United States District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, an appointee of George W. Bush, has done Arizona and the nation a great service by chronicling, in meticulous detail, the unconstitutional harassment and racial profiling Hispanic people have been suffering at the hands of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. On Friday afternoon, on the eve of a holiday weekend, Judge Snow released a 142-page ruling which concludes that Sheriff Arpaio's well-publicized roundup policies violate both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

I'll keep this short-- I'd rather have you spend your time this Memorial Day weekend reading the ruling than my analysis of it-- but I'll offer just a few highlights here. It's important to remember as you read that the issue is not whether unauthorized immigrants should be subjected to "Terry stops" or permitted to continue to reside in the county but rather the means by which law enforcement officials may lawfully detain anyone suspected (or not) of criminal conduct. To read the opinion is to understand the heavy price paid for the "success" Sheriff Joe has bragged about for all these years.

1. The level of lawlessness revealed by Judge Snow is breathtaking. Not only did Arpaio routinely violate federal law and the constitutional rights of Latinos in his County-- including the rights of undocumented immigrants-- he also blatantly violated the terms of a prior court order on the topic. "The evidence introduced at trial establishes that, in the past, the [Maricopa County Sheriff's Office] has aggressively protected its right to engage in immigration and immigration-related enforcement operations even when it had no accurate legal basis for doing so," Judge Snow wrote.