The Justice Department has thrown yet another lawsuit at America's loony desert dingbat moon colony, Arizona. This one, however, was filed against obnoxious self-serving tyrant Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, for refusing to cooperate in a civil rights investigation.

Arpaio, who — with the help of his volunteer "posses" — has been grossly overstepping his authorities for years, well before the controversial immigration law Arizona passed earlier this year. He probably doesn't even care about getting these new, expanded powers for catching illegal immigrants, anyway. He's always been an proud practitioner of racial profiling, regardless of its legal status. And he got a Fox reality show out of it! Such strange incentives, these days.

But the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division started investigating him last year "amid accusations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures related to the sheriff's immigration-enforcement efforts." Arpaio claims his office has been cooperating. The Justice Department's lawyers very much disagree, however, and they're tired of asking, and now they're just suing the asshole to get it over with:

The lawsuit comes after weeks of back-and-forth letters between the agencies, threats to strip the county of federal funding, and a meeting in Washington last week among attorneys to discuss the investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department has said this is the first time in the last 30 years that a police or sheriff's agency has refused to cooperate with a Title VI investigation. Thursday's action marks the first time the agency is suing to compel access to documents and facilities.

Arpaio is brushing this whole thing off. Why should he care so much about this investigation into his practices when there are so many others pending? Like the one in which "a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends." A man only has so much cooperating-with-authorities time in any given day, you know.

[Image via AP]