8.13.2024

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




The Ferguson immediate aftermath, and the police response, was ongoing. 

  • Boyd High School got a segment on a metroplex newscast. You can watch it here if you can get pat the commercials and pop-up ads. (Local news channel websites are the absolute worst.)

  • A Fort Worth police officer was killed yesterday in a traffic incident and, as a byproduct, it will cause everyone in the criminal justice system to cringe.  A person was arrested for Intoxication Manslaughter but she was already on felony probation for aggravated assault of a romantic partner.
    •  "Fort Worth police said she drove the wrong way on an off ramp on southbound I-35W at Sycamore School Road and hit Sgt. Billy Randolph with her vehicle. Investigators believe Evans was drunk when she hit Randolph. Evans attempted to flee the scene, with some officers pursuing her while others got Randolph into a police Tahoe and took him to JPS Hospital, where he died, police said. Evans got about a quarter-mile away before she got out of her car and tried to flee on foot. She was arrested shortly after."  

  • Missed this over the weekend: The Montague County DA, who is under indictment for theft, agreed to a "temporary suspension" last Friday in lieu of a having a removal hearing. The judge then appointed the DA-elect to fill the vacancy. I guess that's the way you handle it -- but I would have thought that even a temporary appointment for a DA would require an appointment by the governor.


  • Missed this as an intended bullet point yesterday: The City of Uvalde finally released a ton of video and text messages from the Uvalde massacre after fighting open record requests. One notable item was that Sen. John Cornyn made a phone call indicating he was not pleased with how DPS's $345,250 Man, Steve McCraw, was handling the fallout and local police saying that McCraw had "screwed them all." 


  • Trump did an interview with Elon Musk on Twitter last night, and it went about as well as you would expect due to a technical meltdown.

    • I blame Jewish space lasers for the technical meltdown while MAGA darlings, of course, blamed "the deep state".  Elon blamed "denial of service" attack which is a boldface lie. 

    • Remember when Elon Musk cozied up to Ron DeSantis by hosting his announcement for presidency on an X broadcast which was also crippled by a technical meltdown? Flashback (which the Kamala Harris campaign was "ReTruthing" last night): 

    • The only news-worthy thing Trump said was that he would disband the Department of Education. That's right out of the playbook of Project 2025.

    • Most bizarre moment: Saying Kamala Harris's depiction on the new cover of Time magazine made her look beautiful and like Melania.
  • Insurrection News:
    • From Friday. Now we are getting somewhere. (Remember that Trump has referred to the January 6th rioters as warriors, "unbelievable patriots," political prisoners and "hostages" and has said he will pardon them.)


    • From yesterday.  "Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump."

  • A moment of silence, please.

  • Legal stuff: In a shocking ruling last night, the Fifth Circuit said that police need a search warrant for Google geo-fence data (wow) but, more importantly, there will never be enough probable cause to get that warrant (triple wow.) However, I think that this might be moot in the future since Google said last year it was no longer keeping geo-fence data, but for pending cases, holy cow.

    • From the opinion:

  • Legal nerdy stuff: The Texas Supreme Court has enacted rules that allow any civil litigation documents filed with a district clerk or county clerk in Texas to be searchable and downloadable in a statewide database. The district clerk of Tarrant County is seeking an Attorney General opinion in an apparent attempt to opt out of this requirement. 

  • Don't see the joint trial of a sheriff and prosecutor everyday: "WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Jury selection has wrapped up in the felony trial of a former Williamson County Sheriff and county attorney accused of destroying video evidence related to the 2019 in-custody death of Javier Ambler."

at 8:30 AM

8.12.2024

Random Monday Morning Thoughts





  • In Tarrant County, there was a sentence in a case involving Munchausen syndrome by proxy (but for some reason the Fox 4 story never calls it that.)


    • Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office Det. Michael Weber sure had some hot opinions about the Tarrant County DA's office.


  • This happened on Saturday, and I don't think any local newscast had the story until last night.




  • We've got yet another "standoff" after a police chase this morning. There's an epidemic of that happening within the last week. 

  • Hamas hit an Israeli soccer field in July and everyone lost their minds.  But Israel kills 100 in a school and it's barely a blurb on the news. 



  • Trump, upset by Kamala's crowd size, went to Truth Social to falsely claim the pictures of one crowd was by A.I.  If your elderly parent wrote something like this, you would call an emergency family meeting. 


  • Eagle Mountain High School off of Bonds Ranch Road has its $270 million grand opening and it looks like a small college. The classrooms have a very lecture hall feel to them. And they got their own football stadium (not sharing) and indoor practice facility. In its inaugural season, football will open with Jacksboro (8/30) and later play other home games against Paradise (9/13) and Bridgeport (10/25).


    The weight room is impressive.

  • I think I said this four years ago, too: How come we don't have a scoring system for the overall standings where you get three points for gold, two for silver, and one for bronze? The U.S. comes out on top either way, but still. 

  • Cancer doesn't discriminate.

  • Matt Kuchar was the only player in this weekend's PGA event to come back this morning and complete his round after the  tournament was called for darkness yesterday. He's now done. It took him six minutes. He made par. Here's why he tried:
    Yesterday evening
    This morning


  • Why would you have Trey Lance over Cooper Rush as your backup?


at 8:30 AM

8.09.2024

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




This Messenger item got my attention back then. 

  • A guy standing on an overpass caused I-35 and 287 in North Fort Worth to be shut down yesterday evening for "several hours."  He apparently live streamed it on Facebook and "more than 7,000 people were watching as of 9:30 p.m. when the video stopped, and there were more than 4,800 comments . . . . ."



    • That's the third major stand-off in a week that has shut down major highways.  The others were the crazy guy in Dallas on 635 and the other was on 820 near Northeast Mall (it still there?) on Sunday.
  • This is the split second screenshot from the cop's bodycam when he peaked up over the roof to see what would turn out to be Trump's would-be assassin. But I'm not real sure where the shooter is in it. 

  • Quick hits from Trump's crazy, rambling, and weird press conference yesterday:

    • He thought it would be a good idea to compare his crowd on January 6th (!!!) to that of Martin Luther King's march (and, to boot, confuse the "Million Man March" in 1995 with King's "March on Washington" event in 1963.)

    • Lied about almost being in a helicopter crash with Willie Brown. (Gift link.)
      Willie Brown and Jerry Brown


    • Went back to the Is-She-Black-Or-Indian attack on Kamala.
    • Now says that it was his ear lobe that was hit by a bullet but has no signs of injury because he is a "fast healer."
      Image from yesterday.

  • I noticed two Not Guilty verdicts in Tarrant County on felony cases this week.  The top one arose out of a drag show protest but involved a protestor against the protestors who had some type of interaction with a police officer.  (Little bit of background about the protest in general is  here.) 

  • Legal photo of the year. I know that Matthew McConaughey's character in A Time To Kill was sweating a lot, but this guy takes it to a whole knew level. 

  • Not exactly what you want to see from a DA investigator. 

  • The Business Second™.  $47 million?!?

  • The Second Business Second™. Observation: For us old-timers, from 1973 to 1993 a 6.47% rate would be considered an absolute steal. 

  • The Third Business Second™. I don't understand this article about natural gas prices at all. 

  • Micah Parson reposting CeeDee Lamb's reaction to a Jerry Jones' comment about Lamb's hold-out:

  • I think Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who won the gold medal in the 400 meters, is the absolute prototype for the perfect female track star. She's the most effortless runner I've ever seen. 


  • Love this photo. 

  • 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: 5 years and 35 days.

at 8:30 AM
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