US Audio Feature: The Arizona Sheriff & President Obama's Birth Certificate --- Scott Lucas with the BBC

Photo: Matt York (AP)On Tuesday afternoon, a controversial Arizona sheriff named Joe Arpaio said his "volunteer posse" of investigators had found President Obama's birth certificate is definitely fraudulent. This would disqualify Obama, who was born in Hawaii according to official records, from standing for re-election.

I spoke with BBC WM about the personality and politics behind the diversion of Arpaio, renowned for re-introducing chain gangs and stunts such as pink handcuffs for prisoners.

For example, the more important story --- overlooked in the Associated Press summary of Arpaio's conference --- is that the sheriff is facing a court hearing in a class-action lawsuit on Thursday, challenging his crackdown on Hispanic men and women as "illegal" residents of Phoenix and Maricopa County.

Then there is the small matter that Arpaio, sheriff since 1992, is standing for re-election in November....

The item starts just after the 1:20.30 mark.

US Politics Snap Analysis: Romney Wins Michigan & Arizona, But the Battle Continues

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Note the significant difference in the stories below about Mitt Romney's narrow victory in the Republican primary in Michigan, his home state, and his more comfortable win in Arizona --- The Washington Post portrays the night as "an important boost" for the former Massachusetts governor, while Al Jazeera English assesses they "will do little to dispel the doubts" about Romney's campaign. Nate Silver of the website 538.com summarises, "Tonight in awkward middle ground between 'huge night for Romney!'narratives and "'boy that was close!' narratives."

The easy conclusion is that Romney did enough to prevent being stuck with a Loser label that cannot be removed but did not do enough to put away his main challenger, Rick Santorum, before the showpiece of "Super Tuesday" next week, in which voters in 10 states will make decisions.

Beyond that, the "safe" analysis might that by Chris Cilizza, published below: "Romney is — as he has been since the day he entered this race — the best funded and best organized candidate in the race. That means that Romney has the operation in place to capi­tal­ize on the boost of momentum that he should get — in terms of media coverage and donor dollars — in the wake of these two victories."

But then again, no analysis has proven "safe" in this Republican campaign....

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EA Cyber-Special: LulzSec Dumps Its Documents and Says Good-Bye

The LulzSec crew, having sailed merrily into the waters of hacktivism this spring, has now dumped their treasure overboard and set course for calmer seas, no doubt with a fleet of law enforcement in pursuit.

The files released last night appear to be the user accounts of the cracked NATO bookshop customer database, an archive of AT&T corporate data, and an image establishing that LulzSec has cracked the US Navy's website. Details of accounts of gamers and those on other forums, an output of network data labelled "FBI being silly", and 91 pages of IP addresses whose routers were using default passwords were also included.

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