The Department of Homeland Security issued a press release today stating it is "waiving" the law to start building sections of Donald Trump's "border wall" in San Diego.

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a waiver to waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international border near San Diego. The waiver will be published in the Federal Register in the coming days.

... The [San Diego]sector remains an area of high illegal entry for which there is an immediate need to improve current infrastructure and construct additional border barriers and roads. To begin to meet the need for additional border infrastructure in this area, DHS will implement various border infrastructure projects. These projects will focus on an approximately 15-mile segment of the border within the San Diego Sector that starts at the Pacific Ocean and extends eastward, to approximately one mile east of what is known as Border Monument 251.

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The Wall St Journal reports (free link via the Capitol Journal)Donald Trump told a gathering of police officers:

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon—you just see them thrown in, rough—I said, please don’t be too nice,” Mr. Trump said, prompting laughter and applause from the audience of law enforcement officers. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody—don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, OK?”

That comment was over the top for acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, who sent out an agency-wide email repudiating it:

Mr. Rosenberg wrote that although he is certain no “special agent or task force officer of the DEA would mistreat a defendant,” Mr. Trump’s comments required a response.

“I write to offer a strong reaffirmation of the operating principles to which we, as law enforcement professionals, adhere,” the memo says. “I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong. That’s what law enforcement officers do. That’s what you do. We fix stuff. At least, we try.”

USA Today has more of Rosenberg's memo to DEA agents: [More...]

Anthony Scaramucci is out as Trump's Communications Director. He lasted 9 days. Reports are it was at the best of the newly installed John Kelly.

The New York Times reports Page 6 is having a field day with the reports that his wife filed for divorce and gave birth to their second child just last week while he was in D.C.

They ought to install revolving doors at the White House.

Over at Yahoo News, Robert Reich has a column, Donald Trump: The Biggest Loser. [More...]

I had another Trump-free news weekend, it was so pleasant not thinking about him.

I hate the new layout of Google News -- I would switch to Yahoo but it's worse -- at Yahoo, they make their ads appear to be news articles and they then put one after every second or third headline.

I'm looking for a substitute (in addition to Lexis Nexis which I use to fact-check and find interesting details.) Any ideas?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Reince Priebus is out as Donald Trump's Chief of Staff. John Kelly, currently the head of Homeland Security, will replace him.

Donald Trump seems to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. He and his inexperienced family members, masquerading as policy makers, are the problem, not his underlings.

Every thing he does is a fail.

Most mistakes in one article I've seen yet on the health care vote: NBC News. I suspect it will be gone by morning, so I printed and uploaded it. How did they even release it? It seems like it was written before the vote by someone who was convinced the Republicans would succeed:

Senate Republicans narrowly passed their pared-down amendment of an Obamacare repeal bill at 1:00 a.m. Friday morning, less than three hours after the text of the legislation was released.

Update: I was right. NBC has already replaced the article with this version by the same reporter.

Some better coverage with interesting details:

Reuters on McCain's apparently last minute decision to vote against the bill: [More...]

Update: 1:35 a.m.: Republicans fail to repeal Obamacare and pass its "Skinny Repeal" bill. Sens. McCain, Murkowski and Collins voted against the Republican bill, making the final tally 49 (yes) to 51 (no).

I rarely quote a Donald Trump tweet but I can't resist this one from a few days ago:

So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John.

Don't miss this article by Ryan Lizza in today's New Yorker. Anthony Scaramucci called him last night and went beserk over Lizza's reporting who was eating at the White House last night. He demanded to know who leaked it and when Lizza would not say, he unleashed his fury on leakers, threatened to fire the whole team, and in a graphic, expletive-filled tirade, went after Chief of Staff Reince Priebus:

They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a f*cking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f*cking thing and see if I can c*ck-block these people the way I c*ck-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)

Same thing when he talked about Steve Bannon: [More...]

The bully in the oval office lost today. The Senate voted against repealing the Affordable Health Care Act (Obama Care) without a replacement. Also,

On Tuesday night, a version of a repeal and replace plan, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act, failed to overcome a parliamentary objection that the bill had not yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

Here's how they voted.

There are a lot of Republican plans in the works. Here's how they compare.

There may be a vote later this week on whatever Republicans settle on. But they are all bad.

Sen. John McCain gave a speech to the Senate today. The transcript is here. There are two highlights:

We are an important check on the powers of the Executive. Our consent is necessary for the President to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and in many respects to conduct foreign policy. Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the President’s subordinates. We are his equal!

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Donald Trump is increasing his attacks on Jeff Sessions. In addition to his recusal on Russia, he's now focusing on investigating Hillary Clinton. He says Sessions is weak on this.

This is classic deflection. He wants the attention off of his children. In his desire to protect them, he's turned into even more of a bullying dictator. Now he not only wants to dictate the outcome of DOJ investigations, he wants to choose what DOJ investigates.

With every turn of the media pump's handle informing us of new allegations of malfeasance by Team Trump, he blasts up the pressure on Republicans. At what point do they feel like fools for voting for him?

Trump seems worried. He must know he's in deep water. He also knows that calling for investigating Hillary will re-energize his under-informed base. He can't afford to lose their support.

Now that he's has a few cabinet and judicial confirmations under his belt, I wouldn't put it past him to try and sneak Rudy Giuliani in the back door to replace Jefferson Sessions. I doubt he's seriously considering Ted Cruz (as was speculated in yesterday's media) because I don't think he'd ever fully trust him. (Cruz will never forget how he used to call him "Lyin' Ted". Neither will we.)

If Rudy Giuliani gets any speaking role in the Trump Administration, I'm going to have a lot of fun re-posting all his peccadilloes. And there are legions of them.

An ailing John McCain flies in to vote, Republicans once again kowtow to the Charlatan's boisterous threats, and Mike Pence breaks a tie vote. The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act advances.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..... The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles.

This is an utter train wreck that is barreling towards us. [More...]