6.14.2024

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

s
at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Hey, Charlie, I need your press agent's name from back in the day.

  • A Fort Worth man was arrested last night for this threat.  And if you want to see the shocking (and I do mean shocking) details of exactly what he said, here you go. And if you think he was mad that Hunter Biden was prosecuted on the gun charge, you would be very wrong. 

  • "About 10:15 a.m. Monday, Flower Mound police officers and firefighters responded to a lawnmower rolled over into a pond near the intersection of Flower Mound Road and Clearpoint Drive, according to a police statement."


    • Side note: I noted that local news coverage has deteriorated in the last few years, and this is a good example. This event happened on Monday and we didn't hear about it until Thursday. And every news report just quotes from a police press release with no independent reporting.
  • Using a child as a prop sure won't help him in court.  But why does the FBI block out the kid's face? The child is blameless, of course, and his/her image might help identify the guy as much as anything else. 


  • He's being bribed in plain sight, and then he tries to hide it from you. 




  • Trump decided to disparage the city of Milwaukee yesterday, the home of the Republican National Convention. They city's newspaper took note today on the front page:



    • He made the remarks about the city yesterday in his return to D.C. where he was surrounded by worshipping lawmakers who once ran for their lives during the Insurrection.  This is all so mind-blowing to me.  He has a stranglehold on a party unlike almost anything we've ever seen. 


  • This court appearance didn't go well.  He even hijacked a car outside of the courthouse but crashed it after a few feet and then fled on foot. They caught him hours later in the middle of the night. 


  • Even crazy Don Huffines backed out of the True Texas Project convention yesterday. 

    • Did I mention that Wise County's state rep.-elect appeared on the True Texas Project's podcast?

  • A Congressman was doing some bits on the House floor yesterday.


  • The Big 12 is exploring some wild money-making ideas:
    • Selling a 20% interest in the whole conference to an equity firm.

    • Selling a sponsorship of the Big 12 name.  We could now have "The Dr. Pepper Big Allstate Conference Championship at AT&T Stadium." Seriously. 

  • Got my attention: R.E.M. surprisingly reunited last night for the first time since 2007 and performed an acoustic version of Losing My Religion. Video.

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 4 years and 346 days.

at 8:30 AM

6.13.2024

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




There are so many crazy killings in this country, we can't possibly begin to remember them all. This couple killed five. Wikipedia article here. 

  • Survivors of Sandy Hook graduated last night.  Twenty of their former classmates are still dead.  A monument to when we learned America no longer cared about gun violence.



  • Update from yesterday.  I haven't seen a response from Wise County rep-elect Andy Hopper who recently appeared on the group's podcast. 


  • The former special prosecutor who derailed the Trump prosecution in Georgia by having an affair with the D.A. went on CNN last night. It did not go well. Video.

  • Trump returns to the scene of the crime today for the first time. He'll be in the U.S. Capitol building. 


  • Whenever I see headlines like this, I know there has been judge shopping to get the case in front of either federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo or federal Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth. Both are involved here.


  • He's got a ton of charges but, and I'm just spit-balling her, let me say the bond amounts might be just a tad too high. Story. Some background.


  • A kid ran onto the field at a Reds game which gave us two incredible photos.


  • Random Tech Stuff: Some guy loaded all the Trump trial pdf transcripts into Google Pinpoint and made them uniquely searchable. To which I thought, "What the heck is Google Pinpoint?"

  • Update to the ex parte meeting with the judge in the Young Thug case in Atlanta: If this is what happened in the meeting, this case just got weirder. The reluctant witness said he was the one who killed the victim? And the D.A. didn't immediately disclose this to the defense lawyer?

  • Very Legal nerdy stuff: We has a shockingly pro-Defendant case out of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals yesterday. When police fail to turn over evidence to prosecutors until the last second (or during trial), that evidence can be suppressed by the trial court even if the prosecutors didn't know the agency possessed it. 
  • Messenger - Above the Fold


at 8:30 AM

6.12.2024

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




That investigation concerned UT regent Wallace Hall who was ultimately never impeached. Rusty Hardin also represented the State in the failed Ken Paxton impeachment trial. I don't think we ever learned how much he made off of either.

  • Hunter Biden was found guilty yesterday.  This really throws a kink in the theory of "Biden has weaponized the Justice Department" and is also a little tricky for the Second Amendment worshipers who don't think you should have to fill out any forms to buy a gun. 

    • And this is how you respond if you are a president, a father, a decent human being, and a lover of democracy. 


    • The ink was hardly dry on the verdict form and a juror was already talking to CNN about it.

  • Oh, my.  A stolen van last night had a body inside. 

  • We had a modified Speed situation in Atlanta yesterday.


  • This is both disturbing yet predictable: I saw this story in the Texas Tribune this morning about the True Texas Project which is about to in Fort Worth . . . 

    • . . .  which led me to this reference to the West Texas Oilman Pac and the origin of the True Texas Project. . . 

    • . . . which led me to this reference to a True Texas podcast episode which got me curious . . . 

    • . . . so I looked at that video podcast and, sure enough, I found Wise County's state-rep-elect Andy Hopper whose election was funded by the West Texas Oilman PAC.


  • Legal Nerdy Stuff Update: Just when you thought the fiasco involving the ex parte meeting by the judge, prosecutor and witness in the Young Thug trial in Atlanta couldn't get any crazier, now the judge is ordering a hearing for all those who attended the (unethical) meeting because he wants to find out which one of them leaked the news about it.

  • I saw this headline and thought, "That kind of sounds like an old movie I saw." Sure enough, it inspired the 1995 movie To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.  She was 22 at the time of the murder. 

  • The Baltimore shipping channel has now reopened to ship traffic, but repairing the bridge will take a great deal longer. The bridge collapsed on March 30th after being hit by an outgoing cargo ship.

  • From the What-Could-Go-Wrong-Department, I saw this note from for Texas Monthly crime author Pamela Colloff:

  • More playoff teams -- as if we didn't have enough.


  • Collin County has a new online judicial record search, and it's great.



at 8:30 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)