Even the fireworks were corrupt at Donald Trump's July 4th rain-dampened, taxpayer-funded, narcissistic dick-wag fascism fiesta. Read the rest

Peter Brown was born in Philly, but he made the mistake of visiting Jamaica for one day, years ago on a cruise. But that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Sheriff of Monroe County, Florida a good enough reason to detain Brown and attempt to deport him to Jamaica, even though he has never lived there and doesn't know a single person there.

From Mr Brown's lawsuit, as reported in CNN:

"Despite his repeated protests to multiple jail officers, his offer to produce proof, and the jail's own records, the Sheriff's Office held Mr. Brown so that ICE could deport him to Jamaica — a country where he has never lived and knows no one," the lawsuit says.

The Sheriff's Office ignored all the indications that it was illegally detaining Mr. Brown. It did nothing to investigate his citizenship. It did not contact ICE to pass along this urgent information, or ask for a review of Mr. Brown's files. It did not seek any further information from Mr. Brown or anyone else. It simply held Mr. Brown, in violation of his constitutional rights and after he was entitled to release under state law, so that he could be picked up by ICE and deported from the country."

The Monroe County Sheriff's Office and ICE couldn't be bothered to comment on the case. They are probably too busy rounding up people born in Cleveland and shipping them off to Haiti.

Image: Shutterstock/Jonathan Weiss Read the rest

Trump is notorious for his "filing system": when he is finished with a piece of paper, he tears it into tiny pieces and throws it away, which is fine if you're a CEO (maybe), but is radioactively illegal under the Presidential Records Act, because the President works for the public, and is required by law to archive their official papers and save them for public scrutiny. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Elizabeth Warren's gift that keeps on giving -- one of the most effective US government agencies, handing out real punishment to banks that break the law, fighting loan-sharks that prey on poor people, and maintaining a database of vetted consumer complaints against banks that have ripped them off. Read the rest

James Meyers of Concord, North Carolina was driving his daughter to school when police pulled him over for a broken brake light. The police officer looked up Meyers' information and told Meyers he was under arrest for failing to return a VHS copy of Freddy Got Fingered that he'd rented from a now-closed video store in 2002. Meyers was handcuffed and formally charged with failure to return rental property, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200.

From WSOC TV:

Meyers said the officers were very polite and professional. They let him take his daughter to school and go to work as long as he promised to turn himself into the police department later that day.

Meyers said he thought everything would get straightened out at the department. He was surprised when officers arrested him and then took him to the magistrate’s office.

“For the first time I got put in handcuffs,” said Meyers.

Meyers said he vaguely remembers renting the particular movie from the family-owned video store in Kannapolis.