5.10.2017

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts


  • Oh, I'll get to Comey. 
  • The ACLU, since Texas has passed an unconstitutional "show me your papers" law, has issued a travel advisory for the state.
  • There is a photo floating around of a fat guy naked on top of a shark (presumably the shark is dead since he's in a boat), and everyone from Deadspin to Bleacher Report is on the hunt to find out who it is. The  first culprit was the University of Florida's football coach but he has denied it. Yesterday, the resemblance to big game hunter and fisherman Jimmy John Liautaud -- yep, that's the sandwich king Jimmy John, became the odds on favorite. (You're on your own for research on this one.)
  • The saga of Baylor's undrafted K.D. Cannon continues. He was picked up by the Jets yesterday after the 49ers paid him $45,000 and then immediately cut him last weekend.
  • There might be as many as 7,000 bodies buried under the medical campus of Ole Miss.  Mississippi State Asylum was on the site from 1855 to 1935. This gives a whole new meaning to Ghosts of Mississippi.
  • Legal nerd stuff: The conviction of former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez was set aside yesterday because of his suicide.   As someone pointed out the other day, Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 7.1(a)(2) is very similar to Massachusetts. If a defendant dies during the pendency of an appeal in Texas, the appeal is then "abated." Since an abatement would mean the deceased's conviction never becomes "final",  the case remains technically and legally forever unresolved. (Texas doesn't "set it aside", however.)
  • And now on to the bombshell news yesterday about the firing of FBI Director James Comey  by Trump. (Fun fact: Comey is 6'8" tall.) 
  • The Right's Version of the Truth: Trump fired Comey because of the way he handled the Hillary email "scandal" last year as outlined in the "Rosenstein memo" -- which is exactly the excuse Trump used to fire him. Left's Version of the Truth: Trump fired Comey because the FBI was investigating alleged Russia/Trump connections and Trump wanted to stop it.
  • Democrat example:
     
  • Why not an independent prosecutor to get to the bottom of the Russian allegations. Heck, one was appointed in the 1990s to investigate a 1970s land deal. 
  • Fun fact #2: Richard Nixon never fired the FBI Director. (That nugget was actually sent out on the official Richard Nixon Library twitter feed last night.)
  • A guy most likely to be in a fetal position all night: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as he thinks about facing the press corp this afternoon. 
  • You can always tell when the Trump White House is in crisis mode because they roll out Kellyanne Conway to take a beating in the press.  They served her up to Anderson Cooper last night. DFW TV critic Ed Bark was not impressed. 
  • Trump's biggest problem is timing. Why fire Comey now for what he did last year in the email investigation? Actions which Trump praised at the time.  (And the second paragraph in Comey's firing letter is borderline bizarre -- he brings up Russia after explaining Russia had nothing to do with the firing.) 
  • Why not just fire Comey for the incompetence he showed at the Senate hearing last week? 
  • The College Freshman Who Is Not In The House is in Rwanda on a school trip. (Yep, Rwanda.) The Eighth Grader in the House is about to go on a multi-state school trip to the Northeast including, D.C., NYC, Gettysburg, Philadelphia and more. And those school sponsored trips are a million times cheaper than doing it on your own. I wanted to go to either of them as a chaperon on the condition I didn't have to do any chaperoning. 
  • Both the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times reference Watergate on their front pages this morning.