On page A3 of today's Washington Post, staffer Reid Wilson relayed the story of how "Voter discontent opens up more governor's races" in a reliably Obama-friendly corridor of the continental United States. "GOP offers surprising challenges in Northeast," notes the subheader for the story.

A new Gallup poll reports that Americans trust the federal government less than they ever have. Given that President Obama has increasingly insisted on acting on his own, it's not unreasonable to infer that this result means, consistent with other polling the press has stubbornly ignored — documented in a new Media Research Center study — that they also trust his leadership less than they ever have.

Gallup's main headline dressed up the results up by focusing on only half of what it found: "Trust in Federal Gov't on International Issues at New Low." But the subheadline says, "Americans' trust in government handling of domestic problems also at record low." Okay, guys. What problems aren't either domestic, international, or a combination of both? So trust in the federal government to handle any problems is at an all-time low. How tough is it to say that?

The "Office of Refugee Resettlement" in the government's Department of Health and Human Services has released a county-by-county list of 29,890 unaccompanied children sent "to safe settings with sponsors (usually family members)." Year-to-date, the number, according to an HHS state-by-state list, is 37,477. This has occurred "while they await immigration proceedings."

Now that they're out in the general population, we're still supposed to believe that the majority of these "children" (more on that later) will ultimately be deported. After all, that's what White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on July 7, specifically:

In discussing President Obama's Wednesday press conference on the Veterans Administration wait-list scandal, CNN's Drew Griffin, identified by the network's Jake Tapper as "the reporter who began this whole story with his investigation into the Phoenix VA," appeared to barely contain himself as he described the "disconnect between what's happening out here in the country and what the president is talking about."

Specifically, Griffin asserted that "this problem is real; it exists; it really doesn't have to be studied," and that "the vets I've been talking to wanted much more direct action." Griffin clearly expected a far more substantive and immediate response from Obama yesterday, and was disappointed that it didn't come. The video segment (via the Washington Free Beacon), a transcript, and Rush Limbaugh's insightful reaction follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

When several members of Congress set out in the early 1990s to improve fiscal reporting and internal controls in the federal government, one thing they certainly had a right to expect is that the press would report on lapses as embarrassments, and that otherwise nonchalant or reluctant bureaucrats would figure out that it would be in their best interest to tighten their ships. It hasn't happened, largely because the press quickly got bored, enabling the bureaucrats to thumb their noses at those who called them out for weak reporting or control violations.

To name just one glaring example: Concerning the Internal Revenue Service, in August of last year, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration happily reported "the downgrade of the information security material weakness to a significant deficiency during the Fiscal Year 2012 financial statement audit," and that "the IRS removed it from the December 31, 2012, remediation plan" (that's bureaucratese for "finally solved the problem") — 19 years after it was first identified in 1993. In that context, let's look at an outrageous situation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.