TPM rounds up the news, from the Arizona Republic and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: A deputy from Arpaio’s “threats unit” and “posse” member Michael Zullo arrived at the Hawaii Department of Health Monday demanding proof of the existence of a document we’ve all now seen a thousand times. From the Star-Advertiser:

A Hawaii deputy attorney general gave the men information concerning the legal requirements to obtain such a document; the requirements are posted on the Health Department’s website. The two men then left the office, Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.

The two men showed Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office badges and identified themselves as Michael Zullo and Brian Mackiewcz, Okubo said. They are “authorized by the Sheriff of Maricopa County, who is conducting an official investigation,” a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said in an email.

The Arizona Republic notes that in addition to having a taxpayer-funded deputy now assisting the supposedly donor-funded “cold-case posse” (which has spent $40,000 investigating Obama’s birth certificate thus far), the citizens of Arizona foot the bill for airfare and lodging for the crack investigators. (Arpaio’s response to questioning: “”It’s one deputy, so what? We have security issues, too, that I can’t go into.”)

Zullo is the guy who, along with crackpot author Jerome Corsi, “proved” at a recent Arpaio press conference that the president’s long-form birth certificate is a forgery, because of pixels. TPM also notes that the Maricopa County sheriff’s office’s “Threats Management Unit” was previously best known for smearing and intimidating one of Arpaio’s electoral challengers.

I think we have long since passed the point at which I’d find this story believable in a fictional setting, so, sure, why not have two crack detectives flashing their worthless Maricopa County badges at the Hawaii Department of Health. (I just can’t decide if they should be hard-bitten noir characters or Clouseau-esque bumblers.) But yes a completely crazy person who is in charge of law enforcement for the most populous county in Arizona is probably going to attempt to arrest Barack Obama at some point. I guess at least he’s not directly involved with the Mitt Romney campaign, like Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, Romney’s Arizona campaign co-chair who’s currently leading a separate investigation into proving the president’s secret foreignness. (Though Arpaio was honorary campaign co-chair in 2008, when he was still a stalwart harasser of Hispanics, but before birtherism had been properly invented.)

Maybe Hawaii officials will throw the cold case posse in jail for, I dunno, criminal nuisance or something. That’d be fun.

The latest Arpaio political supporter to fall is former Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas, who was disbarred April 10 for engaging in unethical conduct to intimidate and smear his and Arpaio’s political adversaries.

A stinging 247-page opinion written by a three-member Arizona state Supreme Court disciplinary panel supporting the disbarment ruling also concluded there was “beyond reasonable doubt” that Thomas had violated federal civil rights laws.

While Thomas, a Republican, has not been criminally charged, the opinion made it crystal clear that his unethical and allegedly illegal conduct was the result of his “unholy collaboration” with Arpaio, also a Republican, to use their law enforcement powers to retaliate against critics.

Thomas and an assistant prosecutor, Lisa Aubuchon, were disbarred for violating perjury and intimidation laws when they filed criminal charges against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe and two county supervisors, Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley.

All three of the criminal cases, filed in 2008 and 2009, were later dismissed for lack of evidence and conflict of interest issues.

The Supreme Court panel’s opinion stated that evidence indicated Arpaio had conspired with Thomas and Aubuchon to file the charges against the judge and two supervisors.

The Thomas disbarment opinion comes at the same time the Department of Justice has been conducting a three-year grand jury criminal investigation into allegations that Arpaio abused his power to go after opponents.  And the federal grand jury criminal investigation is running parallel to a DOJ civil rights violations probe into claims that Arpaio’s deputies routinely targeted Latinos for arrest in an effort to round up and deport illegal immigrants.

Arpaio’s critics are now seizing on the Thomas disbarment opinion to put pressure on DOJ to bring criminal charges against Arpaio, or walk away.

“We draw your attention to the Bar’s findings which indicate that Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio worked in concert to commit the crimes for which Mr. Thomas has, to a degree, been held accountable,” states a letter sent Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by four former Arizona elected officials and prosecutors.

In the letter, former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, former U.S. attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton, former Maricopa County attorney Rick Romley and former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard requested that DOJ bring an indictment or dismiss the drawn-out case.

“I think it is time to make that decision,” Charlton, who was a George W. Bush appointee, stated in an email. “I have been a vocal critic of Sheriff Arpaio. But there comes a time when an investigation must come to an end. It is appropriate (for) DOJ to go forward now, or explain why it cannot.”

