Zero Hour 9 PM  

Still Separated:  No one really cared, certainly none of the people who thought that separating young children from parents was ever an acceptable policy.  There can be no other explanation for the Department of Homeland Security’s failure to create a system to track parents and the children that were taken from them when they crossed the border other than that no one was ever all that concerned about reunification.  Think about it, if one person in authority had directed just one half way competent junior person to create a database, not even a database, an EXCEL spreadsheet and a dedicated 24 hour phone line would have sufficed, then the government would know where all the chldren were located.  If the same official had thought to also focus on having someone keep track of the parents, perhaps using those ankle bracelets bought by the previous administration, then they’d know where all of the parents still in the US were located.  And if they’d just cared one iota about the idea of putting families back together they  could have held up a few deportations by a day or two, providing enough time to return children to their parents so that they could go back to their home countries together instead of sending indigent back to the lawless places that they had fled from in the first place.  Sadly, no one cared enough to think through the “no tolerance” policy, because family reunification was never a priority or even a concern.   The whole point of the “no tolerance” exercise was deterrence, the children were just disposable collateral damage. Fortunately a few judges and some dedicated lawyers do care.  Late Friday, one judge refused to grant the government more time to come up with a list of the “tender” age children, the judge insisted that the government provide a list to the ACLU by Saturday, even after, or perhaps because, one government lawyer said that she couldn’t work on the assignment because of her weekend dogsitting obligation.  Late Saturday, Health and Human Services finally came up with a list of the 100 “tender” age children, solving one half of the equation, now the Department of Homeland Security has to locate the parents, easier said than done since somewhere along the line, someone has lost or destroyed some of those relevant records, but then again as Health Secretary Azar admitted on a phone call on Friday, the government had always assumed that some of the Department’s “wards” would never be reunified with their parents anyway, they figured that the kids could just be put in long term foster homes or up for adoption.  The government now has until July 26 to come up with the list of the rest of the children, the 2900 or so over the age of five.  Meantime, the number of politicians and officials upset because they can’t eat in public without being heckled by demonstrators is growing. Poor Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority leader was the target of protesters  shouting “where are the children” in his own home state of Kentucky after someone tweeted out where he was dining.  It turns out that failing to use your authority to forcefully push back against despicable acts when you are in charge of the Senate sometimes has consequences or, at the very least, makes it hard to eat out.  As to Health and Human Services, the department’s priorities are still focused on trashing Obamacare.  Late Friday, while few were paying attention the administration announced that it is halting billions of dollars of  payments to insurers under Obamacare’s risk-adjustment program, a move that further disrupts the insurance market and could lead to more premium increases next year.  

The Supremes:  The big reveal is still scheduled to take place tonight at 9 PM but it’s still unclear who will be named the winner of Apprentice Supreme Court Edition.  Going into the weekend it was though that Brett Kavanaugh, the Yale College and Yale Law School educated Judge for the US District Court of Washington DC was the likely winner of the title in part because Trump likes judges from Ivy League Schools and in part because he remains White House Counsel Don McGahn’s first choice.  However Kavanaugh, an experienced judge has actually written lots of opinions, and though he’s widely viewed as conservative, apparently some of his opinions aren’t reactionary enough for the right wing of Trump’s very right wing party.  Majority Leader McConnell, has told Trump that he might face too  much pushback from his most conservative Republican Senators if Kavanaugh is nominated and, that given the extensive number of opinions written by Kavanaugh, Democrats might be able to extend his review process by claiming they need time to read through all he has written.  McConnell also told Trump to ditch the idea of nominating Amy Coney Barrett because he thinks that given the things that she has said about abortion rights,  her nomination would make it virtually impossible for him to secure the votes of his two pro-choice Senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski or any of the targeted red state Democrats. Its not that the other candidates aren’t anti-abortion, its just that they have been more discrete about their views.   McConnell is instead pushing for either the lesser known Raymond Kethledge or Thomas Hardiman.  Hardiman had been the second choice for the Scalia seat that was handed to now Justice Neil Gorsuch, presumably both guys are sufficiently conservative since their names come from the list prepared  for Trump by the right wing Federalist Society.  Another plus for Hardiman is that he is the choice of Trump’s sister, retired Judge Maryanne Trump Barry.  Judge Barry stays out of the limelight but does talk to her brother frequently and has made him aware of her preference.  Stay tuned.

