March 9, 2026

WE’RE WATCHING DOWNFALL, BUT WITH MASS NOTIFICATION SYSTEMS AND PCs TO CRANK OUT AI SLOP IN THE AYATOLLAH-BUNKER:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

JOHN HINDERAKER: Lies, Damned Lies, and Journalism. “So the Tomahawk didn’t hit the school, it hit the naval base. And the video indicates that at that point, the school had already been struck. By what? We don’t know, but the one thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t the Tomahawk. My guess is that the military investigation will conclude that the school was struck by an errant Iranian missile, but by that time the left-wing press will have firmly implanted the assumption that it was ours.”

The Western press happily carries water for the mullahs. You cannot despise them enough.

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

GONE IN 60 SECONDS: Noem’s deputy director of ICE bought thousands of vehicles that officers can’t use.

A former Trump administration official wasted millions of taxpayer dollars given to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to purchase thousands of employee vehicles that the agency cannot use to arrest illegal immigrants, according to three sources.

ICE’s top brass are quietly searching for a way to amend the remainder of a massive order of pick-up trucks and SUVs that were ordered last year and slated to be wrapped with the agency’s name, logo, and motto, as well as storing away many vehicles that have been delivered to ICE facilities across the country, the Washington Examiner has learned.

“ICE has never had marked vehicles,” the first person familiar with the purchases said in a phone call. “In talking to people, they’re like, ‘We don’t want to use these, we can’t.’”

The saga is the latest controversial expenditure of taxpayer money within the Department of Homeland Security and speaks to the different ways political appointees at the department have tried to approach operations versus how career law enforcement officials have historically done so.

Over the past year, assaults against ICE personnel have risen 8,000%, according to the DHS, and federal police have opted to hide their faces and identities while working in public. They have frequently switched license plates on rental vehicles to avoid detection by activists, who track the license plate numbers of suspected ICE vehicles in massive crowdsourced databases.

Despite the growing number of ways ICE employees have sought to protect their identities, ICE’s former deputy director, Madison Sheahan, placed a bulk order for vehicles clearly marked with ICE’s logo.

Exit quote: “‘If leadership would have been consulted — leadership being the executive assistant directors, do you need marked vehicles, the people that have done this job would have said, ‘We don’t need marked vehicles, because you’re not going to use them,’ the first person said.”

UPDATE Why would ICE need unmarked cars? Oh, right:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BATTLESWARM: Iran Strikes Day 9. “Back before American journalists became self-licking ice cream cones, war reporting used to include maps, unit movements, logistics, combat reports from journalists embedded with U.S. units, etc. The BBC still seems to do a little of that, but I’m not seeing that from American outlets, maybe because it’s hard work. They don’t even seem to be bothering to tell ChatGPT to do it for them. Hence these roundups to fill the gap.”

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

METAPHOR ALERT:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

TERRORISM IS MOSTLY RICH KIDS LARPING:

Posted at 12:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BUT OF COURSE:

Posted at 12:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds

POSTMODERN FEMINISTS ONLY SUPPORT WOMEN WITH NEUROTIC DELUSIONS OF OPPRESSION, OR “WOMEN” WITH A Y CHROMOSOME:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Stephen Green

ENDORSED:

Posted at 11:55 am by Stephen Green

MATT TAIBBI EXCLUSIVE: The FBI’s Secret Stash Finally Uncovered.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation task force has begun excavating the separate set of books FBI keeps using an inaccessible “prohibited access” file designation, according to multiple government sources. Though an internal fight over how to handle the files continues, embattled FBI Director Kash Patel has assigned personnel to examine decades of hidden history, Racket News has learned, with some files already turned over to Congress.

“This is it — the deep state,” one of the sources said.

Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, whose work with whistleblowers and pressure across years was key to prying prohibited access files loose, expressed cautious optimism.

“If it weren’t for whistleblower disclosures to my office, the very existence of the FBI using ‘Prohibited Access’ files for some investigations would have remained in the dark,” he said. “I’ve asked Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel to turn over certain Prohibited Access records to Congress. I’ve received some, but am still waiting on others. I urge the DOJ and FBI to keep digging – which previous administrations apparently didn’t make any effort to do – so that the facts can come to light. The FBI’s secret stash of records is scandalous.”

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green

NOT A MONTY PYTHON SKETCH, THIS IS MAMDANI’S NYC:

Then there’s this… which is still not a Python bit:

You can’t make this stuff up, and in America’s blue zones, you don’t have to.

Posted at 11:24 am by Stephen Green

WHACK-A-MULLAH:

Posted at 10:53 am by Stephen Green

PRIVACY: Calif. lawsuit accuses Meta of sending nude video from AI glasses to workers.

The company pitches its glasses, with their small cameras that have raised some privacy concerns, as safe: “Designed for privacy, controlled by you.” In late February, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, or SvD, published an investigation that said Kenyan subcontractors end up seeing deeply personal footage from the glasses — including bank cards, people changing and people having sex. A new federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Wednesday points to the article and accuses Meta of false advertising, fraud and breach of contract.

“Consumers purchased these Glasses believing Meta’s privacy assurances,” the complaint says. “They did not, and could not reasonably, understand that their bedrooms, bathrooms, families, bodies, and more would be exposed to strangers around the world.”

Meta is still analyzing the lawsuit and did not answer SFGATE’s specific questions about why private video might end up at data labeling offices in Kenya. Spokesperson Chris Sgro told SFGATE, “Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device.”

Maybe, maybe not — but those glasses are still creepy.

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

THOSE FIRST SEVEN WORDS ARE EVERGREEN: David French Suffers An Apparent Brain Injury Over James Talarico.

In a moment we should have seen coming, New York Times columnist David French has just gushed out a shameless celebration of Talarico’s insane nonsense, every word of which should qualify the worst op-ed prostitute in America for urgent psychiatric intervention. Here’s a whole paragraph: “Or, to put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.”

A challenge: Find the evidence French offers for the claim that Talarico “acts like a Christian.” He cites some speeches, but speeches aren’t actions. How, in David French’s conception, does James Talarico live like a Christian, by his actions, and what does he think that means? Hang onto this point, because we’ll be coming back to it.

But then go on to the characterization of MAGA as a Christian movement, full stop, as if no one would argue. Quick: Name the top three speeches Donald Trump has made in which he used the Bible as an argument for his political program. Discuss, in detail, the specific policy influence of Trump’s pastor, who you should be able to name if we’re talking about a Christian nationalist ideologue. Or, as a shortcut, just show the evidence French has ever presented to prove that MAGA is primarily theological, and that Trump’s first instinct is to steer by religious faith. French doesn’t argue this, because he can’t. He just says it. It’s a noise he makes, endlessly. It has no meaning of any kind.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:22 am by Stephen Green