Sheriff Joe’s sign is flashing “Vacancy” above his outdoor jail, and one certainly gets the impression that America’s toughest lawman or its biggest publicity hound - take your pick - wouldn’t mind locking up someone famous before the week is out.

“I hear Paris Hilton is going to be in town,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says. “She better behave herself. We’ll put her in one of our female tents and get her on one of our female chain gangs.”

Just to eliminate any confusion, he’s not talking about the chains used for measuring first downs on Super Bowl Sunday. These are the kind that bind together inmates before they are sent out to pick up trash along a busy highway, paint over graffiti or bury the indigent in the county cemetery.