NOT SURE HOW CLOSE ALBERTA ACTUALLY IS TO INDEPENDENCE, BUT THIS CAN’T BE HELPING OTTAWA’S CAUSE:

OH CANADA: With Alberta on the brink of deciding on independence, PM Carney has reportedly dispatched Chinese shock troops to the province armed with firearm types that were seized from residents 30 years ago. In all seriousness, Carney’s decision to embrace China’s new world… https://t.co/k2w2GqvoFi pic.twitter.com/F7yA4qomq8

— @amuse (@amuse) February 15, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Czech Official Sends Hillary Clinton Crawling Back Into Her Box of Wine. “Mrs. C. traveled to Munich and ran into a situation that she’s not used to: somebody dared to challenge her. That doesn’t happen often, given that most people are afraid of getting Vince Fosterized. Maybe the updated version of that should be ‘Epsteinated.'”

If nothing else happens today, at least I added “Epsteinated” to my SpellCheck.

NOTE: X seems to be having some trouble this morning — sorry about the embeds not working, but they should come back up as soon as X does.

INDEED:

"Ironically, in denouncing how 'wealthy powerful men' are protected in a two-tiered legal system, Khanna pulled the ultimate powerplay — defaming four individuals with little concern of accountability. Ironically, Khanna succeeded in showing the ultimate example of the impunity… https://t.co/TOUKK9oLYM

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) February 15, 2026

And this from the replies: “The best part is that after he was made aware of this, both Khanna and Massie blamed the DOJ for ‘not adding context.’ Zero accountability.”

NUKES FOR EUROPE? Poland should ‘begin work’ on nuclear defenses, Nawrocki says.

In an interview with Polsat television on Sunday, Nawrocki described himself as “a great supporter of Poland joining the nuclear project” and argued that the country should develop its security strategy “based on nuclear potential.”

He added: “This path, with respect for all international regulations, is the path we should take. … We must work towards this goal so that we can begin the work. We are a country right on the border of an armed conflict. The aggressive, imperial attitude of Russia toward Poland is well known.”

His comments come amid a growing debate in several European countries about developing their own nuclear weapons in the light of growing threats from Moscow and an erosion of trust in the United States.

Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, for example, said at the Munich Security Conference this weekend that “nuclear deterrence can give us new opportunities.” Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said talks were ongoing with France about a European deterrent.

Non-proliferation has been dying for a while, but I never thought I’d see even Latvia openly discussing nukes.

CHEAPER TO KEEP HER:

There’s a weird poeticism to the radical American left being funded by divorce settlements. https://t.co/RNaCyaQIxS

— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) February 15, 2026

MORE NUKES IS GOOD NUKES: War, Energy Departments Announce Nuclear Energy Initiative.

THIS ACTUALLY BEGAN UNDER ADAMS, BUT WATCH IT ACCELERATE:

Under Mamdani, the Muslim calls to prayer in NYC is becoming the new normal @AmyMek pic.twitter.com/M5zuPXs8yX

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 16, 2026

IT’S ONLY JOBS: City Hall boots Israel drone supplier from Brooklyn Navy Yard — after Mamdani took office.

A NYC manufacturer that supplies drones to Israel to monitor the Gaza Strip border was booted from the city-owned Brooklyn Navy Yard six weeks after pro-Palestine Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. — whose board members serve at the pleasure of the mayor and manage the 300-acre industrial park — opted not to renew its lease with Easy Aerial, Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) gloated on X Thursday.

“This public asset should not be leasing space to companies producing drones that are being transformed into weapons of war,” he said.

The company has long been the target of protests outside the former Navy shipyard, including by a group called “Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard” that demanded the board evict tenants that assist Israel.

State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn), a staunch Zionist, said the decision to boot Easy Aerial is foolish.

“Chasing good jobs out of New York because Mr. Mamdani and his friends hate Jews is probably not a very good economic development program,” he said.

But it’s excellent moral preening.

HEH: In Honor of Gov. Newsom: Use ‘Obama Day’ to Celebrate His 3,797 Drone Strike Victims.

MASSIE, LOL:

The Bondi-led DOJ has obtained a wildly successful string of huge victories in the courts at the appellate and Supreme Court levels that have advanced the Trump Administration agenda across a broad range of issues that will be consequential for decades to come.

If the Epstein… https://t.co/VGQ0dWpplW

— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) February 14, 2026

MOST PECULIAR:

On the one hand, you have four random guys who had nothing to do with Epstein.

On the other hand, you have your billionaire donor, Reid Hoffman, who visited Epstein's island and ranch and was working to help him as late as 2018.

Really weird that you never mention the latter. https://t.co/v6ZEiPkEdu

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 14, 2026

TRULY AWFL:

This is perfect.

ICE agent: “If you cared, you would care about the child who got raped and the person who got murdered by the guy we’re looking for. “

Awful, ugly white lady: “I don’t care.”

The entire insane national debate encapsulated in 20 sec.

pic.twitter.com/sYMBU6lIhp

— Gerry Callahan (@GerryCallahan) February 13, 2026

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…

Staggering, really.

UPDATE: Embed isn’t working for whatever reason, so here’s a screencap instead.

UPDATE (From Ed): It’s worth noting what’s under the ellipses in the above tweet to get the full effect: “8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years. 8% of the entire country. 7% of Cuba. 6% of Haiti. 5% of Honduras.” Absolutely staggering numbers. 