Regrettable:  Secetary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang didn’t really come off as planned.  First of all he never got to deliver Trump’s very special present, a CD of Elton John’s Rocket Man, to Kim Jong Un because though Pompeo was forced to sit through several ceremonial meals with dozens of North Korean officials,  the Little Rocket Man didn’t show up to any of them.  Despite being stood up, before boarding his plane for his return flight home, Pompeo reported that his conversations with North Korea officials had been productive and carried on in good faith.  However, as soon as Pompeo’s flight got into international airspace the North Koreans released a statement describing the meetings as regrettable, lambasting Trump for his “one-sided” and “robber like” demands.  Although Trump still hasn’t admitted that in his enthusiasm to get a deal done, he was basically snookered by the way more experienced and very intractable North Koreans, he was.  And who, besides virtually every foreign policy expert, saw that coming?  Most certainly, National Security Advisor John Bolton did.  He’s been biding his time, letting Pompeo try to achieve what is likely an impossible denuclearization commitment and timetable from the North Koreans.  Sadly, Bolton whose solution to virtually every international impasse is premptive war may now get a chance to plan one against the North Koreans, or at least that’s what he is hoping.  As to the usually thin skinned Trump, he hasn’t overreacted yet, but he might and the risk is that when that happens he will start paying far too much attention to the war mongering Bolton.  Senator Lindsay Graham is providing some cover to the North Koreans, he insists that their “change of mind” has been encouraged by the Chinese who are angry about Trump’s tariffs.  Graham is right about the Chinese being angry about tariffs but misses that the North Koreans don’t intend to denuclearize. As to the Chinese, the tariffs are likely to make it more difficult for Trump to get their cooperation on North Korean sanctions going forward.  Also regrettable was the July 4^th junket by a number of Republicans  including  Senators Shelby of Alabama, Kennedy of Lousiana and Johnson of Wisconsin.  No Democrats were invited to participate on the trip.  The Senators didn’t get a much hoped for meeting with Putin, who may have been too busy preparing for his upcoming summit with Trump or more likely attending World Cup matches to spend anytime with the US delegation.  They did however learn from the Russians that did meet with them, including former Ambassador Kislyak, that the Russians didn’t meddle in the US elections. Senator Johnson came back so impressed with the Russians hospitality and “frankness” that he said that the US should consider recognizing the Russian’s annexation of Crimea because as the Russian’s reminded him, the region has been part of Russia before.  Johnson, one the many Republican politicians who always finds the time to support Trump and any conspiracy theory that benefits Trump, may have just paved the way for Trump to formally recognize the permanence of the Crimea annexation.  

Rudy’s Back:  Rudy Giuliani remerged big time over the weekend, appearing on the Sunday talk shows where he insisted that Trump would only agree to sit down with Special Counsel Mueller if certain conditions were met.  Those conditions involve Mueller revealing everything he’s learned about Trump’s bad acts to Trump and his attorneys before the interview, something that Giuliani admits that Mueller would never agree to do.  As to those bad acts, Giuliani also said that there were none, because Trump has never colluded or obstructed and he knows that because that’s what Trump’s told him.  Though he didn’t explicitly bad mouth Mueller, Giuliani called the investigation “extremely disgusting,”  “biased” and the “most corrupt he’s ever seen.”   As to extremely disgusting things, Congressman Jim Jordan wants us all to know that he never saw or knew of any of the acts of molestation committed by the Ohio State team doctor during the time that he was the assistant wrestling coach.  Though Jordan did acknowledge that there was some talk in the locker room, as far as he’s concerned, it was just that, unfounded locker room talk.  Despite the fact that so far seven wrestlers have come forward saying that Jordan was aware of their fear of being left alone with the team doctor, Jordan insists that they are all lying and that the  person responsible for the wrestlers’ “phony” accusations is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who is the leader of a deep state conspiracy to punish Jordan for attacking him and the Mueller investigation.