Good old-fashioned justice!

Eric just sent this to me in an e-mail. Joe Arpaio is the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, and he keeps getting elected over and over.

Why?

He created the "tent city jail". Yes, tents in the Arizona Desert. With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees just set a new record), the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. Hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138* inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.

"It feels like we are in a furnace," said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the tents for a year. "It's inhumane."

Sheriff Arpaio is not one bit sympathetic. He told all of the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!"

He has jail meals down to 20 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.

He took away cigarettes, porn, weights, and all but "G" movies.

He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination.

He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney Channel and The Weather Channel. When asked why The Weather Channel he replied, “So they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.”

He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them, "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."

He bought Newt Gingrich's lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.

Folks, this guy has the right idea, and the citizens of Maricopa County are doing right by re-electing him. Eric said in his e-mail that we gotta love this guy, but I say we have to clone him! Criminals should not be allowed to serve their sentences in comfort. I did go to the Maricopa County Sheriff website to verify that all of this is true and to see if they had any statistics on repeat offenders. I didn't find the latter, but I would imagine that after serving a sentence in a tent in the desert, most people would be smart enough to avoid Maricopa County if they're going to continue to commit crimes! If they aren't, they deserve a return trip.

I know there will be some bleeding hearts crying that it's cruel and unusual punishment. Let me just point out that these prisoners are fed, housed, and clothed. They have access to movies and TV, and are providing a valuable community service. The punishment is unorthodox, certainly, and maybe a little unusual, but if the person living in that tent had murdered your child, would you consider it cruel?