Roy Exum
I make no secret of the fact I am a huge admirer of Joe Arpaio, the so-called “Toughest Sheriff in America.” Now 79 years old, the no-nonsense but often comical lawman has captured America’s heart with his iron-fisted stance on just about any issue and he has been famously elected as sheriff of Maricopa County (Phoenix, Ariz.) five straight times.
“Sheriff Joe” makes inmates wear pink underwear, sleep in sweaty outdoor tents and says regularly, “If you don’t like it in my jail, don’t come back.” He serves two meals a day, doesn’t allow R-rated movies and has chain gangs.
But his tough immigration stance – and that of the state – has run afoul of the so-called federal agenda and for him to bash heads with the Obama administration is now common. Suffice it to say “Sheriff Joe” doesn’t lose sleep over it.
Despised by the liberals and debunked by the political pundits, it wasn’t surprising to notice Sheriff Joe’s press conference held in Phoenix last Thursday barely tweaked the national media’s attention but it was sure more fun to watch Sheriff Joe claim the President’s birth certificate is believed to be a hoax than to watch yesterday’s stumbling stumping of the “Super Tuesday” stooges who only wish they were king.
In case you missed it, Sheriff Joe – who is still being investigated by the Justice Department – announced his all-volunteer “cold case posse” had unearthed probable cause to call the birth certificate President Obama finally released last April a computer-generated fraud. “I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” he stood and said.
Of course, the so-called “birthers” have long held the theory that Barack Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, as he has claimed, and is thus ineligible to be the President of the United States. But when a birth certificate was finally surrendered by the Obama Administration just 11 months ago, it seemed to quell the rage until last week when Sheriff Joe – the pariah of any illegal alien – said the President’s Social Security card also appeared to be a fake.
Arpaio’s critics were quick to roar, saying Sheriff Joe is actually running for a sixth term and his method of getting people stirred up to take their attention away from his alleged short-comings, such as the civil rights investigation and a lack of attention to sex crimes by his department, is obvious. The sheriff roared right back, saying, “I’m not after the President, I’m only doing my job.”
Arpaio said he was acting after getting a formal complaint from the Tea Party movement and said he felt there were enough “anomalies” in the documents a Congressional criminal investigation should take place. “If nothing else comes out of the investigation … what we have learned, we need a better process to vet people running for President of the United States of America," he explained.
Sheriff Joe and his lead investigator, Mike Zullo, said several times they weren’t actually accusing President Obama of being part of any impropriety or conspiracy but the Sheriff did say, “Mr. President, please come up with some other information … and then everybody will go away.” Since the press conference, an e-book has appeared on Amazon.com entitled, “A Question of Eligibility” and it is co-authored by Jerome Corsi, said to be a well-known political conspiracy writer, and Zullo, the lead investigator of Sheriff Joe’s cold-case posse. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama re-election campaign, laughed off the probe and reportedly tweeted a clip from the TV show, “The X Files.”
Regardless how you feel about the Arpaio-Obama feud, you have to admit it is more exciting than the so-called “Super Tuesday” that was anything but. Too many Americans have died in the name of freedom for anyone to ever miss a chance to vote, no matter how weak or meaningless the ballot, but as one voter said while offering his photo ID on Tuesday, “Why am I really here?”
I am thinking Barack Obama or Joe Arpaio might have an acceptable answer but after watching the best of the Republican presidential candidates insult one another, it is certainly more fun to watch the show in the Phoenix desert than the boredom of the local voting booth.
royexum@aol.com