Children and teenagers chiefly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have been crossing into Texas at a rate of 35,000 a month, the Los Angeles Times reported in June. About 240,000 illegals - 52,000  unaccompanied minors - have crossed into the Rio Grande Valley in recent months. Up to 300,000 more are on their way, WOAI Radio in San Antonio reported Monday (7/7). Many come with infectious diseases such as scabies and tuberculosis, which appear to be spreading into the local population. Doctors and nurses caring for illegal alien children at Lackland AFB in San Antonio have been threatened with arrest if they divulge information about contagion. The refugee camp is like "a giant emergency room," said a psychiatric counselor who talked to Fox News despite the threat.  "We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness," said a nurse, who told Fox News she was "horrified" by what she saw. The administration knew they were coming, did nothing to stop them, prepared inadequately for their arrival. The border crisis is President Obama's "Katrina moment," said USA Today reporter Susan Page.  I have a modest proposal on how to get Zero to put an end to this. 

July 1 might go down in history as the beginning of the end of the comprehensive, progressive income tax. A progressive income tax, in which the government attempts to tax all labor income and capital income, such as interest, dividends and capital gains more than once, cannot help becoming so complex that it eventually dies of its own weight. This is particularly true when the government attempts to tax the worldwide income of its "tax persons" rather than the income located in its own territory. The complexity is caused by the never-ending attempt to define what income is and what should be exempt (loopholes). Press reports now state that the U.S. tax code is more than 77,000 pages and growing at a rapid rate. Obviously, no one individual or even teams of lawyers and accountants can fully understand all of this, including people at the Internal Revenue Service. When laws are too complex and increasingly subjective in their interpretation, it inevitably leads to corruption. All but the willfully blind now understand that the IRS has both become corrupt and incompetent.  It's time to end it, not mend it.

At the start of his political career, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, was a man of modest means. After a lifetime in "public service," he has a net worth of up to $12 million. Sen. Reid often sponsors legislation that benefits firms represented by lobbyist sons Rory and Key, said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute. In just four years between 1998 and 2002, firms connected to the Reid family earned more than $2 million "from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington," the Los Angeles Times reported. Corruption in Washington is driven more by extortion than bribery, Mr. Schweizer said. Bills have been introduced, "crises" manufactured primarily to extort contributions. "We need to somehow break the back of the ability of politicians to leverage their position to extract donations," Mr. Schweizer told CNN.  Yes, indeed, it's time to put an end to Washington's Oligarchy of Corruption.

There was an "audible gasp" from spectators when Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways & Means Committee the hard drive on Lois Lerner's computer had been destroyed. The IRS broke the law when it targeted conservative groups; broke it again when it leaked confidential tax information; broke it a third time when it destroyed evidence. Mr. Koskinen wouldn't apologize for the lost emails; for not informing Congress for months afterward; for giving misleading testimony in March. He was "arrogant," did "a terrible job," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. He is "as smug and imperious as any bureaucrat you will meet," said the New York Post. "It's all there - the arrogance, the wealth, the air of privilege," said Rosslyn Smith, who blogs at the American Thinker. "He has the makings of a great Bond villain." The federal bureaucracy has a face.  And it's really repulsive.  How are we going to wipe the smug smile off it?

I've played water polo for most of my life, and still do. I've had the privilege of playing on some truly excellent teams, and I've also played on some, well... not so excellent teams. I've also been involved with groups of psychologists who thought they knew how to be part of a team or build teams. I was always surprised at the lack of understanding among them. Today I want to talk about some of the things I've found over the years that make for an excellent team... and a not so excellent team, whether it's for work, play, or marriage. This is by no means exhaustive. There is so much that goes into team building that I can't put it all in one article. But I want to focus mostly on doing away with one great big flawed cliché: "There is no I in ‘team'." The truth is, an excellent team has excellent players, each one of whom is there for his personal achievement and for the team's collective achievement. There is no contradiction between the two. When either of these two elements is missing, the magic just won't happen.  A perfect example of this happened at the World Cup on Tuesday (7/01).

Do you know why the U.S. economy shrank almost 3 percent in the first quarter of this year? When the news of the dreadful gross domestic product (GDP) number came out last week, many were surprised, but none were more surprised than the folks in the Obama administration. Many of their supporters had been saying this was the year of a real economic recovery. The quick reaction was to blame the bad GDP numbers on the cold weather.  It is rather ironic that the president blames the bad economy on the cold weather, while at the same time he is running around the country saying we have to spend many more tax dollars to prevent warmer weather a hundred years from now. But get ready for much worse economic weather.  Today, July 1, the administration implements perhaps the most stupid and destructive piece of tax regulation ever devised - the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). This one regulation by itself may well cause another drop in GDP during the third quarter of this year.  The Disaster of FATCA has begun.