March 18, 2026

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

China is a problem. But certain parts of the intel community are a bigger and more immediate problem.

Posted at 9:53 am by Stephen Green

THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Man in Iran Tacitly Admits He Had a ‘Minder’ Who Informed Regime.

CNN had repeatedly insisted that senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen and the network maintained “full editorial control” about what they reported when the former was in inside Iran. But, in an interview with the U.K.-based newspaper The Guardian, which was less of an interview and more just answering prompts, Pleitgen asserted that he and his cameraman didn’t have a “minder” lurking over them. Yet, when he described who guided him around and what he was allowed to see, it very much sounded like a minder.

“Did you have a minder? Were you taken around by someone?” asked Guardian’s media and power reporter Jeremey Barr. A minder in this case being someone who worked with/for the regime who would shadow or guide a foreign journalist, who would only show them what the regime wanted, or to be a constant reminder the regime was in control over their stay and life.

Pleitgen initially suggest they CNN didn’t have a minder, but they did have “a guy” who showed them around and translated. He began to say the guy “obviously” had some sort of duty before cutting himself off and noting that the regime had asked the guy not to show them certain places.

Read the whole, and remember that this kind of thing is nothing new for the network: How CNN hid the truth about Saddam and betrayed the world.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

NIFTY:

Although I’d be surprised if the Pentagon (and Israel, too) hadn’t already figured this one out.

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I SO Did Not Have ‘Gayatollah’ Khamenei on My Bingo Card. “Please believe me, dear readers, that I desperately want to be more mature about this story because this is a newsletter, after all. Then again, I am the snarky opinion guy around here and you’re all familiar with my observational peculiarities. Please know that my tongue is being figuratively bitten to avoid any fanciful pictures I might want to paint about a mullah bath house that pipes in Adam Lambert music all day.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

BLUE STATE BLUES:

Posted at 8:51 am by Stephen Green

THE MACHINE HASN’T QUIT PROTECTING THE LEFT:

Posted at 8:38 am by Glenn Reynolds

DON SURBER: The Little Orange Rooster “’Not I,’ said the NATO nations who forgot 102,839 Americans died protecting freedom since World War II.”

What are the odds that Trump puts a tariff-like “security fee” on all oil transiting the Strait of Hormuz? . . .

Posted at 8:37 am by Glenn Reynolds

DON’T LET UP NOW: ‘Worst of the worst’: Latest ICE roundup nabs murderers, pedophiles.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday announced the arrest of several violent criminals, including convicted murderers and pedophiles, as part of its latest “worst of the worst” roundup.

The “worst of the worst” series is part of an effort by DHS to highlight the criminal nature of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) priority targets amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

“Yesterday, ICE arrested criminal illegal alien murderers, pedophiles and sex criminals – the very definition of depraved,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said. “Under President Trump, if you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you and arrest you. There is nothing that will stop ICE from putting American families, American children and American lives FIRST.”

Trump has set a goal of deporting as many as 22 million illegal aliens from the country. As of January, DHS stated that roughly 3 million had left the country through a combination of physical deportations and voluntary exits.

Topping the list was Sergio Colin-Aviles of Mexico, who was convicted of homicide or manslaughter.

Dems want to keep them in the country, free-range.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

MORE FALLOUT FROM 2020:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

THIS RIGHT HERE IS THE BEST ARGUMENT FOR THE SAVE ACT:

Posted at 8:20 am by Stephen Green

I SUSPECT THE PAKISTANI ISI HAS TENDRILS THROUGHOUT THE UPPER ECHELONS OF BRITISH SOCIETY:

Posted at 8:19 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE LEFT HAS ROOTED FOR AMERICA’S ENEMIES FOR BASICALLY MY ENTIRE LIFETIME:

Posted at 8:15 am by Glenn Reynolds

THIS ISN’T DECOLONIZATION, IT’S STRAIGHT-UP COLONIZATION:

Posted at 8:12 am by Glenn Reynolds

WHEN PEOPLE LIE AND INFILTRATE, THEY AREN’T YOUR FRIEND, AND THEY PROBABLY AREN’T REALLY ALTRUISTIC:

Posted at 8:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Hollywood Dodges a Bullet.

The pleasantly surprising news that Paramount, not Netflix, came out on top in the Warner Bros. sweepstakes will turn out to be one of the great cultural bullet-dodges of all time… like Neo on Agent Smith’s roof big. Most everyone here in town understands this on a gut level, though few will say so out loud because as the drama dragged on, much of Hollywood decided that known cinephile Ellison was the bad guy in this particular story.

Perhaps now that the WB derby is over and the good guys won, someone in this accursed town can cash in on that signal and begin to reverse Hollywood’s grand mistake. Because in the recognition and reversal of that mistake lies a profitable way forward for the theatrical movie business, and for those of us who still love the art form and wish to see it endure for another generation of moviegoers, that would be great news indeed.

Netflix’s perilously woke management proved to be their undoing:

 

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll

HMM: Flight Costs Are Up, but Travelers Aren’t Deterred, U.S. Airlines Say.

At an investor conference on Tuesday, executives from most major U.S. airlines said that robust travel demand was offsetting the effects of winter storms and a huge rise in the cost of jet fuel since the start of the war in Iran. The price of jet fuel on Monday was about 50 percent higher than it was before the war began on Feb. 28.

Executives at American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said they had incurred $400 million each in higher fuel costs, but that they were not changing their profit forecasts for the first three months of the year because ticket sales remained strong. The executives said their airlines had broken daily or weekly records for ticket sales this year.

“It’s across all segments, covering corporate, covering international, covering premium leisure, covering main cabin, covering our domestic system,” Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said at the J.P. Morgan 2026 Industrials Conference in Washington. “We’re seeing strength in every market that we look at.”

It’s the same story with beef prices. They’re at or near record highs, but consumer are still buying — there’s little-to-none “protein substitution” going on, even with 80/20 ground beef nearing $7 a pound at Walmart.

Whatever the press tells you about how pinched consumers are, we’re still spending on the things we like.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green