A court in South Korea on Thursday sentenced disgraced former President Yoon Suk-Yeol to life in prison over his very ill-advised and poorly executed December 2024 attempt to impose martial law because of some conspiracy theory bullshit he saw on YouTube, the Associated Press reports.

The conservative Yoon had potentially faced the death penalty and prosecutors had sought it though most observers had ultimately correctly called the life bid, leaving the door open for a commutation down the road by a future right wing government. A number of Yoon’s minions still face sentencing for their roles in the utterly moronic coup attempt – or have already learned their fate, among them former Prime Minister/Acting President Han Duck-Soo, who got 23 years in the clink.

Cops in Thames Valley, England on Thursday arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, aka non-Prince Andrew, on charges of misconduct in public office over his abuse of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims, Sky News reports an extremely dramatic escalation coming on Andy’s 66th bday.

“On February 17, 2026, at approximately 1116 hours, the Alaska Wildlife Troopers received a report from Barrett Alexander that he had shot a moose that had attacked his dog and caused injuries to the dog. The investigation revealed that Barrett shot the moose on the evening of 2-12 and did not notify Troopers until 2-17 which was required to be done immediately. Barrett also did not salvage the moose, which resulted in the meat becoming rancid. Barrett received citations for the violations, and the moose was donated to a trapper to use,” says a Tuesday dispatch report from the Alaska State Wildlife Troopers, Palmer detachment. It’s not clear which “trapper” was blessed with this unexpected windfall of rancid meat or what scavengers the carrion is meant to attract.

US military officials tell CNN that assets will be in place for another round of attacks on Iran by this weekend and it’s only a matter of whether convicted felon President Trump decides it’s go time.

The reasons for bombing Iran were not actually clear, however. Probably the Epstein files.

A Tuesday night vote of the Pittsylvania County, Virginia Board of Supervisors the question of censuring Republican member Timothy Dudley for shoplifting a pack of kratom a few months ago was not even close as the measure passed 6 to 1 with the lone vote opposed being Dudley’s, plainly took exception to being formally reprimanded for stealing the pills from an Arco gas station on November 25th, 2025, WSET reports on the democratic process working as our founders intended.

The FDA defines kratom as “a tropical tree (Mitragyna speciosa) native to Southeast Asia. Products prepared from kratom leaves are available in the US online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Kratom is often used to self-treat conditions such as pain, coughing, diarrhea, anxiety and depression, opioid use disorder, and opioid withdrawal, with regular kratom users self-reporting using less than 6g of botanical kratom per consumption, per several recent studies. An estimated 1.7 million Americans aged 12 and older used kratom in 2021, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” though it’s not clear if the text there predates Bobby Brainworm’s takeover of the agency. Maybe one of his lackeys fucked up and forgot to change it to say kratom is a wondrous miracle salve for any and all of your ailments.

Prior to the vote, Chairman Robert Tucker told the audience the censure was not retaliation against Dudley so much as their signaling to Pittsylvanians that it’s unfair of them to accuse the other six of condoning shoplifting of gas station remedies. Not really an exaggeration “We had a speaker tonight that wanted to lump us all together, but I wanna make sure that this board assured the public that we have laws and we have ethics, and that’s why we had to do what we have to do,” said Tucker.

The chickendicks at the NRCC and the RNC, joined by Virginia MAGA Congressmen Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith on Wednesday sued the Old Dominion State in a desperate bid to stop Democrats from nuking four of the five seats currently held by Republicans, the National Review reports.

Wages are climbing

Costs are falling

Our economy is thriving

This is the Trump Effect 🔥

— GOP (@GOP) February 18, 2026

Republican Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales on Wednesday was outraged that his far right gun freak primary challenger Brandon Herrera – who has his own liabilities – would dare politicize the tragic and horrific September suicide of Gonzales’s staffer Regina Aviles, the Texas Tribune reports.

“Similar behavior in our military would lead to court-martial and dismissal from service, and we should not hold the political leaders who oversee our armed services to a lower standard than the one to which our fighting men and women are held,” said Herrera in a statement after the San Antonio Express News reported on Tuesday that Aviles had texted a colleague in 2024 to tell him she “had an affair with our boss.” Nominating Gonzales again is a “risk we as a part cannot afford to take,” Herrera added in the oddly disciplined statement for a fucking extremist maniac like him.

Herrera, who came within 400 votes of beating Gonzales last cycle, has some baggage of his own as among the fans of his YouTube channel was Robin Westerman – the sick asshole who shot up a Catholic school in Minnesota, killing two kids last August. Herrera’s also close pals with “Demolitia” Nazi cosplayer Matt Carriker of failed Trump assassin Thomas Crooks’s t-shirt fame. So given the headwinds that Texas Republicans are facing with Latino voters Herrera might be just as risky.

Former top Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson tells the Daily Mail he was confronted by “men who identified themselves as airport security” who confiscated his and his producer’s “passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador [Mike] Huckabee about,” following a taping of an interview with Huckabee in Israel’s David Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday. “It was bizarre. We’re now out of the country,” said Tucker.

Huckabee had invited Carlson to sit down to chat in response to accusations that the ambassador was not doing enough to prevent Christians from being persecuted in the country, which is kind of a touchy subject given the public execution of a highly influential Christian leader there in 33 AD.

Huckabee’s embassy denied anything happened, telling the shitty British rag that “It is not accurate that Israel only was going to let Tucker into the country for the interview. The only engagement the Embassy had with Israel about his visit was to coordinate his private plane landing as part of facilitating a seamless visit. It was Tucker who chose to only come into the country for a few hours and depart. And Tucker received the same positive treatment of any visitors to Israel.”

