6.21.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Forgot that he was so young when he died. If my math is right, he would have been 26 when the famous video of him was filmed in 1991. 

  • Oh, my! This just keeps getting worse and worse. 
    • The Austin American Statesman has obtained a screenshot of video footage from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde showing officers with long guns and shields at 11:52 a.m.   

    • The Texas Tribune has a screenshot of more officers and guns at 12:04 p.m.

    • Everything we are learning about Uvalde comes from the press. The mainstream media is the lifeblood of democracy and government accountability.  And here is a video from yesterday of the press being kicked out of Uvalde City Hall (a public building) by Uvalde police. The desperately need a PR person. 

    • Last second Edit/Update: There will be some public hearings today (including DPS head Steve McCraw for the first time since he threw the police chief under the bus) so at least something in the open is going on. But I'm not sure I see a "part of the door" in this photograph:

  • The burning of the Balsora Baptist Church has made national news (well, at least Fox News) because of its remains. 
  • In a shocking campaign ad yesterday (video of it here), the leading Republican candidate for the Senate out of Missouri, and former governor, encouraged others to join in "RINO hunting." He's literally going to get people killed. Facebook took it down. Twitter kept it up but put a warning label on it. 


    Actual text: "Join the MAGA crew! Get your RINO hunting permit.
    There's no bagging limit!" 


    • People need to wake up. The Republican party is being taken over by a faction of fascists.    Encouraging violence while openly willing to defy the norms of democracy is straight of early 1930s Germany. It's the equivalent of Hitler and his brownshirts  (the Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers) rising to power after a failed insurrection -- and finally achieving their goal despite never getting a majority of the vote.  I know it makes me sound like an over-the-top alarmist but, right now, what's the difference between that and the efforts of Trump and the Proud Boys/Oath Keepers and those who sit back and nod in approval?  These are dangerous times. 

  • The January 6 Committee will continue to present its case at noon today. It will focus on Trump trying to find and strongarm elected officials in the state governments in Arizona and Georgia who might be sympathizers to overturn the vote. ("I just want you to find 11,780 votes!")  In addition, the shocking scheme of the submission of "Fake Electors"  will be explored. Once again, faithful Republicans will be the damning witnesses. 

    • One of those witnesses will be Russell Bowers. He is a state Republican from Arizona and an American hero. This press release, written by him way back on December 4, 2020, proves he is basically the first person to alert us that there was a crime and a coup afoot by Trump and his henchmen. "As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him," he wrote. "But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election." More golden language:


  • The medical examiner's office in Tarrant County has had a rough couple of years. 

  • Anyone got their summer electric bill yet? Throw this on top of the price of gasoline, grocery, and housing increases and we are in trouble.  Story.

  • Texas seceding from the Union was in the news yesterday as the Texas Republican Convention floated the idea at its convention. All the news stations jumped on the "Texas can't secede! It would be illegal!"  I've fought this for over a decade.  Secession talk is dumb, but if a state wants to leave the United States there is no law that is going to stop them. Succession is, by its definition, a declaration that an entity no longer wants to be abide by the laws and rules of its motherland. Can you imagine England telling the colonies: "You can't declare independence! That's illegal!" But there are contrary voices: 


  • Update from yesterday: I had a bullet point of a not guilty verdict out of Wichita Falls. A faithful reader tells me the defense lawyer was Michael Valverde.

at 8:31 AM

6.20.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




That's not true any longer. It's now a federal holiday, and I saw lots of references to it. 

  • According to the Sheriff's Office press release, McKinley Mantrell Bradford, 39, of  Lawton, Oklahoma is a "likely suspect" (say what?) in the murder of man just north of Chico and was arrested in Wichita Falls over the weekend. That's really all I know for now. Total stranger? Acquaintance? Motive?

  • Joe Biden took a spill off a bicycle on Saturday. Video. Those toe clips will get you.



  • The burning of the Balsora Baptist church made metroplex news. 




  • The Texas Republican Convention was last weekend. 

    • Patriot Mobile, which funded the election of some anti-CRT metroplex school board members, had a booth.  Seems normal. 

    • The Proud Boys felt comfortable in attending and angrily confronted Rep. Dan Crenshaw  as he we walked into the convention.  Video. They screamed "Eyepatch McCain" at him (a term which was coined by Fox News' Tucker Carlson.)

    • John Cornyn was also booed by the right ring crowd for his very modest mental health and school security funding provisions in a new proposal which hasn't even been voted on. Video. 

      • Recall what the proposals were. They were upset about this?:

      • By the way, we are so divided on real gun control. Right?
  • More revelations have come out about the disastrous response to the Uvalde shooter:
    • Video shows that law enforcement never attempted to open the classroom's door for the hour after the response, there's a possibility door was never locked and, regardless, police had a Halligan device to open the door which they never used. 


    • According to the New York Times, a Uvalde police officer had a shot at the shooter before he entered the school but didn't take it because kids were in the background. (But that sounds odd since there have been no reports of kids being outside in the beginning. The report comes from a deputy with the sheriff's office.)