Thomas’ disbarment comes six months after Arpaio’s closest ally in the state Legislature was recalled from office. Angry voters ousted former Senate President Russell Pearce for his leading role in passing Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB1070. Pearce and Arpaio have a long history of working closely together. Pearce was once Arpaio’s chief deputy and is credited with coming up with the idea 20 years ago of housing thousands of county inmates in tents.

Maricopa County’s “Tent City” jails propelled Arpaio to national prominence and for years helped make him Arizona’s most popular elected official. Pearce delivered another powerful political tool to Arpaio in 2010 by passing SB1070, which gave local law enforcement more power to enforce federal immigration laws. Arpaio seized on this and began a series of high-profile criminal sweeps in largely Latino neighborhoods rounding up thousands of illegal immigrants.

The roundups triggered the DOJ civil-rights investigation of MCSO’s operations that found serious violations outlined in a report released last December. Negotiations between DOJ and MCSO to resolve the civil rights issues broke off last week, and DOJ is widely expected to file a civil suit against the department in the near future.

Behind the scenes, Arpaio has also quietly lost the support of a longtime political ally in Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Last December, under pressure from Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, Napolitano terminated an agreement with MCSO that gave the department access to the immigration status of detainees that could lead to their deportation.

Until then, Napolitano, a Democrat, rarely challenged Arpaio’s authority, even while she served as the U.S. attorney for Arizona (1993-1998), the Arizona attorney general (1998-2002) and as Arizona governor (2003-2009).

In her last days as a U.S. attorney in October 1998, Napolitano signed an agreement with Arpaio that ended a DOJ investigation into jail operations in the wake of several inmate deaths. Arpaio later appeared in a television commercial praising Napolitano during the 2002 gubernatorial election when she narrowly defeated Republican Matt Salmon.

As governor, Napolitano could have shut down Arpaio’s Tent City jails by ordering the state Fire Marshal not to renew waivers of state regulations prohibiting the housing of people in tents beyond six months, but never did.

Arpaio has also lost key support staff within his office, including his longtime chief deputy David Hendershott, who was fired last year for his role in an unfolding Arpaio campaign finance scandal that is the subject of another federal criminal investigation. For years, Hendershott oversaw operations in MCSO and was involved in initiating criminal investigations of Arpaio’s critics, including an Arpaio opponent in the 2004 Republican primary.

The highly publicized fall of Thomas, Pearce and Hendershott, along with eroding support from other powerful politicians such as Napolitano, combined with loud demands for a federal indictment have many believing that Arpaio’s two-decade reign will come to an end.

“We are witnessing the end of the Joe Show,” says prominent Phoenix attorney Michael Manning, who requested a federal civil rights investigation of the sheriff in 2008. “I believe he will be indicted within the next 30 days.”

But even a federal criminal indictment may not work against Arpaio in the upcoming general election, where he is expected to face an independent and Democratic candidates. Despite the steady drumbeat of news reports of serious problems within Arpaio’s sheriff’s office, there hasn’t been a huge public outcry demanding he step down.

“The groundswell of people coming out protesting, we haven’t seen it,” says Randy Parraz, a community activist who led the Russell Pearce recall effort. “It’s a mystery. Anywhere else with this kind of stuff, he wouldn’t survive.”

“None of us agreed to allow a federal monitor to come remove my authority as the elected sheriff of Maricopa County,” Arpaio said. “I feel that turning my office over to the federal government would be a dereliction of my duty.”

The breakdown sets up the likelihood that the Department of Justice will file a lawsuit against MCSO, which Arpaio said on Tuesday he welcomed.

Politically astute and a master of media manipulation, Arpaio never misses an opportunity to dust off his best John Wayne impression and cast himself as the courageous lawman calmly plunging into the firestorm to protect genteel citizens. No stinking judge, flimsy court order or federal bureaucrat is going to stop him from delivering Joe’s Justice.

This bravado has made him a national figure. But something most people don’t realize is how much of Arpaio’s gusto is defensive in nature. He learned long ago the best way to deflect criticism is to launch a criminal investigation of his critics, whether it’s the press, political leaders, judges or fellow cops.

