Do you know your flags?

Do you recognize this country’s flag?

No fair doing an image search. Just tell me — telepathically, of course — what country the image represents.

You’re wrong.

The above is a federally trademarked image belonging to 7-Eleven, Inc. I bring this up because a federal suit filed recently on behalf of 7-Eleven in Texas contained this assertion: “7-Eleven’s use of orange, green and red stripes is iconic, famous and immediately recognized by consumers in the United States and around the world.”

I admit I’m a snob who only shops at inconvenient stores, so this was a surprise to me. I was also amazed to discover in this lawsuit that 7-Eleven colors appear in all sorts of items you can purchase. Why haven’t I noticed people proudly strutting in their 7-Eleven socks?

Shoes would be harder to miss and that’s what the lawsuit is about. It turns out that Nike, Inc., according to the complaint, planned to release shoes with the 7-Eleven colors on 7/11!

Is this meant to tap into the market of people proud of their Big Gulp and hot dog heritage?

Culture comes in many forms.

Taxing issue . The current U.S. government may have found a way to defund everything.

I received a letter from the IRS last week. This is what it said:

“What you need to do … if your address listed above is correct:

“You don’t have to do anything.

“If your address listed above is not correct:

“File a change of address notice …”

Which, of course, I couldn’t do if the letter was sent to the wrong address because I wouldn’t know about it.

Do you think someone at the IRS now thinks all their addresses are correct?

Recidivism . Say, hypothetically, someone loses in court and then goes out and repeats the activity that the court says was wrong. And then another court also says this person was wrong. And then the person does it again. And again. And again.

Shouldn’t there be some sort of penalty for that?

You’d think so, but, apparently, there isn’t if you’re part of immigration enforcement.

If you don’t believe me, go through the daily list of court rulings and count the number of rulings against the government and/or ICE for wrongly locking people up — often for months — or delaying hearings on visas — often for years.

I counted more than two dozen on just one day last week. I see this pretty much every day lately.

Immigrant or citizens-who-don’t-look-right plaintiffs may be winning cases after enormous suffering, but ICE keeps on ICEing and never getting punished for causing all that suffering.

That’s your depressing thought for the week. No further comment needed.