Good morning, and welcome! Thanks for being here. Today is Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Today is National Cabbage Day and National Cauliflower Day. The gentler weather continues here in the Northeast, though I see that the California coast is getting hammered with rain and wind. Be careful, folks.
1678: Nathaniel Ponder publishes John Bunyan's Christian novel The Pilgrim's Progress.
1876: Direct telegraph link established between Britain and New Zealand, a distance of about 12,000 miles.
1879: French Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi is awarded a U.S. patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty.
1885: Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the U.S.
1901: Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the British House of Commons.
1902: Jules Massenet's opera Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) premieres in Monte Carlo.
1977: American rock band KISS played its first concert in its hometown venue of Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Birthdays today include: Automotive Pioneer Armand Peugeot, Actors Burt Mustin, Adolphe Menjou, and Edward Arnold, presidenial candidate Wendell Wilke, Enzo Ferrari, country artist Pee Wee King, gameshow host Bill Cullen, Jack Palance, Helen Gurley Brown, Allen Melvin, George Kennedy, Dottie Schwartz of the Chordettes, Johnny Hart, Yoko Ono, Juice Newton, and John Travolta.
* * *
Here we go again, I note this morning with a sad shake of the head. Our Catherine Salgado’s piece on the Rhode Island hockey game shooter reports that he identifies as “transgender."
The lesson that comes from encouraging mentally ill people to indulge their insanity and to express violent hatred against those who do not affirm their illness is written in the blood of children killed at the high school hockey game.
Remember my column on the case of George Zinn? He’s the one who jumped up, claiming that he was the one who shot Charlie Kirk, not Tyler Robinson? Both Zinn and Robinson shared at least one trait: mental Illness, which includes sexual deviancy. Remember, I’ve already written about Zinn, in which I quoted a New York Post article:
The elderly man who falsely claimed he shot Charlie Kirk to create mass confusion during the conservative influencer’s assassination cried out in court as he was sentenced to prison for keeping “graphic” sexual photos of children.
George Zinn, 71, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor on Thursday after police discovered the vile photos on his cellphone when he was detained at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
He also pleaded no contest to an obstruction of justice charge.
Then, too, there’s the case of Robinson himself, who was romantically involved with Lance Twiggs, himself another victim of transgenderism, and who, according to contacts within his family, “hates conservatives and Christians,” and who, according to other sources, influenced Robinson's politics in the year they had been dating.
Then there’s the mass shooting last August at Annunciation Catholic Church and Catholic School in Minnesota. The shooter? Robert "Robin" Westman, who shot some 19 people, including 14 children, two fatally, before pointing the gun at himself. His manifesto told us the story: "I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brainwashed myself."
Next on this bloody hit parade is Audrey “Aiden” Hale, who in March 2023 entered the Covenant school in Nashville, killing three young students and three staff members before being shot and killed by police.
Then, we have the case of Anderson Lee Aldrich, who on Nov. 19, 2022, killed five people and injured 40 at Club Q, in Colorado Springs, an LGBTQ nightclub. He’s serving a life sentence.
There’s more, of course, but I think the pattern is pretty firmly established. Part of that pattern is the knee-jerk response of blaming conservatives and Christians for the attacks. It doesn’t need to make sense; it just needs to be repeated, often and loudly.
That brings us up to date, so back to the Rhode Island hockey rink:
JUST IN: Woman claiming to be the daughter of the man who opened fire at a Rhode Island hockey game says he was "very sick."
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 17, 2026
A local report claims the man may have been "dressed in women's clothing."
"He has mental health issues."pic.twitter.com/OX0GqSQGwx
Catherine's been doing a good job of covering these events for us. She points out, "This shooting comes a few days after a mass shooting committed by a transgender-identifying young man in Canada, who murdered his mother and 11-year-old brother."
Let's not forget Bondi Beach, in Australia, which not only matches the pattern under discussion but also points out the fantasy that banning guns will prevent such attacks. In that case, I said at the time:
We all watched the other day as the legacy media reinvented the nomenclature for a murderous gunman who considered himself a woman and shot up innocents, including elementary school kids. It was a “gunperson,” we were told, whom the media went out of their way to call “her” and she” and even correct anyone who used what they call the “incorrect pronouns.” They held, apparently, that the killer's feelings were more important than the number of people with bullets in them because this troubled man was "transgender." (Yes, I said 'man".)
Given the number of dead in that case, it seems clear that banning guns isn't the solution. But more to the point:
... such people are committing such crimes at a much higher rate than the general population. A report out from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Jan. 9 of this year says that nearly 50% of trans-identifying people have sex crime convictions, as opposed to around 10% of the general male population. We used to commit such people to the local R wing, where they could get the kind of mental health care they need, or at least the public is protected from them. But our press wants us to play into their fantasy. We have to go to the press outside of our country to find people asking questions like “Are cross-sex drugs driving trans shooters to kill?”
Catherine correctly asks, and I'll quote her because I can't do better than she does here, "How many transgender shooters does it take to stop leftists from lauding the delusion that one can change one’s biological sex and demand everyone agree?"
I would only add it's time to treat the mental illness like we used to and not play into and reinforce the delusions. We're costing lives playing this game. It needs to stop. And perhaps we should be looking at treating transgenderism itself as a mental illness, again. The indicators are clearly there.
Your comments are welcome as always. I'll see you tomorrow.
Thought for the Day: When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth —George Bernard Shaw.
Media bias is undeniable. They never give you the big picture. They're certainly never going to tell you the economy is doing better, unless it makes Democrats look better and clearly, they won't touch this topic, today. That's why it's important for you to become a PJ Media VIP member. Not only do you support the reporters and writers who support YOU, but you also get 60% off the regular price by going to this link and using the promo code FIGHT.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member