Arizona sheriff touts tough stance on immigration at Indiana church with an active Hispanic ministry

[BridgeTheGap]

The self-described “toughest sheriff in America” leaned into the podium and turned serious. He’d already spoken for more than an hour, and it was getting late. The question posed by an audience member was about babies born in this country to mothers who aren’t U.S. residents. Sheriff Joe Arpaio slipped out of character for a moment and said he is squarely on the fence, and that the issue is probably too big to take on because it would involve changing the Constitution. “I don’t have an answer to that one.”

It was unexpected. America’s toughest sheriff, who has built his celebrity by being nothing if not defiant, was acknowledging doubt. At the point where he would have been expected to endorse the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment, the right-wing political wedge issue du biennium, he demurred.

Soon enough he returned to his shtick, the lines you’ve already heard if you’ve read the profiles of Arpaio in The New Yorker or GQ. He seemed weary of them himself, though he knew that was what the crowd expected. How he took away the prisoners’ salt to save tax dollars; housed inmates in tents — in Arizona’s sweltering heat — and forced them to wear pink underwear; instituted the first all-female chain gang in U.S. history. A festival of punishment in which prisoners, many of whom are simply awaiting trial, have their faces rubbed in it or worse.

There were quiet rumblings about Arpaio’s visit, particularly because of the venue. The Saturday night dinner, a fundraiser for the Harrison County Republican Party, was held at St. Joseph Catholic Church, which happens to have a Hispanic ministry. But there were no protests. Inside, the crowd never got too frothy. My Corydon friend Leah Porter, who describes a certain nonchalance that personifies the town’s reaction to most things, called the response slightly gung-ho by local standards. Even a merry band of Tea Partiers, wearing red T-shirts in support of Todd Young, who is challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Baron Hill in Indiana’s 9th District, never generated much heat.

http://leoweekly.com/news/rhymes-%E2%80%98me-oh-my-oh%E2%80%99

[yellowcanine]

1. They held a political fundraiser at a church???

Somehow that would seem to violate the spirit if not the letter of the law regarding involvement of churches in partisan politics.

[classysassy]

2. The modern day Bull Connors

or that Arizona traveling sheriff spreading hate all over America,come back Sheriff Joe our brown brothers and sisters are sneaking into Arizona at a faster rate since you left to spew republican hate.