The Conservative Cave

IRGC Closes Strait Again, Calls Iran's Foreign Minister an 'Idiot,' Fires on Oil Tankers

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/04/18/irgc-closes-strait-again-calls-irans-foreign-minister-an-idiot-n3814049

The Iranian government is at war with itself as much as it is at war with America, Israel, and the Gulf states.

As I have been writing for days now, there is not one Iranian government in charge, but two, battling it out over who controls the entire country.

The IRGC appears to be winning at the moment, which is utterly unsurprising.
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It's pretty clear that the civilian Iranian government was well on its way to a deal with Trump, and even announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open for business again. They had announced it to the world on X, and the Iranians had given ships actual clearance to transit the Strait.

Then, all of a sudden, the IRGC didn't just close the Strait, but sent boats out to fire on ships that were in the midst of transiting.

This is not entirely surprising. The Iranian government got beheaded, and now the lower-downs are scrapping among themselves for the vacant places of power, making contradictory statements and actions. Those new wannabes are split between assertion of POWER and trying to rebuild a nation out of the rubble.

Will This Atlantic Hit Piece Be the Final Straw?

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/04/19/will-this-atlantic-hit-piece-be-the-final-straw-n4951950

The Atlantic has a well-documented history of publishing fake hit pieces about President Donald Trump and his administration, and one wonders how many more hoaxes they can run before they get in real trouble.

Its latest effort targeting FBI Director Kash Patel may be its most reckless yet — and this time, the bureau is fighting back with lawyers.

The piece, written by reporters Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Lemire, claims that on Friday, April 10, Patel struggled to log into an internal FBI computer system while wrapping up his workday.

Quote

He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”
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It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved.

The piece didn't stop there. It also alleged Patel has been plagued by "bouts of excessive drinking," claiming members of his security detail had trouble waking him on multiple occasions because he was seemingly intoxicated. It further alleged that breaching equipment — the kind used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams — was requested last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.

The FBI denied every word of it before the article ever went live. Attorney Jesse Binnall sent a formal letter to The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick ahead of publication, putting them on notice that the claims were "categorically false and defamatory."

I'm not sure what "The Final Straw" means, but The Atlantic is not likely to fare very well if this goes to court. They don't have their evidence ducks for a "Truth" defense in a row.

1st impeachment hid exculpatory evidence:

Trump was accused of pressuring Zelensky to open an investigation into the activities of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, in exchange for releasing $400 million in U.S. military aid to the country that had already been approved by Congress.

The entire impeachment process was unethical. For starters, due to a change in the House rules quietly made by then-incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi shortly after the Democrats won back the majority in 2018, Trump was denied legal representation, the right to call witnesses, and the right to confront his accuser throughout the impeachment hearings.

You may recall that the whistleblower, who remained anonymous throughout the hearings for “safety reasons,” provided second-hand information to the inspector general of the Intelligence Community. [It should be noted that his identity was actually an open secret in Washington, D.C., and was ultimately revealed by investigative reporter Paul Sperry.]

At any rate, on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released nearly 400 pages of previously undisclosed documents from the 2019 impeachment. And the newly declassified files give us a pretty good idea of why Schiff insisted upon the whistleblower’s anonymity.

Just the News editor John Solomon and his colleague Jerry Dunleavy, who requested that the files be declassified, obtained them on Sunday. They reported that the files “provide a starkly different portrait of the alleged whistleblower whose name and face were never shown to the public and whose lawyerly written letter accusing Trump of hijacking Ukraine policy for political gain was heralded by Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings.”

The new files showed that investigators from the inspector general’s office “developed derogatory evidence” about the whistleblower “including that he submitted false information in his whistleblower complaint, offered hearsay to support his allegations, and had the ‘potential for bias.'”

https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/04/newly-released-2019-impeachment-files-point-to-previously-undisclosed-exculpatory-evidence/

I don't think Leo having been a leader of the Augustine order necessarily means he understands the Just War Doctrine, invented centuries ago.

No wonder he's a White Sox fan.

Of all the DU posts that made me go "WTF?", that one made me go "WTF?" the most (at least in recent times). And it's DU, so the bar is high... er, low. I don't know.