Curiously, the meeting was not listed on the vice president’s schedule. But Arpaio told the Phoenix Business Journal that he’d said to Biden in their meeting that he needs more deputies and resources for his law enforcement unit.

Arpaio’s law enforcement actions, however, have not always gone over well with the Obama administration. The Arizona sheriff is under official investigation for civil rights violations, and just recently, the Department of Homeland Security revoked some of his powers to enforce federal immigration laws under the 287(g) program.

Arpaio has insisted that he has all the powers he needs to arrest illegal immigrants anyway, and vowed not to let up on his much-publicized efforts to crack down on them.

Elliot Madison, who counsels seriously mentally ill patients, first came under suspicion when, at the G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh in September, he was arrested for allegedly listening to a police scanner and then sending out the information on Twitter to help protesters avoid the heavily armed police. Wired notes that the State Department applauded the same activity when protesters did it in Iran.

But in Madison’s case, the following week the Joint Terrorism Task Force got a warrant and raided the 41-year-old social worker’s home, where he lives with his wife and some roommates. The feds seized his computers, books, camera memory cards, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters. These were all supposedly evidence of his breaking the federal anti-rioting law. If found guilty, he could spend up to five years in prison.

Among his possessions taken were an electronic manuscript of a book he was working on. His first book, written with the “Curious George Brigade,” is called “Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs.”

Madison and his lawyer are now claiming that the search and seizure were unconstitutional.

Wired reporter Ryan Singel is decidedly sympathetic, suggesting that Madison is “yet another casualty of the government’s nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.”

The House Judiciary Committee is actually holding a hearing on a related subject this afternoon — the case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, in which one of the thousands of Muslims rounded up, treated harshly and detained in the United States just after 9/11 sued the government for wrongful imprisonment and violation of his constitutional rights. In May, the Supreme Court dismissed Iqbal’s claims.

Here’s an interesting example. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank with funding from the energy industry, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Treasury documents that suggested a cap-and-trade program would cost taxpayers more than the Obama administration claimed. Earlier today, CEI’s communications director Christine Hall needled Tapper via Twitter to report on the think tank’s findings.

“did u see the updated docs Treasury released late Friday?” wrote Hall. “~$300~ bil cap-n-tax costs, prev. redacted.”

Tapper fired back: “i wrote about it on sunday at my blog abcnews.blogs.com.”

Sure enough, Hall tweeted about the original report on Friday. Tapper wrote it up on Sunday in a story titled “A Secret Cap and Trade Tax of $1,761 Per Family?”, keying off Mitt Romney’s statement that the proposal would cost that much. In it, Tapper concluded that the figure itself was produced by sloppy math. It was “possible to see as false the assertions by Romney and other Republicans that the president has been hiding a $1,761 tax from the American people while also wondering if the Treasury Department is being as forthcoming and transparent as President Obama’s campaign promises would suggest.” He quoted CEI’s “Chris Holder” making the point. Hall tweeted to correct him: “@jaketapper – Horner. Chris Horner.”

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Specter got it all wrong that I ever used words “death boards”. Even liberal press never accused me of that. So change ur last Tweet Arlen

Here’s Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) offending tweet.

Called Senator Grassley to tell him to stop speading myths about health care reform and imaginary “death panels.”

Malkin has the No. 1 book on The New York Times bestseller hardcover nonfiction list, but I have nearly twice as many Twitter followers as she does.

Oh, snap! I guess?

Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who ran for president in 2008, got his start in politics as a lawyer for the special committee investigating Watergate, so the “enemies list” joke is pretty resonant here. He’s one of the real losers of the new campaign book “The Battle for America 2008″ by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. Short version: Thompson drove his own campaign into the ground through a combination of arrogance and laziness.

Here’s their progress as of the early afternoon.

Then:

Translation: They arrived at the Russell building.

Translation: They dropped off documents at the offices of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

Translation: Staff are being very nice in the Russell building, and Sen. Levin is in the Veteran Affairs office.

Translation: They handed over documents to staffers for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Translation: None needed.

Translation: They handed off stuff to staffers for Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Translation: ?

Next, they hit some snags:

Translation: The staff of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) was not helpful.

The saga continues at #phnm.