JENNIFER RUST REVIEWS DENNIS PRAGER’S LATEST: Who Decides What Is Good and What Is Evil? Book Review: ‘If There Is No God.’

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Edtech is booming, but so is ‘brain rot.’

IQ, which measures the ability to learn in school, used to correlate closely with years of schooling, Horvath writes. Not any more. “Despite spending more time in school than any generation before, Gen-Z is losing school-ability.”

Trying to make learning easier will backfire, he warns. “The more students rely on easy, supportive digital tools, the less friction they encounter and the less mental effort they must exert. But friction is not a flaw of learning: it is learning.”

“Edtech companies tout huge learning gains,” but researchers have found “technology rarely boosts learning in schools — and often impairs it, editorializes The Economist.

Around the world, in-school computer use is up and test scores are down, the story notes. “Back in 2013, Bill Gates remarked that it would take a decade to know whether education technology really worked,” The Economist concludes. “More than ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the answer is increasingly clear.”

Maybe educating was never the point.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: The Twofer Eye-Bleach Mugshot Edition. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn twice how not to pose for the camera, how to save the Baby Jesus, and how to (almost) steal booze in Texas.”

SPACE: The SpaceX Merger: If You Want More Compute, Leave Earth. “Tesla is building a ‘gigantic’ chip factory to produce AI hardware at scale: batteries, power electronics, chips (he’s musing about creating the factory’s equipment and memory from scratch, too). SpaceX is gearing up to build 10,000 rockets a year. Solar panels in orbit can collect 13x the energy of those on the ground, where unlike on Earth they’re always exposed to sunlight. Elon wants to launch solar-paneled data centers in space.”

MCCONNELL DID THE MEME:

McConnell’s heel turn on election security is worse than spite. It’s about money and power.

Trump blew up the system, and especially the foreign policy, that allowed McConnell and his idiot staffers and all their lobbyist friends to get rich. They have to get rid of Trump, and… https://t.co/K9XOU8cBHW

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 13, 2026

The meme:

I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS AT ALL: The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex — and the Implications Are Huge.

UM…: Air Force Now Denies Receiving F-35s Without Radars.

The U.S. Air Force has now denied taking delivery of any F-35A Joint Strike Fighters from the latest Lot 17 production batch without radars installed. This comes a day after TWZ published a detailed piece examining a recent unconfirmed report that the U.S. military has been receiving radar-less F-35s since last June due to issues tied to the new AN/APG-85 radar. Earlier this week, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) had declined to confirm or deny whether that was the case, citing “enhanced security measures.”

“USAF F-35A lot 17 aircraft are delivering with APG-81 radars,” an Air Force spokesperson told TWZ today in an unprompted statement. “The Air Force is working with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office to deliver F-35s with APG-85 radars, and actual modernization plans, capabilities, and schedules remain classified to maintain program security.”

When TWZ broke the story earlier this week, the Air Force at first refused to confirm or deny — so who knows?

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — And Then the Facebook Guy Fled California With His Zuck-Buck Billions. “Ima let you finish, Gav, but this latest Newsom disaster is not only getting embarrassing, but it’s the most expensive capital flight since, well, probably since American oil companies bugged out of Venezuela with what was left of their companies. Or New Yorkers moved to Florida during COVID.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China performs an impressive rocket landing.

China’s space program, striving to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030, carried out a test flight of a new reusable booster and crew capsule late Tuesday (US time), and the results were spectacular, Ars reports. The launch of a subscale version of the Long March 10 rocket, still in development, provided engineers with an opportunity to verify the performance of an important part of the new Mengzhou capsule’s safety system. A test version of the Mengzhou spacecraft, flying without anyone onboard, climbed into the stratosphere on top of the Long March booster before activating its launch abort motors a little more than a minute into the flight as the rocket reached the moment of maximum aerodynamic pressure, known as Max-Q.

China getting there on rocket reuse… The abort motors pulled the capsule away from the booster, simulating an in-flight escape that might be necessary to whisk crews away from a failing rocket. The Mengzhou spacecraft later deployed parachutes and splashed down offshore from Hainan Island. Remarkably, the booster continued its ascent without the crew capsule, soaring into space on the power of its kerosene-fueled YF-100 engines before reentering the atmosphere, reigniting its engines, and nailing a propulsive landing in the South China Sea, right next to a recovery barge waiting to bring it back to shore.

SpaceX won’t hold a monopoly on reuse forever…

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Excuse Me, But California Dems Stole How Much Again?

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: The Supreme Court’s Decade of Dithering on Hardware Cases Comes at a High Cost to Gun Owners.

So many more people have had their right to bear arms stripped from them since the Supreme Court denied cert in the first wave of “assault weapon” cases back in 2015 over the dissent of Justices Scalia and Thomas. A lot more states have since passed various bans.

People don’t live forever while the Court dilly dallies. Waiting more than a decade to decide these issues has a real cost to people’s liberties. People like Sam Paredes spent decades fighting for their rights in antigun states like California, only to pass away before the Court could be bothered to take up their case. It’s enraging just how much their neglect has hurt us.

Maybe there was nothing SCOTUS could do back in 2015 with a 5-4 court with a squish like Justice Kennedy who didn’t want to go any further than Heller did. But now, since 2020, the votes are either there or it’s time we find out if Roberts and Barrett are going to stab (shoot?) us in the back.

Read the whole thing.