Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

Out of Weatherford 10 years ago.

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• Oh, my! (In a good way). The Superintendent of Decatur ISD has fired back against "a mass text message accusing Decatur ISD of teaching 'WOKE POLITICS'" which was the feature of my first bullet point yesterday.  He writes: "I want every staff member and citizen of Decatur to know that they have a superintendent who will back them when they are unjustly called out as a group for actions or activities that are false and damaging to their personal reputations and that of Decatur ISD." (PDF link.)
  
  
  
• Early voting in Decatur's school and bond (and city) elections remains heavy.
  
  
  
• Ok, this verdict in the "crane case" in Dallas seems ridiculous. According to this story, the mother got $340 million (that's silly) and the dad got $20 million. The biggest hit was in punitive damages which were $500 million (also silly.)  I don't know if state damage caps effect the verdict at all.  The lead attorney for the defendant which got hit was a guy named Christopher White but I'm not sure which Chris White.
  
  
  
• The Wise County Sheriff's Office jail and courts website remains down. This is day four. Let's fix this!!
• It was hard to miss this video of hail coming down in Dublin, Texas around 5:30 yesterday. If you did, here ya go.  
  
  
  
• We've got some inmates on the run in Mississippi. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Side note: I don't think near enough was made of the Texas inmate which escaped last year and hid out under the noses of law enforcement for three weeks as he slaughtered a man his four grandsons, ages 11 to 18 who had gone to their vacation cabin.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Hey, I'm no fan of Trump, but I'm not so sure about this lady's claim. She testified yesterday on day two of the defamation trial which included her (damage-control) admission that she didn't now if the assault occurred in 1994, 1995 or 1996. On opening, Trump's lawyer, who has yet to cross-exam her, had said, “She can’t tell you the date that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the month that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year that she claims to have been raped by Donald Trump.” 
  
  
  
• Disney finally sued the governor of Florida for targeting them based upon speech.  I don't know what took them so long. This is a slam dunk for Disney. It's government targeting free speech. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I've never seen so many people so scared of people who are simply different than them. 
  
  
  
• Legal nerdy stuff: The Houston DA sent out a press release press release which contains something which I think is not true. There's no question that a grand jury only needs nine votes in order to return an indictment. And it's true that they only need to find "probable cause" (not "probably cause" as seen below). When they do, that's called a "true bill." But if the grand jury has a vote on a case and does not have the nine votes, that should be a "no bill." This press release says that a person is no-billed only if nine members find there was not probable cause.   Hey, there's nothing to prevent a DA from referring a no-billed case to another grand jury -- there should be a law, but there's not -- but a vote without nine votes to indict is a "no-bill".
  
  
  
• Other kind of legal nerdy stuff. The top three scorers from the February Texas bar exam were announced and all of them graduated from out-of-state law schools.
• Messenger: Above the Fold