    • The City of Uvalde and police department are fighting with taxpayer dollars to keep you from learning what happened.  So far, they are contesting 148 Open Records requests.

  • I don't know much about this story out of Wichita Falls but . . . 

    • . . . the judge might want to consider not being quite so curt next time. "As I told you." 

  • Beating.



  • Random Photo from @Fox4Terry last night. There was apparently another shooting in Deep Ellum. 

  • Personal observation: There are very, very few boats on Lake Bridgeport over the last two weekends despite perfect boating weather. I bet gas prices has something to do with that. One of the handful of boats I saw had a 44 gallon tank. (It was so nice looking that I decided to Google it to find out its cost -- around $90,000 by the way -- and just happen to see the gas tank spec.) 
  • Legal nerd stuff: Hey, trial practitioners, have you ever heard of two pages of an appellate opinion being accidentally attached to a jury charge and submitted to the jury? It actually happened. See it at Appendix A (last two pages of the court's opinion reversing the case because of the error.)

at 8:30 AM

6.17.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




You can't find Nazi stuff at gun shows now, right? Or can you?

  • Yesterday's January 6th hearing was stunning. Mike Pence almost got killed because Donald Trump almost got him killed. And it was all because Trump wanted to overturn an election and decided Pence was the weak link to make it happen. 

  • It was all so simple. John Eastman came up with a plan that Mike Pence could single handedly overturn the election by not counting the electoral votes on January 6th as required by the Constitution.    Target one man. The weakest man in the administration. A man who is a true Trump sycophant. And when it didn't work, you let the mob be your last "Hail Mary."
    Front page of the New York Times today

    Eastman on January 6th.

  • The timeline as laid out yesterday by the Committee:
    • Twenty minutes before Trump speaks to the mob he had called to Washington (because it will be "wild"), he calls Mike Pence in front of his inner circle to make one final attempt to strong arm Pence to not count the electoral votes.  He calls Pence the "P-word" during the "heated" conversation. These are actual photos from that moment.


    • Trump then speaks to the mob and, as we learned yesterday, changes his prepared remarks to include references to Mike Pence and what he wants him to do. 

      From the transcript.





    • At the same time as Trump is riling up the crowd, Pence announces via Twitter that he won't follow Trump and Eastman's illegal scheme.

    • The mob then moved to the Capitol as directed by Trump and, once they breach it, Trump sends this tweet at 2:24 p.m. It might be the closest act to attempted murder a president has ever done. It is hard to think of a worse thing that any president has ever done. Seriously. Come up with a different one.

    • The crowd acknowledges that tweet, it gets read on megaphones, and then the insurrectionists really get ramped up. "Hang Mike Pence!" is screamed as the Capitol is invaded. (Watch this new minute and half video shown yesterday of how the crowd kept referencing Pence.)

    • With the mob getting close, the Secret Service moves Pence down to a loading dock for safety. The mob gets within 40 feet of him along the way. 40 feet. 

    • Pence, once in the loading dock area, refuses to get in a car and leave. As he told his Secret Service agent, "Tim, I know you, I trust you, but you’re not the one behind the wheel." Wow. But who can blame him?  He doesn't know to what lengths Trump would go to stop the certification. The new photos are haunting. 






    • Finally, at 3:42 a.m., not to let Trump get away with his plan, the electoral votes are finally counted and Joe Biden is certified as President Elect of the United States.
  • How John Eastman does note end up in prison over all of this is beyond me. He came up with the legal "theory" that the U.S. Vice-President had unilateral authority to reject certified State electors -- a plan he knew was illegal. And if Eastman deserves to go to prison for trying to overthrow the United States, how does Trump not go with him? And, if not, what the hell does it take if this attempted coup doesn't get you there? Even Eastman knows he's in trouble because he put in for a pardon.
    It's like he is ordering a pizza.

  • Fittingly, last night was the 50 year anniversary of the Watergate break in. 

  • Last thought on the hearings yesterday.  Retired federal judge, and darling of conservatives everywhere, J. Michael Luttig, had some great things to say ---  Trump poses a “clear and present danger to American democracy” for example.  That's spot on.  But, otherwise, he was a disastrous witness simply because of his presentation. He spoke slowly, with long pauses, and then wouldn't shut up.  (Just look at how long his "opening statement" was. Good gawd.  Talk about an ego.)

  • A guy climbed the outside of the Devon building in downtown Oklahoma City yesterday. Here's a video from someone in an office as he goes by. 

  • A plane crashed into Lady Bird Lake yesterday. 

  • The SMU Jones film collection released silent footage yesterday of "A day at Camp Soroptimist in Paradise, Texas. KERA Collection. Early 1970s." I had never heard of that.
  • Family/Genealogical  DNA followed by police footwork solves another case.


  • 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: 1,080 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold (we have a new unsolved murder and an unrelated story about how genealogical  DNA led to a lost father for a Wise County man)

at 8:32 AM
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