The relentless raptor sinks his beak into the tyranny of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas

Now that's what this sapsucker calls selective enforcement.

For Thomas and Arpaio, immigration has become yet another way to put more bodies under the heel of the county's Doc Martens. These bodies are largely brown and are subject to the MCSO's racial-profiling tactics. Profiling tactics, this pecker might add, that are currently under investigation by three federal agencies: the FBI, the GAO and ICE, with which the MCSO has a memorandum of agreement for the use of its federally trained 287g officers.

Using his federal authority, Arpaio has conducted numerous unconstitutional sweeps through Valley neighborhoods, causing widespread anxiety and terror. He's raided Valley water parks and a Mesa landscaping company, and collared corn vendors in Maryvale.

Most recently, his shock troops descended on Chandler's Gold Canyon candle company. With a warrant for only about 20, the MCSO executed a military-style raid with hooded SWAT team members wielding assault rifles. Effectively, they held 200 employees of the company hostage for five hours, while Joe's Gestapo decided whom to hold and whom to let go.

"They quarantined everybody in a conference room," complained company spokeswoman Rebecca Clyde. "Office employees, the IT department, customer service, secretaries, people like that. Everybody including executives, everybody at every level was held."

Get the picture? So just being Caucasian or having a white-collar job doesn't excuse you from boot time. People were not allowed to go to the bathroom without a police escort, said Clyde. There were not enough seats for everyone, so some people had to stand. Sounds like a remake of that '70s TV flick Raid on Entebbe, dramatizing the hijack of an Air France jet to Uganda, with Joe Arpaio playing Idi Amin.

The company's lawyer wasn't allowed into the building or access to the list of names of the MCSO's suspects. Hey, so much for your right to counsel in Maricopa County, much less freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

The raid occurred even though Gold Canyon boasts revenues of $100 million a year, employs 300 Arizonans, around 75 of them white-collar, and participated in the federal E-Verify pilot program even before the employer sanctions law became effective in January.

Think you're off the hook 'cause you follow the law? The owners of Gold Canyon now know better.

Even if you have no sympathy for those whose mother or father (sometimes the sole breadwinner of a family) has been carted away for immigration violations — perhaps never to be seen on this side of the border again — this warbler thinks you should at least worry about your own skin.

'Cause if you live in Maricopa County under the Uncle Joe and Candy regime, the flesh of you or yours could bear the boot print before it's all over.

DEBATING DAN

Will someone please tell Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services to stick a day-old sock in it? The winged wonder was watching this full-of-himself gasbag on KAET Horizon's journalists roundtable the other day, when he spewed forth the dumbest statement since Jesse Jackson was caught saying he wanted to cut Barack Obama's nuts off.

"How many weeks have we sat around this table," smarmed the fatuous know-it-all to his fellow Fourth Estaters, "talked about Sheriff Joe, talked about things going on, talked about multimillion-dollar judgments against him. Talked about protests. And every poll, the guy's in the 70 and 80 percent [range]. I mean, even after this candle factory thing."

WTF? Nickel Bag hasn't been in the 80th percentile for years. In fact, as was first documented by the Taloned One's blogging bro Feathered Bastard (and later ripped off by several journalists in town), even a poll listed on Joe's own site of sheriffjoe.org showed nearly 70 percent of those voting online choosing "Absolutely Not!" when queried if they were gonna pull the lever for Joe come November.

Joe's flunkies jerked down the poll not long after FB's blog item was posted, but not before revealing the IP addresses of some of those who voted, and how they voted, a blunder even the Horizon dunderheads picked up on.

That poll wasn't scientific, of course. It's the kind you see on the Web site of KTAR and elsewhere, ones usually used by Joe fanatics to tout the crusty top cop's popularity.

But as this worm-wrangler's mentioned time and time again in this column, real polls have shown a steady decline in Arpaio's approval ratings over the past year and a half, from 64 percent in March 2007 to 54 percent at the end of July, according to Phoenix polling firm Rocky Mountain/BRC.

Horizon host Ted Simons quickly corrected Fischer's flub, telling him what he should already know if he'd pull his head out of his rear — that Joe's numbers are nowhere near the 80th percentile. But Fischer didn't seem to care that he'd effed up on camera, and persisted in his moronic malarkey.

"But we're still down to the other half of the question," replied Fischer. "So let's assume he's down to 60; let's assume he's down to 55. Dan Saban has yet to make a concise case of why to eject him. Simply saying, 'I'm different' . . . If you're gonna replace the horse you know with the horse you don't know, you better have a damn good reason."