VW of the future, Immigration crackdowns snares Americans, and a Chinese artist’s portraits of corruption

       Good Morning Humboldt County!

As the day dawns a Bluejay can be seen on the lower limb of the young Redwood Tree across from my front porch. C’mon in and pull up a seat and have a cup of coffee with me. I’ve selected three stories to start your day. 

Volkswagen's Delivery Vehicle of the Future

 Volkswagen Group Research and the German postal service teamed up to envision what the (far into the) future postal-delivery vehicle could look like. They came up with the Volkswagen eT! delivery vehicle, with autonomous driving capabilities and a passenger side "drive stick."

                    Immigration crackdown also snares Americans

A growing number of United States citizens have been detained under Obama administration programs intended to detect illegal immigrants who are arrested by local police.

In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.

Photo - An American college student, Romy Campos, was sent to a California jail on an immigration detainer.

Americans said their vehement protests that they were citizens went unheard by local police and jailers for days, with no communication with federal immigration agents to clarify the situation. Any case where an American is held, even briefly, for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest because immigration agents lack legal authority to detain citizens.

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Americans should have their own hall of Shame for politicians!

      Chinese artist's portraits of corruption

Zhang came up with the idea of creating his “hall of shame” as early as March 2009, during China’s National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of Communist Party officials.  It was then that he learned that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in the previous year alone. “I was shocked at the numbers, I did not realize there were so many,” Zhang told NBC News during a recent visit to his studio.  “China is in such a transition period, those corruption issues also should be witnessed in a historic context.”

Time to walk on down the road…