He’s initiated criminal investigations against reporters, including this writer. He’s launched investigations into Arizona’s former attorney general, several members of the County Board of Supervisors, a couple of Superior Court judges, and a former Mesa police officer who was his opponent in the 2004 and 2008 elections. Famous for his aggressive prosecution of animal abuse, Arpaio opened a criminal investigation of a Chandler police officer whose dog died after being left accidentally in a car.

There is no limit to who will become a target. In an apparent attempt to deflect a separate, ongoing criminal probe that Arpaio has used his office to retaliate against political rivals, the sheriff is now investigating the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate.

Not everything goes Joe’s way. When pressed against the wall by a steady stream of pesky civil suits alleging wrongful deaths in his jails and other atrocities, such as the worst case of racial profiling in U.S. history, his office simply destroys evidence, even in the face of federal court orders to deliver the goods.

Despite the well-publicized problems engulfing the sheriff’s department, including misspending $100 million and botching scores of sex-crime investigations in Latino neighborhoods, the majority of voters in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, simply haven’t cared whether Arpaio abides by the law or even runs a competent department.

The Republican-dominated county loves his brash talk, and so do many independents and even some Democrats. Arpaio’s been elected five times without a serious challenge and is running for his sixth term this fall and is expected to coast to victory in a three-way race.

Encouraged by a fawning and frustrated electorate, Arpaio’s refusal Tuesday to comply with the Justice Department will likely generate even more campaign contributions from across the country. Arpaio has raised $6 million since 2009, with $1.1 million donated in 2011. The vast majority of Arpaio’s 2011 contributions – 80 percent – came from out of state.

Arpaio is claiming the DOJ civil rights allegations are nothing more than election year politics by the Obama administration as it tries to shore up flagging support from Latinos who helped deliver Obama the Oval Office in 2008.

For once, Gutierrez found himself in agreement with Arpaio. Latinos, he said, feel “betrayed” by Obama because he failed to deliver on a campaign promise to pass comprehensive immigration reform and has done little to support passage of the DREAM Act.

“Somebody in the Obama administration read the polls showing declining support from Latinos for Obama, so they finally decided to do something on this,” Gutierrez says. “But these complaints about MCSO have been before the Justice Department for years.”

Liberals were quick to mockingly dismiss “hug-gate,” and the scandal largely fizzled in the mainstream press. But this likely won’t be the last we hear of critical race theory before November from the right. Already, conservatives’ menacing interpretation of the theory has shaped policy in some places, suggesting that critical race theory may be on its way to joining the pantheon of right-wing bugaboos.

In January, a new law went into effect in Arizona that prohibits schools from offering courses that “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” While the legislation doesn’t specifically mention critical race theory, it quickly landed on the state’s blacklist when officials cracked down on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program, which former state superintendent Tom Horne had been trying to undermine since 2006 after its students dealt him a personal insult. The Republican finally succeeded with HB 2281, the ethnic studies bill that he authored, when it passed just 20 days after the state’s now-infamous anti-immigration law.

Horne subsequently ruled that Tucson’s program violates his law, citing its teaching of critical race theory. This “racist propaganda,” as Horne described it in his decision, is “fed to young and impressionable students, who swallow [it] whole.” Horne concluded that it was his “duty … to put a stop to this.” Among the books culled from Tucson’s schools when the program got axed were Shakespeare’s ”The Tempest” and “Mexican WhiteBoy,” a young adult novel by Matt de la Peña that deals with familiar themes like growing up, not fitting in and baseball. “The novel’s story is pretty much the American dream,” the New York Times noted Sunday. Nonetheless, it was embargoed for allegedly propagating critical race theory. De la Peña spoke at Tucson High last week, and used his speaking fee to purchase copies of his contraband book for students. Earlier this month, activists organized a scheme to distribute blackballed books, calling themselves “Librotraficante” — book traffickers.

But critical race theory was virtually unknown outside of universities until Arizona and Breitbart made it famous, as Google Trends show. Breitbart’s crew took a page from Horne’s book, using similar mischaracterizations of CRT to portray it as a “a deeply disturbing theory.” Breitbart.com went all in. A search of the site for “critical race theory” returns an astonishing 871 results, over 680 from the past month alone.  Other conservative blogs and pundits, including Fox News’ biggest guns, took up the baton and soon CRT was everywhere.

