And yet, after all of that, the news of this video tells us that these public officials still do not accept, and are not fully complying with, the remedial order the judge issued last year to try to fix the County's unconstitutional profiling. And that means that the official discrimination which has disgraced Maricopa County for years surely still exists, despite the order, despite the presence of a federal monitor, despite everything. The rule of law is not working, or is working far too slowly, for the Latino men and women who live and work there. Here is how The New York Times covered Monday's drama:

A federal judge strongly rebuked Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County and one of his chief deputies on Monday, saying that they had defied and even mocked the judge’s order last year to stop singling out Latinos during routine patrols, traffic stops and workplace raids. “Whether or not the sheriff likes it, there is a distinction in immigration law that was not understood by the population and, with all due respect to you, it is not understood by the sheriff, which is that it is not a criminal violation to be in this country without authorization,” said the judge, G. Murray Snow of United States District Court here, staring down the 81-year-old sheriff, whose tenure has been framed largely by his unforgiving stance against illegal immigrants.

And here (a little more softly) is how the Arizona Republic, Arpaio's hometown newspaper, covered it:

A Maricopa County Sheriff's administrator's decision to call a federal racial-profiling ruling "absurd" and "ludicrous" were made in the heat of the moment and do not reflect the agency's intention to prevent racial profiling among deputies, attorneys for Sheriff Joe Arpaio argued in U.S. District Court on Monday. The remarks from Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan drew a rebuke from U.S. District Judge Murray Snow and the agency will likely receive a letter that clarifies Snow's ruling in response to Sheridan's statements. But experts said the hearing was likely designed to put the agency on notice that Snow and his court-appointed monitor are paying close attentiont to how Sheriff Joe Arpaio's agency enacts the changes Snow ordered last year following his racial-profiling ruling

What is happening here is the sort of open defiance of judicial authority by local law enforcement officials that America hasn't seen since the massive Southern resistance to desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Arpaio and company aren't just arguing in an appeals court that the trial judge got it wrong. They are signalling to their subordinates that a valid court order, supported by extensive evidence and clear legal precedent, is bogus. What does a line officer in Maricopa County take away from these sorts of comments? Surely not that Judge Snow's order ought to be respected. Surely not that public officials, like everyone else, must comply with even those laws with which they disagree.