Month: March 2026

I need to read the oral arguments; I’ve just glanced at them.

I don’t think this is going to go well for the state. Sotomayor is asking good questions that make it sound like she is leaning towards The People.

One of the things that just popped into my head is how much the agenda-driven justices seem to like decriminalizing things. They might even side with the Second Amendment if it means that pot users are allowed to exercise their rights.

More tomorrow after I finish with some client work.

I was at my boyfriend’s place on Saturday when I heard about the Ayatollah. For a long time, I just kind of stood there, in shock.

One of my earliest political memories (though I wouldn’t have called it that at the time) was when I was 8 years old. We had a friend in the neighborhood who came from Iran. She was in the country with her mother and father, and was staying for a year. We were all getting ready to say goodbye in ’79, and she was going back to Iran with her parents. Then the Ayatollah took over. They didn’t go back. They mourned their home, but they refused to take their wife/mother/sister/female child back to a place that was bound to try and erase her/them.

That moment, when my friend came to tell me she wasn’t leaving, came streaming back to me when I heard he’d been killed. And then I saw the videos of women and families, Iranians who’d moved here and to other countries (Canada, Australia, Britain, etc) when the Shah was exiled and the radical muslims took over. They were cheering, dancing, sobbing with joy. Many of them were saying the words out loud: “Now I can go home! Soon I can go HOME!”

This is the definition of how asylum should work. These people came here because they were escaping an oppression that not one of us in this country can understand. They had to walk away from their beloved homeland because evil people took it over. And they’ve done their best to live a good life here. But upon learning that the oppression was gone? Their first statement was that they were ready to leave. Not because America is horrible or treated them badly, but because we’d helped them grow and become better people, and now their home is free again!

I cried. I cried because, if that long ago friend is still alive, I’ll bet she’s ready to go home. And I hope she’s able to, because what an incredible thing, to be able to go home.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Right about how the Left is now stumping for the Ayatollah. Are there some people saying that? Yeah, but that’s always going to happen. What’s filling my feed, my very  much Left tinted feed, are news reports about the celebrations, the joy, the tearing off of the hijabs, the bonfires burning effigies of the Ayatollah and his torture gang. There’s video of Iranians, in Iran and in other parts of the world, dancing and singing, blessing President Trump, thanking the United States and Israel for bringing about their freedom. From within the Middle East, the former Shah’s son (I believe that’s correct, but please don’t quote me on this) is wanting to come home as well. He’s telling his people, the people of Iran, that the US and Israel did the easy part, but now their version of “We the People” must stand up and root out the aggressors, the torturers. That the police must begin to do their jobs again, correctly and not as they were under the Ayatollah. That Iran has gotten their hand up, but they  must not accept hand outs, but need to stand on their own two feet and fight this from within. Because that is the ONLY way for them to win as a nation.

The public news media is presenting this as a win. Their only negative talking point was about the girls’ school in Tehran that exploded… and that’s since been shown to be a mistake of Iran, not the US or Israel. It’s difficult to paint this kind of thing as a loss for the United States. As with Maduro, Trump was in and out before most people had a clue as to what was going on. The win was done before we’d all had our morning coffee. You can complain all you like, but he’s good at this.

A pundit this morning said it right. Trump just proved that you can go in, “get ‘er done”, and get out of dodge without starting a ground war. And you can do it repeatedly. The ground wars, the forever wars? They were a choice, not a necessity, a choice made by shitty politicians who didn’t do their job. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for having the balls to take it to Iran and make Khomeini pay. Thank you for freeing the women and children from degradation and oppression.

I won’t wish ill on anyone, especially the dead. That’s not my way, and I think it’s tasteless. But I will say that I hope, genuinely, that the Ayatollah Khomeini met his maker, and his maker is currently taking him to task for everything he did. In detail.

I was going to write a long article; instead, I’ll use the research I did via Grok.

It covers just about everything I was going to say.

Here’s the standard framework used by intelligence professionals (CIA, DIA, Five Eyes, etc.) to evaluate source reliability:

Core Factors (in rough order of importance)

1. Source Access
   How close is the source to the actual information? (Direct access > second-hand > rumor)

2. Past Track Record
   Has this source been accurate before? (Proven reliable vs. untested vs. previously wrong)

3. Corroboration
   Is the information supported by independent sources? (Single-source = weak)

4. Motivation & Bias
   Why is the source providing this? Money, ideology, revenge, disinformation?

5. Consistency
   Does it match known facts and previous reliable reporting?

6. Specificity & Detail
   Vague claims are low value; highly detailed claims that can be tested are higher value.

7. Timeliness
   Fresh information is more valuable than old.

8. Technical Factors (if applicable)
   For imagery, signals, etc.: resolution, chain of custody, technical limitations.

Standard Reliability Rating Scale (used by most agencies)

• A = Completely reliable
• B = Usually reliable
• C = Fairly reliable
• D = Not usually reliable
• E = Unreliable
• F = Reliability cannot be judged

Credibility Evaluation (Information Credibility / Confidence Scale)

This is the second half of the standard intelligence evaluation system (paired with Source Reliability A–F).