Over 20 articles on Breitbart’s site are just about CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien, who criticized  editor Joel Pollak’s “complete misreading of critical race theory” on live TV. Conservative pundits pounced on O’Brien for defending the theory, even calling her “anti-Semitic.” (Incidentally, Horne was forced to resign from the board of the local Anti-Defamation League over his support for the ethnic studies ban.)

“If I were to look for a connection … it would be a perplexity over minority success,” Richard Delgado, one of CRT’s most prominent proponents, told Salon. Delgado, who has two books that ended up on Arizona’s blacklist, said, “You have Obama in the presidency, and it’s starting to look for the first time like he’s going to win [again] … The Republican Party is in disarray, the economy is improving, and they’re thinking, ‘Dammit, this is not the way things are supposed to go.’”

As for Arizona, Delgado said Tucson found a kind of “magic” with its Mexican-American studies program that made Latino kids interested in education like never before. Indeed, Tucson schools chief John Pedicone said students who took courses in the program earned higher scores on state standardized tests, were more than twice as likely to graduate from high school and were three times as likely to go to college.

Asked about the program’s high achievement, Arizona Department of Education spokesman Ryan Ducharme dismissed the figures as “propaganda.” “It’s obviously coming from a biased source,” Ducharme told Salon, noting the studies were conducted by the program itself.

An independent study conducted by an auditor hired by Ducharme’s boss, current superintendent John Huppenthal — who took over after Horne became attorney general last year — found similar results. But the state dismissed this finding as well because it relied on numbers supplied by Tucson’s program, Ducharme explained. In fact, the audit Huppenthal ordered and paid $110,000 to conduct “found no evidence that the program is in violation of state law and even recommended that the courses be maintained as part of the district’s core curriculum.”

“This history is frightening to people in power there,” Jean Stefancic, another prominent critical race theorist and close collaborator of Delgado’s, told Salon. Noting that the Hispanic population in Arizona is growing rapidly, she said, “There’s a lot of fear [that] when they decide to vote and they run candidates, what kind of legislators or decision makers will they be? Will they be fair to the people that find themselves in a minority situation? Will they be fair to the rest of us?”

But beyond the electioneering, the use of critical race theory as a political cudgel may have a chilling effect when it comes to talking about race at all. Several of the critical race theorists I spoke with — who are generally known for their outspokenness — were wary to talk on the record in the wake of the Breitbart video. Two preferred not to speak on the record at all.

Just as talking about income inequality can get you branded as a socialist by the right today, talking about racial inequality on a systemic level can lead to charges of reverse racism against whites. And the ultimate irony of having a black president is that it may make it harder for him to discuss race. The killing of Trayvon Martin has sparked national outrage and a heated debate over race, but the White House responded timidly. “Obviously, we’re not going to wade into a local law enforcement matter,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney said Monday. But that policy didn’t apply to Henry Louis Gates’ run-in with Cambridge police just three years ago. Obama publicly condemned the police in the case, and was pilloried by the right for it.

Stefancic said Martin’s case is a perfect example of the importance of critical race theory. Without a racial lens on the incident, it would be a narrow legal question about Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense laws. But critical race theory allows us to see the whole picture that a strictly colorblind analysis might miss, she said. “When the law tries to redress an action that comes from a certain stereotype, it’s difficult,” she explained.

Brewer, the Republican left in charge of the state after President Obama tapped Janet Napolitano to be his secretary of Homeland Security, has been planning anti-union moves since last spring with the backing of the Goldwater Institute. (Named for Barry Goldwater, the think tank pushes for “freedom” and “prosperity” — as long as it’s not the freedom or prosperity of state workers.)

It’s not just Arizona’s right-wingers who are pushing Brewer to beat up on unions – John Nichols at the Nation notes that Walker may have had a hand in helping push an anti-labor agenda, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is involved. In a speech to the right-wing policy shop behind many of these anti-union bills last year, Brewer complained about her inability to fire government employees and supervisors’ difficulty “disciplining” workers.

This week, the Republicans in the state Legislature introduced moves that would make collective bargaining for public workers completely illegal. Here, we break down what you need to know about Brewer and the GOP’s anti-worker agenda.

