Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

Erbie Lee Bowser, a former big man of the Mavericks ManiAAC, went on a killing spree of four women — including his girlfriend and estranged wife — and wounding four children in two homes. In 2017, he would get life in prison after a Dallas jury deadlocked on the death penalty. 

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• The fire on Maui is awful. You don't see many fires that just burn up everything in sight until it is stopped by the ocean. Edit: The death count is up to a shocking 36 as of this morning.
  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  
• This guy was a radicalized nut. Here is the actual criminal complaint detailing everything that he did.  
  
  
   
  
  
  
• Irreverent observation: He reminds me of Buddy Ryan who used to coach the Philadelphia Eagles back in the day.
• This is both awful and weird. Three other officers opened fire as well after, they say, the suspect pointed a gun at them. And there is no evidence to refute that the shooting was justified. 
  
  
  
• There were no bodycams.  The officer was a Dallas Police Officer, but he was assigned to a "fugitive task force" which included federal officers. There's a weird policy where the feds don't want any of the task force members to wear bodycams. 
  
  
  
• We learned yesterday that the prosecutor obtained, via a search warrant, the data from Trump's Twitter account -- but only after a judge had to sanction Twitter $350,000 for the delay in turning over the information. 
  
  
  
• What do they want? Theories include: (1) private direct messages or (2) the meta-data which shows where public tweets were sent from, i.e. phone or desktop, to help prove that Trump, and not someone else, actually posted them. 
• And for those upset about the government's intrusion, (1) this is routine, and I'm surprised they didn't get a search warrant for his actual cell phone sometime along the way, (2) remember when hard-liners use to tell us "if you don't do anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to complain about" whenever a lowly criminal would object to the government's tactics? 
• ProPublica has yet another article on Justice Thomas this morning.
  
   
  
  
  
• A play in two Acts. 
• Act I: DPS patrols inside Austin city limits at the order of the Governor.
  
  
  
• Act II: From today's Texas Tribune.
  
• The Cumulus lawyers of the Ticket trying to stop Dan and Jake from having a podcast had their case dismissed because they failed to follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. What a screw-up.  I wonder what their hourly rate was?
  
  
  
  
• The lawyers for Southwest Airlines who were ordered to basically go to church (a slight exaggeration on my part) have appealed. Good.
  
  
  
• Another gun law goes down in light of Bruen. Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit held that the federal statute criminalizing gun possession by an "unlawful user" of a controlled substance was unconstitutional.  (The judge in Hunter Biden's case rejected his plea, in part, because she thought this statute -- which is the exact same one he was charged with -- may be unconstitutional.) 
  
  
  
• Legal nerdy stuff: The opinion is here. These facts are wonky, and I can't believe the guy got charged by the feds in the first place. They had to have been after him for something else. 
• Messenger - Above the Fold