“The Government’s… submission raised a very disturbing issue,” the district judge wrote in the Islamic Shura case. “The Government asserts that it had to mislead the Court regarding the Government‟s response to Plaintiff’s FOIA request to avoid compromising national security. The Government’s argument is untenable. The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court. The United States Constitution entrusts the Judiciary with the power to determine compliance with the law. It is impossible for the court to determine compliance with the law and to protect the public from Government misconduct if the Government misleads the Court. The Court simply cannot perform its constitutional function if the Government does not tell the truth.”

If 16.6 is accepted the way it stands, the kind of legal breech on display in Islamic Shura would be written into standard procedures.

Below view Udall’s letter to Attorney General Holder and a fairly comprehensive brief on the matter filed to the Department of Justice by the ACLU.

Letter to Attorney General Holder on the Freedom of Information Act

FOIAACLUbrief

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The Miami Herald reports that, ”since 2009, more than 4,000 space jobs have been lost in the Cape Canaveral area as NASA closed out the space shuttle program.”

Enterprise Florida — a private-public partnership that supports Florida businesses — explains that “Florida ranks 2nd among states for aviation, aerospace, and space establishments, with nearly 2,000 aviation and aerospace companies employing some 83,800 workers.” According to Enterprise, this includes almost every major defense contractor, the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, and many U.S. military installations.

Accoridng to Space Florida, the state’s aerospace development organization, its partnership with Boeing will modernize Kennedy Space Center facilities to “provide efficient production and testing operations that optimize the company’s best practices from satellite manufacturing, space launch vehicles and commercial airplane production programs.”

The release from the governor’s office adds that Boeing will partner with, “NASA, Space Florida, Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast, Enterprise Florida, the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners and Brevard Workforce.”

For three decades, the libertarian-leaning Texan has preached limited government, a smaller role not only domestically in the form of lower taxes but also abroad, with a less adventurous foreign policy.

“Right now your biggest threat comes from your own government,” Paul said.

More than 100 people turned out Saturday morning in Carroll to hear Paul speak at Santa Maria Winery. Paul delivered opening remarks and then turned the event into a town-hall-style meeting, fielding audience questions.

Paul finished third at 12 percent behind businessman Herman Cain (23 percent) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (22 percent) in a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucus-goers released Sunday.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul reiterated his fiscal message in Carroll Saturday and made clear that he would only seek the White House a member of the GOP. (Photo: Douglas Burns) 

On Saturday, Paul, a former Libertarian Party White House candidate, said he’s in a strong position as a Republican in the 2012 field and dismissed any speculation of a third-party candidacy.

“I have no intentions of running in a third party,” Paul said.

In his remarks Paul said that government reaction to crisis should to be pull back, grow smaller and allow free will and the marketplace to work.

“With each crisis it seems like the government grows,” Paul said.

He added, “It just has led to all this debt and all these problems we’ve had.”

Paul called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the United States has been involved in Afghanistan twice as long as the duration of World War II. The two wars are costing the United States $4 billion a month, he said.

Removal of troops would not only correct an entry into the conflicts on what Paul called “false pretense,” but also spur the American economy.

America’s largest defense concern now should be the nation’s economy, the Texan said.

“If we’re in the wrong places at the wrong time, it doesn’t serve our defense,” Paul said.

Paul also calls for cuts in military spending.

“How many weapons do we need?” he said. “Who is going to invade us?”

Paul said his foreign policy positioning should not be interpreted as isolationism. He would use diplomacy, not force, to advance U.S. interests.

“Using force doesn’t work and it’s very costly,” Paul said.

And Paul said he would be consistent.

“We were on the side of bin Laden,” he said. “We were on the side of Saddam Hussein.”

One audience member questioned Paul about farm subsidies. Paul noted that he has represented farming areas of Texas but opposes subsidies.

“I’ve not supported farm subsidies,” Paul said. “I think it distorts the marketplace.”

He added, “Subsidies tend to make people soft.”

Paul said Americans demonstrating now, either in the tea party movements or Occupy Wall Street groups, appear to break into two categories: people who are scared they won’t get their government handouts and those who are tired of paying for big government.

Paul said he is firmly in the latter category.

“To me, liberty is one clear package,” Paul said.

The Corrections Corporation of America (commonly known as CCA), the largest private immigration detention contractor in the country, is partnering with Southwest Ranches. According to Detention Watch Network, CCA “operates a total of 14 [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]-contracted facilities with a total of 14,556 beds. In 2009, CCA averaged a daily population of 6,199 detained immigrants.”

In a press release issued today, residents

who oppose the ICE Immigrant Prison in Southwest Ranches are attending tonight’s Town Council Meeting at 7pm. We are sick of the lack of transparency, stonewalling, and ramrodding occurring at Town Hall. We call on Mayor Jeff Nelson to STEP Down and the Town Attorney Keith Poliakoff to resign as well. We believe they have been complicit in a web of deception and smoke-filled room back door deals all the while imposing a “cone of silence” on the residents. We are disgusted with the current administration of the town and want to see a regime change. How can we continue to trust these people with guiding our Town and to be a beacon to protect our rural lifestyle when they are clearly selling us out?

Opponents of the detention center have also launched a petition that states, “I oppose any involvement in, or support of the construction of a new private 2000 bed immigrant detention facility.” The petition is directed to local elected officials as well as Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart.

According to the current convention agenda, speakers will include Gov. Rick Scott, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, anti-Islam blogger Pam Geller and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Attorney General Pat Bondi was mulling over an appearance, but her name does not appear on the updated convention agenda. In September, Scott’s office told the Independent his appearance had not been confirmed.

The convention will also feature G. Edward Griffin, an anti-Federal Reserve, anti-United Nations and anti-communist conspiracy theorist who describes himself as a “life member” of the John Birch Society — a historically infamous anti-communist group.

Anti-Islam blogger Pam Geller is also on the agenda for next week. Geller is best known for her blog Atlas Shrugs, described by The New York Times as a “site that attacks Islam with a rhetoric venomous enough that PayPal at one point branded it a hate site.” According to the Times, Geller “has called for the removal of the Dome of the Rock from atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; posted doctored pictures of Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice, in a Nazi helmet; suggested the State Department was run by ‘Islamic supremacists’; and referred to health care reform as an act of national rape.”

Geller is well known in certain Florida political circles, because she — along with a small group of advocates in Florida, including a U.S. Senate candidate — fought to keep Rifqa Bary in Florida during the very public legal dispute involving her parents.

The convention will also feature two discussions on Agenda 21, a U.N. sustainable development initiative that some on the right believe is a plot by the United Nations to damage our sovereignty and individual property rights. The belief has seeped into mainstream politics. Florida GOP Senate candidates, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and Scott have each touted the theory.

The Tea Party Convention will take place at the Volusia County Ocean Center Nov. 4-6. According to the convention’s website, sponsors of the event include Freedom Works, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Craig Miller’s U.S. Senate Campaign and the Oath Keepers.