Credibility of the Information (1–6 scale)

How the Two Scales Combine

The final rating is usually written as Source Reliability – Information Credibility

Examples:

• B-2 = Usually reliable source reporting information that is probably true
• A-1 = Completely reliable source with confirmed information (highest confidence)
• D-4 = Not usually reliable source reporting doubtful information (very low confidence)

This combined rating is how intelligence agencies communicate how much weight to give a piece of intel.

Here is a professional intelligence-style evaluation of the Iranian claim:

Claim Being Evaluated

“US or Israeli airstrikes deliberately or directly hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran on February 28, 2026.”

1. Source Reliability (A–F Scale)

Rating: E – Unreliable

Reasoning:

• Source: Iranian government + state-controlled media (IRIB, IRNA, Iranian military spokesmen).
• Past track record: Extremely poor when attributing blame to the US or Israel. Iran has a long history of false or exaggerated attributions in military incidents.
• Motivation/Bias: Extremely high incentive to shift blame away from any possible Iranian misfire or collateral damage, especially since the school is located immediately adjacent to an IRGC military facility.
• Access: High physical access to the site, but this does not overcome the severe bias and history of disinformation.
• Corroboration: Zero independent corroboration from any non-Iranian source.

2. Information Credibility (1–6 Scale)

Rating: 4 – Doubtful

Reasoning:

• The physical damage to the school is confirmed (multiple independent outlets have geolocated photos/video of the rubble).
• However, the attribution (that a US or Israeli weapon caused it) has no independent verification.
• Strong alternative explanation exists: the school is right next to a known IRGC base that was a legitimate military target during the strikes.
• No weapon fragments, crater analysis, or munition signatures have been publicly presented by Iran that would support a US/Israeli strike.
• Timing and location make an Iranian missile misfire or collateral damage from striking the nearby military target at least as plausible (and in many analysts’ view, more plausible).

Final Combined Assessment

E-4

Translation:
Unreliable source reporting doubtful information.

Bottom-line confidence: Very low

The Iranian claim that a US or Israeli airstrike directly hit the school should be treated with extreme skepticism until independent evidence (such as weapon forensics, satellite imagery showing the strike, or admission by US/Israel) emerges.

Commentary

I’ve been doing this type of analysis for years on just about everything I hear or read. I just didn’t formalize it. My wife has difficulty with this sort of analysis. Her go-to is “everybody says”.

For her, this means checking with multiple media sources to see what the media sources are saying.

And all the media sources are reporting what the Iranian regime is saying. Thus “everybody is saying.”. What she misses is that all are reporting the same thing, Iran said.

The response from the US and Israel just isn’t nearly as interesting. “We are aware of the situation and are looking into it.”

You will sometimes find this in textbooks. All the textbooks report the same thing. That’s because they all reference the same sources. Those sources in turn might only have a single reference.

As some astute readers might have noted, Jimmy Carter is, in my not so humble opinion, the worst president to ever serve.

His utter spinelessness on the world stage led to the Middle East exploding with violence. His inability to trust the military lead to the deaths of soldiers in a sandstorm in Iran.

His sanctimonious platitudes let the Muslim world know that the United States was morally weak and unwilling to stand up for what was right.

His actions after the “students” took the US Embassy the first time led to the marines being disarmed when the “students” attacked and took the Embassy and held US citizens hostage for over a year.

I hope he is frying in Hell for what he did to my country and the world.

Side note, the day after the students took the Embassy the second time the skies over my home were free of navy aircraft for the first time ever. A couple of weeks later, one of my friends, a Tomcat driver, explained to me that he had been flying around us and for those two weeks was in flying on the other side of the ocean. The military was ready to take action within 24 hours of the Embassy being taken. Their commander in chief decided to sit with his thumb where the sun doesn’t shine.

Since that day, every Muslim terrorist attack can be traced back to that time of weakness. Reagan made them back down but everybody on the world stage knows that when there is a Democrat sitting in the Oval Office, the United States is weak.

Yesterday Iran got to Find Out. The president of the United States, using the authority given to him by Congress, acting with the Israelis, took out the Iranian regime.

Thank you Trump.