Weigel

Joe Arpaio and the Birthers

Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images

PHOENIX, AZ - OCTOBER 22: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (L) and Politician and conservative activist Sarah Palin, with her son Trig Palin, listen to the National Anthem during a rally for the Tea Party Express national tour October 22, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. The tour, part of an initiative to get conservatives elected to the House and Senate, will move across country and conclude on November 1, 2010 in Concord, New Hampshire the day before the contentious mid-term elections. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

Shot:

Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann met with Joe Arpaio, the Arizona lawman who has called himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff” at his office Wednesday afternoon, as one of her rivals, Mitt Romney, was campaigning nearby at a retirement community... Arpaio’s aide Chad Willems said the sheriff received several calls from Bachmann prior to Wednesday’s meeting, and that he’s also been called by Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Chaser:

Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told WND he has assigned a five-member “Cold Case Posse” to investigate the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The members of Cold Case Posse won’t be identified, but I suppose the people who made up Donald Trump’s “team of investigators in Hawaii” have been hard up for work since Trump got bored with that particular publicity stunt. Also, Arpaio tells Jerome Corsi – who is to the birther investigation what Walter Duranty was to coverage of the Soviet Union – that “if a complaint is legitimate, I don’t dump it into the wastebasket.” Does any Phoenix resident want to test this theory and ask for an investigation of David Icke’s “reptilian rulers of the world” hypothesis? There’s just as much evidence that Obama is a shape-shifting lizard – which would pose real eligibility issues – as evidence that he’s not really American.