1. The bill would go further than Wisconsin’s, making collective bargaining completely illegal for government workers.

SB 1485, the first of the bills to take on union rights, declares that no state agency can recognize any union as a bargaining agent for any public officer or worker, collectively bargain with any union, or meet and confer with any union for the purpose of discussing bargaining.

While Wisconsin’s law bans public employees from bargaining over everything but very small wage increases, Arizona’s bill bans collective bargaining outright and refuses to recognize any union as a bargaining unit. Existing contracts with unions will be honored, but not be renewed if this bill passes.

2. Arizona includes police and firefighters in its ban.

Scott Walker famously exempted public safety workers — police officers and firefighters — from his attacks on union workers, but many of them joined the protests anyway. In Ohio, John Kasich’s bill, overturned by his constituents this past November, included the police and firefighters in its elimination of bargaining rights. Now Brewer and her legislative compatriots have decided that police and firefighters should lose their bargaining rights as well.

Arizona, as Dave Dayen at FireDogLake noted, “is changing to a purple state because of an extreme legislature which first demonized immigrants, in what could start a backlash among the Hispanic community. Now, flush with that success, the legislature will demonize police and firefighters. It’s not exactly a textbook strategy for a lasting majority.”

Walker’s attempt to divide and conquer public sector unions by attacking some and not others didn’t work; perhaps that’s why later attempts at similar bills didn’t bother giving special treatment to public safety workers. But as we saw in Ohio, the support of the traditionally conservative police and firefighters’ unions helped unite the state’s voters and bring out record numbers to vote down the bill. Arizona seems to be asking for trouble by targeting police and firefighters with this bill.

3. The state would ban government employers from deducting union dues automatically from a worker’s paycheck.

Not content with banning bargaining, the Arizona legislature is also out to make sure unions can’t collect any money for the work they do. SB 1487 inserts language into existing law that says “This state and any county, municipality, school district or other political subdivision of this state may not withhold or divert any portion of an employee’s wages to pay for labor organization dues.”

This move obviously is aimed to hit unions right in their wallets — taking away the funding they need in order to do more organizing, and carry out political activity.

4. Arizona would ban the government from allowing employees to do union work on company time.

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos notes that in addition to the other measures, Arizona’s Republicans also want to eliminate “release time,” a practice “in which union stewards and other representatives are allowed to spend work time on certain union functions, such as contract negotiations or handling grievances.”

Union stewards and representatives are full-time employees who take on additional responsibilities on top of their jobs—a move like this makes it harder for them to carry out those responsibilities to their fellow workers without fear of facing sanctions from their bosses. Specifically banned by the bill, SB 1486, are “activities that are performed by a union, union members or representatives that relate to advocating the interests of member employees in wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment.”

5. Brewer also wants to eliminate any job protections for workers, buying them off with pay raises.

Brewer plans to offer public workers their first pay raise in years, a 5 percent increase. The tradeoff? They have to opt out of job protections some of them currently enjoy, including the right to appeal demotions and protection from being fired without cause – they have to become at-will employees.

Like most “merit pay” arrangements, this one sounds good at first — hard-working people will get raises! — but workers see right through it. Odalys Hinds, who works in the state health lab, told the Arizona Republic, “No way will I do it. I won’t take it — it basically would take away our rights. My retirement’s gone up. My insurance has gone up. There’s going to come a day when I’m going to have to pay the state to work.”

6. Arizona is already a “right-to-work” state

The kicker to all this? Arizona workers already enjoy fewer protections than those in Ohio and Wisconsin. Arizona is a so-called right-to-work state, where unions cannot collect a fair share of the direct costs of representation from workers who opt out of joining the union — even though the union is compelled to represent all workers.

This means that unlike the Midwestern states, Arizona has few union members already and that means there are fewer people who are likely to be outraged and moved to protest by attacks on collective bargaining. Yet Brewer, the Goldwater Institute and the Republicans in the Legislature aren’t content with what they have and are moving to make public sector unions all but irrelevant, by making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs.

Arizona now has a strong Republican majority in the Legislature, and so barring a change of heart by a handful of GOPers, the anti-union measures are likely to pass. But if Brewer continues to antagonize working people in her state, John Nichols notes, Arizona does have something else in common with Wisconsin — provisions that allow for the recall of the governor and state legislators, provisions that were used just last year to remove Russell Pearce, the state senator responsible for the state’s hideous anti-immigrant law, from office.