Random News and Notes 26 February
We start today all the way back in 1993. On this date in that year the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center was made. At 12:18 p.m. – pretty close to when this piece will hit the web – a terrorist bomb exploded in a parking garage, leaving a massive, multi-story crater and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. By March of the next year, Mohammed Salameh, Ahmad Ajaj, Nidal Ayyad, and Mahmoud Abouhalima were arrested and convicted by a federal jury for their role in the bombing, and each was sentenced to life in prison. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef – the mastermind of the plot – remained at large until February 1995, when he was arrested in Pakistan. He was tried and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
This event should have changed the world, and exposed radical Islam for what it is. It did not. That lesson still seems to escape a large segment of the population. Just look at NYC as an exemplar.
Also of note on this day in history, today is the birthday of one Johnny Cash. Cash was born in 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, as J. R. Cash. He became the iconic “Man in Black” whose deep voice, storytelling songs like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Ring of Fire,” and raw honesty revolutionized country music and influenced generations across genres.
.He passed away on September 12, 2003, at age 71 in Nashville, Tennessee, due to complications from diabetes, just months after losing his beloved wife, June Carter Cash.
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Now News!
The FBI announced Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., a 65-year-old former F-35 simulator instructor and Air Force major known as ‘Runner,’ was arrested February 25 in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Why did the Feebs arrest Brown? He spent the last 2 years in China providing flight instruction to pilots in the PLAAF. He has been charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act by delivering this ‘defense service’ without a State Department license, linked to a co-conspirator tied to a convicted Chinese hacker.
FBI officials called it a betrayal, amid broader warnings of China recruiting Western aviators; Brown faces an initial court appearance in Indiana’s Southern District.
Normally, the courts should have their say in things, but in this case, there should be an exception. This traitor – and I do not use that term lightly – needs to stand in front of a firing squad. Like tomorrow. Pour encourager les autres. . .
On February 25 north of Troy, Missouri, a semi-truck from Cargo Transportation LLC drove south in northbound lanes of U.S. Highway 61, endangering drivers until Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers intervened. They cited the Minnesota-licensed driver for wrong-way driving after he failed to identify road signs and placed him out of service. MHP provided no details on his nationality or immigration status, but purported video of the driver shows what looks to be a South Asian man.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy praised the quick response and launched a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration investigation into the new Hopkins, Minnesota-based carrier, amid public concerns over trucking safety and CDL standards.
Rep. Seth Moulton publicly invited Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Massachusetts teen previously detained by ICE for his undocumented status, as his guest to President Trump’s February 2026 State of the Union. Gomes da Silva, cleared by Capitol security (?) and was invited to highlight young immigrants’ stories. During the event da Silva was publicly named by DHS as an ‘illegal alien’ targeted for removal in a social media post Moulton’s office escorted him from the gallery and he watched the speech from the congressman’s office and met lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey the next day.
Moulton wasn’t the only Dem to invite an illegal or illegal-adjacent to the SOTU. DHS posted the following during the speech.