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Federal authorities say they intend to file a lawsuit against Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his department over allegations of civil rights violations.

by John HillStand With Arizona He's known as "America's Toughest Sheriff". But we think he should be called "America's Jobs Sheriff". Because every time Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducts a raid, he frees up jobs for legal American workers. Thursday was no exception, as the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office served search warrants at a Phoenix-based vitamin company and arrested 31 illegal aliens working there. Based on a tip, deputies conducted a 5-month investigation of 21st Century Healthcare in Tempe. Deputies were looking for 34 employees at the vitamin warehouse presumed to have used stolen identification to gain employment with the company....

SAN DIEGO -- Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez may be nowhere more popular than at a labor caucus meeting at a Democratic convention, and so it was that he received a standing ovation here this afternoon and tried out a one-liner on the crowd. "This year you've seen Mitt Romney and others talk about the fact that corporations are people," the former labor organizer said. "I won't believe corporations are people until Texas executes one of them."

SHERIFF ARPAIO MEETS TODAY’S D.O.J. DEADLINE PROMISES TO CONTINUE FULL COOPERATION WITH INVESTIGATION BUT WILL NOT COWER AT THREAT OF LITIGATION (Phoenix, AZ) In a letter authorized by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, attorneys for the Sheriff tell DOJ officials in no uncertain terms that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office will continue to cooperate with the federal government’s “racial profiling” investigation. But the letter also states reciprocal transparency is critical and demands full cooperation from the Justice Department to provide, in writing, information and facts which can prove, or disprove, the findings made public in a surprise press conference on...

Holder's Racial Politics Eric Holder must be amazed that President Obama was elected and he could become Attorney General. That's a fair inference after the Attorney General last Friday blocked South Carolina's voter ID law on grounds that it would hurt minorities. What a political abuse of law. In a letter to South Carolina's government, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez called the state law—which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo ID at the polls—a violation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Overall, he noted, 8.4% of the state's registered...

President Shimon Peres challenged presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy Sunday to back up their vows not let Iran go nuclear. “I want to see actual results,” the Israeli president said. Speaking at the opening session of the annual Israel Business Conference, President Peres declared to a CNN reporter, "Iran is the center of all corruption. They kill, threaten, and poison….They are a significant threat to the entire world, not just to Israel. .....

Iran is morally corrupt and spoiled, President Shimon Peres told CNN's Piers Morgan Monday night. “An attack on its moral foundations is needed.” "They are the only country that threatens to destroy another country openly,” and an attack on the Islamic Republic’s foundations is needed "because Iran is a spoiled country. It is morally corrupt." Concerning sanctions and promises to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, he said, "We expect that the leaders that make a promise will fulfill it." If military action is needed, President Peres said that he hopes Israel will not be alone in attacking Iran’s...

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - The State Department of Education is advising school superintendents to hold off on providing enrollment data to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ had requested Alabama school superintendents provide a list of all students who had withdrawn from schools since the beginning of the school year. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez sent a letter to Alabama school systems wanting to know how many Hispanic students are enrolled in schools and how many have withdrawn since the beginning of the school year. Educators reported the new law caused many Hispanic students to stay home in the...

Obama’s Department of Justice has ordered Colorado to protect the interests of “language minority populations” by strengthening a Court Interpreter Oversight Committee that assures immigrants who don’t speak English get free translators.The new DOJ mandate also applies to civil cases, which means that U.S. taxpayers will fund interpreting services for foreigners who may stand to make settlement money. Under the agreement, announced this week, the Colorado Judicial Department will also develop “state and local language access plans” that address “both oral interpretation and the translation of vital written documents.”A revitalized state Court Interpreter Oversight Committee will be expanded to include...

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez is accepting "full responsibility" for mischaracterizations in recent years that he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. The Los Angeles Democrat's Assembly Web site says he "attended" UC Berkeley but does not indicate whether he got a degree. In a written statement, he said he regrets not doing enough to correct accounts that he graduated. "I take full responsibility for this mistake, and I regret it," Pérez said. Robin Swanson, Perez's spokeswoman, said today that he left UC Berkeley for financial and family reasons after attending for about four years.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Convicted former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez is seeking more than $130,000 in unused sick and vacation time. Bart Halloran, Perez's attorney, has sent to Hartford's director of human resources asking the former mayor be paid for 1,200 hours of unused vacation and 768 of unused sick time. Perez was convicted of using a city contractor to have free work done at his home and could be going to prison. The former mayor's criminal conviction doesn't change the fact he was a city employee, said Saundra Kee Borges with the city's Corporation Counsel.

