The children streaming across our border are refugees fleeing violence in their home countries, Democrats say. That isn't true. The primary reason they came to the U.S. was because they think they'll be allowed to stay, said 219 of 230 illegal immigrant children and adult family members interviewed by the Border Patrol in May, according to a report by the El Paso Intelligence Center. Illegals have said the same to journalists who've interviewed them. Nearly 90 percent of unaccompanied minors stopped at the border last year and this are teenagers, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicates.In the Rio Grande Valley, adults and children crossing as part of a family unit outnumber "unaccompanied minor children" by nearly five to one. About 25 percent of illegals apprehended in Texas, 20 percent in Arizona have criminal records in their home countries, local authorities say. Some of the "children" sport tattoos indicating membership in MS-13, the vicious Salvadoran street gang.

Jack Wheeler is on a boat to Russia, so I'm filling in for him on the HFR on what's been a truly eventful week. If a documentary were made about John Kerry's performance as Secretary of State, it ought to be entitled: "The Putz." In an administration in which the most common characteristics of senior officials are arrogance and incompetence, Kerry sticks out. It isn't often we can be grateful our president and his secretary of state are international laughingstocks, but in this instance we can. Some suspect Kerry was made secretary of state in order to make Hillary Clinton's performance seem better. Here, here and here are reminders it wasn't. * * * * Democrats were gleeful last night after House Republicans failed to pass a bill to address the border crisis. But their joy was short-lived. * * * * Zero's downsizing of the military leaves America too weak to counter rising global threats, said an independent panel appointed by DoD and Congress. * * * * If you weren't fretting about the Ebola virus before, you will be after reading this. * * * * House and Senate negotiators have agreed on a VA "reform" bill that does a little to relieve the plight of veterans; more to reward the bureaucrats who've neglected and abused them * * * * New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo could be in really big trouble. With the law, not the voters. Watergate type trouble, thinks the very left wing Nation magazine. * * * * The administration's argument Congress intended for those who sign up for Obamacare on the federal exchange should get subsidies too has been torpedoed by a video of remarks made in January of 2012 by one of Obamacare's leading architects.

Starvation has claimed the lives of 128 people - 18 of them children or babies - in the Palestinian refugee camp since the conflict began. But the Yarmouk camp is in Syria, where images of atrocities go viral only when misrepresented as coming from Gaza, so the world has paid little attention to their suffering. "My Twitter and Facebook feeds would have me believe that the only noteworthy military conflict in the world today is that between Israel and Hamas," said Jonathan Messing of the Stanford Business School. "Either many of you care about war only when it involves a Jew holding a gun, or you are woefully unaware of what else is going on in the world," Mr. Messing said. At the time he wrote, about 170,000 had died in ongoing violence in Syria; 600 in Gaza. "It must be so awkward having to check whether the dead child is from Gaza or Syria before deciding whether to be morally outraged," tweeted Marc Lynch, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University. The sequence of events triggered by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers reminds Clarice Feldman that "Providence isn't just a city in Rhode Island."

CNN's Drew Griffin, whose reporting on secret waiting lists at the medical center in Phoenix led to the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, concluded that VA dysfunction and corruption are so widespread and deeply ingrained that just making a change at the top won't change much.   "I don't know how you fix this...other than I would throw out every senior manager in the VA," Mr. Griffin told CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin June 23. When he made that remark, the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency set up to protect whistleblowers, was investigating 10 cases where VA employees said they were punished after reporting abuses to management. OSC now is investigating 67 charges of retaliation at 45 VA facilities in 28 states, its chief told the House Veterans Affairs Committee July 12. After she told Congress data was being falsified to hide long delays and errors in processing veterans' claims, she was retaliated against, Kristen Ruell, a quality review specialist in Philadelphia, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee July 14. "The VA's problems are the result of morally bankrupt managers that through time and grade have moved up into powerful positions where they have the power to, and continue to, ruin people's lives," Ms. Ruell said.

Do you want the Obama administration sharing all of your financial information with the Russian, Chinese and Saudi Arabian governments? You may be thinking, not even President Obama would go that far. Not so, read on. This past week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its full proposal for a global standard for the automatic exchange of financial information. The rationale behind this despicable idea is to more effectively enable governments, such as that of France and the United States, to identify tax evaders. This might sound like a good idea until one realizes that every individual and business will be stripped of all of their financial privacy if this becomes the law of the land - and it is very close to being just that. Under the OECD proposal, all of the information that financial institutions now report to the U.S. government to try to ensure income-tax compliance, including your account balances, interest, dividends, proceeds from the sale of financial assets - would be shared with foreign governments. The United States and other governments will, of course, claim that your sensitive financial information will remain confidential - and that you can trust the governments. It is bad enough when American officials leak or misuse sensitive financial information about U.S. citizens and businesses, but just think what is going to happen when all of those corrupt officials in foreign governments get ahold of it.