Tucker never actually left the airport premises, taping the Huckabee interview there. It’s unclear if the increasingly unsubtly antisemitic right wing influencer would’ve been allowed in the country.

Eight of the nine backcountry skiers who were hit Tuesday by a sudden avalanche near Castle Peak in California’s Sierra Nevada range were found dead by responders on Wednesday and the ninth remains missing, Reuters reports, citing an update from the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.

Six survivors were rescued on Tuesday. The search for the final skier is still ongoing. Either way, it’s already the third-deadliest single avalanche in US history after the 1910 Wellington, Washington disaster when two trains were hit, killing 96, and the 1980 Mount Rainier avalanche that took the lives of 11 climbers. Which, when you think of it, for a country with a shit ton of mountains that get a shit ton of snow every year, the US’s avalanche safety record is pretty damn good.

“I have been telling Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the United Kingdom, that Leases are no good when it comes to Countries, and that he is making a big mistake by entering a 100 Year Lease with whoever it is that is ‘claiming’ Right, Title, and Interest to Diego Garcia, strategically located in the Indian Ocean. Our relationship with the United Kingdom is a strong and powerful one, and it has been for many years, but Prime Minister Starmer is losing control of this important Island by claims of entities never known of before. In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature. Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime – An attack that would potentially be made on the UK, as well as other friendly Countries.”

“Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease. This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the UK, but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!” posted the President of the United States on Wednesday, plainly unable to recall how to spell Mauritius, the Indian Ocean archipelago nation set to gain sovereignty over Diego Garcia but obviously not full control given the 100-year base lease.

It’s not clear why, if Diego Garcia – uninhabited by any civilian population since the British forcibly removed about 280 locals in the early 1970s – is so important, that Trump won’t just step in and ask Mauritius to name a price for the territory since that worked out so well with Greenland.

Not even sure how to start here. If you haven’t read the Saturday National Zero story “Schools cancel photo day over vendor’s Epstein ‘connection’” and/or the Associated Press story it was sourced from the you may not fully appreciate the Tuesday story from WDKY in Lexington, Kentucky headlined “Laurel County parents speak out over Lifetouch concerns, spring photos canceled.”

Or maybe this is enough to get the gist: Lifetouch has been in the school portrait business since the 1930s, it was bought up by online photo hub Shutterfly in 2017, in turn Shutterfly was bought up by hedge fund Apollo Capital Management in 2019. Apollo’s co-founder Leon Black, who quit under pressure in 2021, was REAL tight with Jeffrey Epstein and that’s enough for some parents to act on vague fears that a sex trafficking cabal will have unfettered access to their kids’ names and photos by demanding that principals and administrators cancel photo day despite Lifetouch’s protestations.

Indeed the AP’s story itself was not particularly credulous toward the parents’ um, concerns which makes the lede to WDKY’s story that much friggin funnier: “Parents in Laurel County are speaking out after new concerns surfaced about Lifetouch, a company that photographs millions of students across the country. The concerns stem from a recent Associated Press report that said some school districts nationwide are cutting ties with Lifetouch after social media posts linked the company to Leon Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, which purchased Lifetouch’s parent company,” emphasis added on the part where the local station acts like the AP exposed some direct Lifetouch-to-Ghislaine Maxwell pipeline rather than simply reporting the perception was causing serious problems for the company and quoting from their statements denying any malfeasance.

Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux, who had previously said he was considering quitting his seat and Canada’s Parliament altogether after his name leaked as a potential defector a few months ago, became an actual defector on Wednesday and announced he’s joining Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party, the CBC reports on the premier inching closer to a majority in the chamber.

Jeneroux is the third Conservative the Libes have picked up in the current Parliament, following Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont in November and Toronto-area MP Michael Ma in December.

Hint-fucking-hint, Republicans. There are some of you who could credibly do the same.

If you REALLY want to watch ex-coworkers Dan and K$H fellate each other here’s the whole thing:

FCC incel Brendan Carr on Wednesday confirmed his agency is investigating ABC’s The View for “bias,” the Guardian’s Jeremy Barr reports on more impotent rage from the fascist weenie.

Carr said the woman-hosted talk show is potentially in violation of the “equal time” regulation that hasn’t been enforced in decades. The bald worm also cried about the Stephen Colbert-James Talarico mess, bitching that the show could’ve just cut the interview on Texas airings and decrying the coverage from outlets not in the FCC’s actual jurisdiction. “Too many in the mainstream media fell for it… it’s why people don’t trust the mainstream media anymore,” whined Carr, adding “I think you guys should feel a bit ashamed for having been lied to and then run with those lies.”

Douchey sex pest Mark Halperin reports that convicted felon President Trump’s top minions including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Suckretary Scott Bessent, Epstein pal Howard Nutlick, Bobby Brainworms, former MTV Real World cast member Sean Duffy, pollster Tony Fabrizio, and cueball-headed political apparatchik James Blair held a midterms strategy session in front of an audience of about 175 to 200 other, lower-ranking comrades at the Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday night, a meeting at which Halperin writes “was a veteran group, not panicked or shaken.”

“Just focused on the work and the task at hand,” he continued. Okay, Mark. Got it.

“The group was served a chicken and steak buffet,” Halperin also wrote in the lnegthy tweet. That was actually before he described their state of mind and the non-state of panic. It’s not clear if he was actually in the room or if he was allowed to eat from the buffet if he was indeed there for the powow. Anyway, Fabrizio had a lengthy presentation on the economy being the main issue for November (no shit) and hammering the need be focus on the Big Beautiful Billionaire giveaway, pushing housing affordability that the GOP has no plans to address and blah blah blah.

“His message was not pessimistic,” Halperin then adds gratuitously to his account.