March 29, 2026

THE OLD AND THE DUMB:  No bosses.

Posted at 12:34 am by Sarah Hoyt

March 28, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Have fun!

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THIS IS WHAT THE DISPATCH IS LIKE IN 2026:

Posted at 7:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OLD AND BUSTED: John Kerry’s infamous 2004 “global test” presidential debate rhetoric.

The New Hotness? Europe flunks Trump’s test:

Tweet continues, Trump “was testing whether European countries that the U.S. has protected for over 80 years would do the bare minimum to help secure global sea lanes, which American taxpayers have also been underwriting for decades at no cost to them. In this case, those sea lanes benefit Europe far more than the U.S. and Europe failed the test.”

Exit question: The Hormuz Hypothesis – What If the U.S. Navy Isn’t in a Hurry to Reopen the Strait?

Posted at 5:17 pm by Ed Driscoll

CANDY CRUSH! Thieves make off with 12 tons of KitKat chocolate bars.

Twelve tons of KitKat chocolate bars went missing in ​Europe last week after thieves ‌made off with the truck transporting them, Swiss food giant Nestle  said on ​Saturday.

KitKat, which is made by ​Nestle, said the truck carrying 413,793 ⁠bars of its new range ​set off from central Italy to ​distribute the chocolate throughout Europe, but never reached its scheduled final destination in Poland.

The ​vehicle and the merchandise remain ​unaccounted for.

Though the suspects should be pretty easy to spot:

Another movie version proposed here:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE RADICALIZATION OF CALLA WALSH:

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint assault on Iran, perhaps no American has more aggressively and publicly rallied behind the Islamic Republic than Calla Walsh. From her new base in Lebanon, the 21-year-old Cambridge-raised activist has taken to social media and left-wing podcasts to incite her fellow countrymen and women to sabotage U.S. and Israeli defense contractors wherever they can find them. On March 3, she mocked four American soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike, posting: “They all died fighting for fascism, genocide, pedophilia, and cannibalism.” She attached pictures of the dead Americans. In recent days she reposted a list of missile-production sites inside the U.S.

“We have a duty to escalate,” Walsh told her host on the Psychic Militancy podcast last Saturday from Beirut, noting that “lockdowns” of weapons factories and vandalism alone are “not sufficient at this point.”

She added: “And as the genocide and these wars of aggression continue to escalate, much more is demanded of people in the West.”

Walsh looks every part the art-school hipster, with her thick-rimmed glasses and a mop of curly hair. But she’s a chameleon of terror. Five years earlier, as a 16-year-old, Walsh was fawned over by The New York Times for being a young, social media-savvy activist who was helping to shake up the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. But as a monthslong investigation by The Free Press shows, she’s thrown her allegiance squarely behind the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The U.S. government has placed her on a suspicious persons watch list for her expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran, U.S. officials told me, as well as a spiderweb of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

* * * * * * * * *

It was Senator Ed Markey’s 2020 reelection bid that elevated Walsh’s profile nationally. Polls showed the septuagenarian trailing the 39-year-old Joe Kennedy III by as many as 16 points. The age gap and the Kennedy mystique appeared to many pollsters as too much for Markey to overcome.

Walsh and a network of hundreds of young, progressive online activists, who became known as the Markeyverse, changed the course of the race. They used social media to mobilize young voters, casting Markey as the leading Democrat fighting climate change and corporate corruption. Kennedy, in contrast, was portrayed as the scion of an entrenched political dynasty who was beholden to business interests and the Washington establishment.

A platinum blonde Walsh canvassed Boston neighborhoods in a Green New Deal T-shirt and face mask. Markey won the 2020 Democratic primary by 11 points and praised Walsh and her allies. Glowing profiles appeared in The New York Times and Boston magazine. “It’s a movement fueled by young people who are not afraid to raise their voices or make enemies,” Markey said after the vote. “This is a tribute to those young people and to their vision. They will save us if we trust them.”

Not since Al Gore declared “Mission Accomplished” to his brand of radical environmentalism by selling out to the petrostate of Qatar in 2013 has an environmentalist pivoted on a dime to defend an oppressive oil-driven Middle Eastern regime. I’m sorry that Walsh’s “Green New Deal” t-shirt is cut-off in the left photo of the before and after juxtaposition below:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DID YOU KNOW: That China and Russia are rearming Iran, even as the bombs and missiles from the U.s. and Israel are on a week-long pause implemented by President Donald Trump in the hope of a successful deal being negotiated? Richard Pollock has the details and much more that hasn’t been reported in the MSM.

Posted at 2:12 pm by Mark Tapscott

DEEP SCHIFF:

Last year, PJM’s Matt Margolis wrote: Exposed: How Hillary Planned to Reward Schiff for Undermining Trump.

Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge has not only released FBI reports that reveal that Rep. Eric Swalwell, another Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was also a habitual leaker of classified information, even receiving warnings from the FBI to be more cautious. The reports also indicate that had Clinton won the 2016 election, she would likely have rewarded Schiff for his efforts by appointing him CIA director, a testament to their deep ties and shared political objectives.

As Mark Steyn wrote in 2005 upon the announcement that FBI man Mark Felt was Woodward and Bernstein’s “Deep Throat,” memorably played by Hal Holbrook in 1976’s All the President’s Men: 

Now we learn that Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the Director’s job when the big guy keeled over after half-a-century in harness. And, whatever Mark Felt’s motives, it wasn’t because of a distaste over illegal break-ins: at the FBI, he himself had authorized illegal burglaries at the homes of friends and family of various leftists.

Oh, dear. Like the Star Wars wrap-up, “How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it. The nobility of the Watergate myth – in which media boomers and generations of journalism-school ethics bores have invested so much – seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.

And if the above is true as well, it explains so many of Schiff’s antics over the past decade.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll