Maybe I was too blasé about the federal government letting HSBC off the hook; certainly the story has effectively shown how Too Big to Fail continues to be the watchword of the financial regulatory community. My pet theory here is actually that, because practically every mega-bank engaged in this same type of money laundering for drug cartels and countries under sanction – all of the big four in the US, including Wells Fargo (who admitted it in court), Bank of America, Citi and JPMorgan Chase – if they threw the book at HSBC, they would have to do the same to everyone else. So we’ve migrated from Too Big to Fail to Too Caught Up In The Same Criminality to Fail.

Less than a year after Occupy Atlanta members clashed with police in riot gear in a downtown park, they’re now protesting alongside officers to help a retired detective avoid losing her home to foreclosure.

It’s sad that we have to see the injustice of a “show me your papers” law in action before invalidating it, but that’s what it’s going to take.

Federal courts have consistently trimmed back attempts by states to write their own immigration laws. The Supreme Court overturned much of the Arizona immigration law in June, and federal judges have done the same to parts of laws in several Southern states. We saw another example of this yeterday, when the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Alabama and its draconian immigration law. However, the precedent set by the Supreme Court on Arizona did hold, and the “papers please” parts of immigration laws in Alabama and Georgia were upheld for the time being.

Violence plagued the city of Anaheim, home to Disneyland, last night, as protests against a series of officer-involved deaths turned ugly. Protests continued into the 4th day after police shootings resulting in the deaths of two Hispanic men, the sixth this year to be shot by Anaheim police.

Charlie Engle today. Engle is a marathoner who participated in a liar loan during the housing bubble. The IRS – really one vindictive agent of the IRS – tracked him down, searched through his garbage, sent an undercover agent with a wire to get him to admit guilt, and coming up empty on any tax violations, prosecuted him for the liar loans. It turned out that the mortgage broker inflated his income on the loan document after the fact. But Charlie Engle, not the broker, was prosecuted, and sent to jail. He gets out this week, still burdened with a felony record and five years of probation.

Nocera makes a very provocative but accurate point about how the Justice Department has conducted itself during the aftermath of the financial crisis. It’s not just about avoiding any prosecutions for the top Wall Street executives whose fraud led to the crisis; it’s about making up for that through prosecutions of the bit players.

Eric Lichtblau, one of the reporting team who exposed President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program, takes a look at its aftermath; with telecoms receiving immunity, police departments feel no compunction against tracking people by their cell phone.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim Weiner has a talent for getting clandestine government agencies to spill their secrets. After dissecting the Central Intelligence Agency in Legacy of Ashes, for which he won a National Book Award, Weiner now turns his sights on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s intelligence activities in Enemies: A History of the FBI. Those who watched the 9-11 Commission hearings during which the FBI was criticized for being no more than gumshoe detectives might be shocked to find that the FBI engaged in clandestine anti-terrorism and counter-espionage right from its very beginning in 1908.

Bill Lee, the chief of the Sanford Police Department, which has still failed to make an arrest in the killing of Trayvon Martin, has taken a temporary leave of absence. This came a day after a no-confidence vote from the city commissioners.

Los Angeles county sheriff is suffering through the worst performance record in the country outside of noted racist Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. First, Sheriff Lee Baca had to endure credible allegations of mistreatment of prisoners in county lockups. Now, he has a new scandal on his hands.