In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

There was an initial hint in the morning's news that there might be more to the Joe Kent story : According to Semafor, Joe Kent, the top counterterrorism official who just resigned in protest of the Iran war, is under FBI investigation for leaking classified information. The investigation predates Kent’s departure, Semafor’s White House correspondent reported. Joe Kent resigned on Tuesday and said the US started the war against Iran due to pressure from Israel. That immediately fed my instinct that anyone who resigns in that sort of public fit is likely about to be shown the door and knows it. It does appear that Kent had been a behind-the-scenes source for Tucker Carlson at least since the runup to Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, 2025: On Wednesday, Fox News’ Mark Levin accused Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s ongoing operation on Iran on Tuesday, of telling Tucker Car...

We're in a strange slow-news period: media, both legacy and alt, had to work for a couple of weeks following the Iran attacks, but around the time the gayattolah story broke, they all left for spring break, and we're back in a silly season. Hormuz? Blip. More dead mullahs? Blip. Cuba? Blip. Instead, we get a big story all gift wrapped with a cute bow on it featuring a jut-jawed special forces type straight from central casting but with retro 70s sideburns and an incongruous wavy hairpiece, Joe Kent: Donald Trump's top counterterrorism official has resigned over the war in Iran, urging the president to "reverse course". In a letter posted on X, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent said that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the US and claimed the administration "started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby". . . . Kent, 45, is a US special forces and CIA veteran whose wife, navy cryp...

Via the AP , The social media feud between former Fox News colleagues Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin hit a new level Sunday with Kelly hitting her rival below the belt — literally. Sunday’s back-and-forth began when Levin called Kelly an “emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck.” “She’s completely revealed and destroyed herself,” Levin continued. “She’s everything people say she is, but much worse. Never an intelligent, thoughtful, or substantive comment. Utterly toxic.” Kelly hit back by writing, “Micropenis Mark @marklevinshow thinks he has the monopoly on lewd.” “He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible. Literally more than some stalkers I’ve had arrested. He doesn’t like it when women like me fight back. Bc of his micropenis,” Kelly added. I asked my AI oracle, "How does she know?" It replied, Kelly's comments appear to be a rhetorical insult rather than a claim based on firsthand physical knowledge. She fram...

It's hard to tell if the latest reports on Mojtaba Khamenei were dug up after diligent search by US and Israeli intelligence, or if they were deliberately planted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- the cumulative effect is the same. As of this morning, for instance , President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal. Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources. So OK, Mojtaba's gay, but he's in a coma, so it doesn't matter -- and who benefits from this state of affairs? The Revolutionary Guard, who reportedly pressured the Assembly of Experts to name him Supreme Leader on his father's death. They wanted a non-entity in that role from the start. And in another w...

One incongruity that "just war" theorists seem to miss is that while they claim an abstraction called "just war doctrine" has developed over millennia, examples of its practical application under law are few and far between. Using AI purely as a semi-omniscient reference librarian, I can come up with only a few "just war" tribunals before the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, such as the 1474 trial of Peter von Hagenbach for atrocities committed during the occupation of Breisach. After that, we have to wait almost 500 years to reach Article 227 of the Versailles treaty, which "publicly arraigned" Kaiser Wilhelm II for "a supreme offence against international morality." However, he was never brought to trial as the Netherlands refused to extradite him, and he lived there until his death in 1941. In other words, we baaically have only one solid example of applying "just war doctrine" in a quasi-jurisprudential environme...

Addressing the crash of a US KC-135 air refueling plane this past Thursday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth remarked, War is hell. War is chaos. And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes - all of them. CENTCOM confirmed that while the crash involved an unspecified incident with two aircraft in friendly airspace, the loss of the aircraft "was not due to enemy action or friendly fire". So, what was it due to? All we really have is Secretary Hegseth's characterization: "War is hell. War is chaos." As best as commentators with experience in mid-air refueling can surmise without other confirmation, two KC-135 tankers collided during some type of refueling maneuver. One was so badly damaged that it immediately crashed, killing all six of its crew. The other had less severe damage, it was able to return to its base, and its crew survived. I've been ruminating on the idea I began to develop ...

I simply haven't been able to find any good single source on what's happening in the Iran war. Unlike the first year or so of the Ukraine-Russia war, when Oryx provided confirmed equipment losses, and the Institute for the Study of War provided overall updates. Now, legacy media is remarkably incurious, probably due to the refusal of most outlets to sign rhe October 2025 Pentagon media agreement. On the other hand, nobody in alt media seems up to the job of adding two plus two in any insightfiul way. Instead, we get stories like US Intel: Iran Govt Not at Risk of Collapse : U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter. A "multitude" of intelligence reports provide "consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger" of collapse and "retains contr...