SACRAMENTO -- Assembly Speaker John Perez insisted Tuesday that closing the state's remaining $15 billion deficit with spending cuts is out of the question, and vowed to step up pressure on Republicans to relax their anti-tax stance. "Talking about an all-cuts approach is in essence an exercise in futility," the Los Angeles Democrat said at a Capitol press briefing. Perez said he will be seeking new revenues through a two-thirds vote that could be ratified by voters later -- a departure from Gov. Jerry Brown's vow to take any tax proposal to the people for a vote. "I'm not the...

The Civil Rights Division has blocked a much-needed reform of a local school board in S.C., once again showing it has no interest in protecting minority voters if they are white. The Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has done it again. Under the supervision of scandal-plagued Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, the Division has blocked a much-needed reform of a local school board in Fairfield County, S.C. It’s the latest example of what happens when you put a civil rights enforcement unit under a political appointee who opposes race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Aided...

The Department of Justice has launched a new website to rehabilitate its damaged reputation among uniformed servicemembers. Good luck, because servicemembers have figured out that this administration is not their friend, particularly in protecting their right to vote. It is an effort to put more “lipstick on the military voting pig.” If you serve in the military, don’t waste your time looking for help through the website. The DOJ doesn’t want to hear from you. The website is www.servicemembers.gov. “The Department of Justice, in partnership with other federal agencies, is committed to enforcing the federal laws that protect the...

Today, two very different stories will be heard at a hearing before Congress. Eric Eversole and Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez will both testify about the plight of military voters in the 2010 election and whether or not the Justice Department did all it could to protect them. Perez will exaggerate DOJ efforts to protect military voters, and Eric Eversole will testify truthfully about where DOJ dropped the ball in 2010.In 2010, the Department of Justice was suggesting that states mail overseas ballots to servicemembers that listed federal elections but intentionally omitted state contests. With the approach of the electoral...

WASHINGTON — As the effect of a new law protecting the rights of overseas U.S. voters is felt, those voters are reporting an easier time in requesting and receiving ballots. But a very substantial number of their ballots still went uncounted in the 2010 midterm elections, according to a private foundation. “There was definitely an indication from the voters themselves that there was improvement,” Claire M. Smith, research director for the Overseas Vote Foundation, said Thursday in explaining the group’s findings. “One voter said, ‘For the first time in 34 years, I got my ballot on time.”’ Improved procedures received...

The Holder Justice Department declares open season on big city police departments In 2000, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration slapped the Los Angeles Police Department with federal oversight. A 1994 law gives the Justice Department the authority to seek control of police agencies that have engaged in a “pattern or practice” of constitutional violations. Justice’s attorneys never uncovered any systemic constitutional abuses in the LAPD as required by the 1994 law, despite having commandeered hundreds of thousands of documents (and having lost 10 boxes of sensitive records). Nevertheless, for the next decade the LAPD would operate under...

MIAMI (AP) — Former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, whose popularity soared with his country's oil-based economy but who later faced riots, a severe economic downturn and impeachment in his homeland, has died in Miami, his family said Saturday. The 88-year-old Perez's daughter, Maria Francia Perez, said her father had died in a Miami area hospital.

The New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, which has rocked the Justice Department, will reach an important endpoint on November 19. At its regular business meeting tomorrow, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will consider a draft report on its investigation of the Department’s scandalously politicized handling of the case. This case was unique in one vital aspect almost from its beginning — the existence of a visual recording of the New Black Panthers in their paramilitary, fascist-style uniforms, one holding a night stick, blocking the entrance to a polling place. That kind of direct evidence is very unusual...

Facing a federal lawsuit accusing "America's toughest sheriff" of failing to cooperate in a Justice Department investigation into allegations of discrimination in his arrest of illegal immigrants, Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Wednesday unveiled a new armed "Immigration Posse" to combat illegal immigration in Arizona.   Sheriff Arpaio, who heads the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, said the new armed posse ---
which includes Hollywood actors Steven Seagal, Lou Ferrigno and Peter Lupus ---
could help his deputies enforce immigration laws in the state. But, more importantly, he said the new posse "would provide a means by which citizens could...