Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Two crime alerts by TCU last week and neither was caused marijuana. (Credit: Bud Kennedy.) The cops might want to spend some time on that. 
• I didn't watch a second of it, but Jeremy Lin beat the Mavericks yesterday. He's becoming a great and bizarre NBA story. (And one ESPN headline writer lost his job over the weekend for his creation of "A Chink In The Armor" after a loss.)
• In the house this weekend was a "Scream" mask. (Don't ask.) And it was used to scare me senseless three times by noon on Saturday. The first one occurred when I rolled over in the morning to take my first look at Mrs. LL.
• Sucker Punch - Watched this movie over the weekend which is quickly becoming a cult classic. It's part Sin City, Inglorious Bastards, Kill Bill, Donnie Darko, and a video game.
• NASCAR genius: When qualifying for the poll position at Daytona, Fox shows you the fastest qualifier by the use of a phantom/transparent car next to the current qualifier. Very cool.
• "Doing what I wanted to do in life has never been much of a factor."
• Failed to mention last Friday that the BagOfNothing guy and his wife had a son. 
• I discovered this weekend that watching a PG-13 movie with a 13 year old can be very uncomfortable.
• My Valentine's present to Mrs. LL: Tickets to Bring It On - The Musical in Dallas. We saw it Friday night. Verdict: Good stuff. (Although the crowd looked like it was made up of the cast of Mean Girls.)
• There's something weird about the story of the Frisco teen who was allegedly kidnapped and freed over the weekend.
• Mrs. LL watched the end of Scarface on Saturday. The rest of the day she tried to recreate Tony Montana's accent.
• Uh, oh: I see where the Decatur girls will play Abilene Wylie this week in playoff basketball. It's nemesis time. And that's normally a bad thing. 
• WBAP traffic gal Laura Houston commented this morning on Whitney Houston's funeral. I didn't hear the whole quote, but she made some reference to Stevie Wonder "flying blind." Wow. 
• Photos of a Victoria Secret's commercial. "Hey, . . . " Do I really have to say it?
• Dale Hanson's interview last night with Jason Garrett was great  when he asked him why he is so robotic in press conferences. It's a "process" and he's "getting better." Not that it matters, but he'd get a longer leash from the fans if he'd knock that bit off. 
• Somebody explain the Newark (Texas) Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corporation mentioned in today's Update.

Almost

Wise County People Went To Big City Last Night

Story.

Edit: The CBS local affiliate says the driver was charged with as charged with "Intoxication Assault causing Brain Injury – Vegetative State" which is horrible (and a strange way to put it.)

This Is 2012, Right?

Full editorial.

The Messenger this week went on a low key rant against the potential of "public notices" being allowed to be posted on the Internet instead of in print.  You see them all the time: Governmental budgets, lawsuits filed where a person cannot be located, eminent domain.

The reasoning against Internet Public Notices, according to the editorial, is that (1) how can we be sure of accurate archiving, and (2) hackers!!!!

Do I really care about this issue? Naaaa. But what I do care about is my local paper being dishonest with me. The elephant in the editorial room is this : Newspapers charge an exorbitant rate for those notices. An outrageous rate charged to someone who has no choice but to run the public notice in print. It's borderline extortion, and it certainly a cash cow. That's why the newspaper industry doesn't want Public Notices to be allowed on the Internet. I know it. You know it. Just say it. 

Allowing public notices on the Internet at one URL would be a great idea. We would know exactly where to go. Everyone would have access to it without having to buy a paper. And the cost of posting it would be next to nothing.

You want to know how much it costs me to keep wisecounty.com and Liberally Lean on the Internet? $19.95 a month. And that's because I'm too lazy to find a cheaper rate. But even at that cost, I'd post Public Notices for free.

(And, since I'm on the topic of being honest, the Messenger made me mad again this weekend.)

Messenger Above The Fold

Taking You Into The Weekend

Government Worker excited for having Monday off

And Another - Colorado

2012 is starting off strong.

Link. (Thanks to the comment-person-tipster.)

I Was Wondering If The Card Reader At Whataburger In Decatur Was Working

Nope . . .

New Santorum Ad

It's an odd little attack ad complaining about attack ads.

But the guy does look like Romney.

Wise County Man Killed In Metroplex Car Wreck

Fox 4's story here.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• I could have sworn I saw a story on Fox 4 this morning about another cop car being crushed by another motorist in Coppell but I can't find it. Edit: Here's a Channel 8 link. Thanks.Edit #2: After a strong rebuke from a person of power over at Fox 4, here is their link.
• Very uncomfortable interview moment when an old guy talks about how women used to practice contraception it back in the day. It would win an Emergency Brake award.
• Until around 1950, there was a Rhome Independent School District and a Fairview Independent School District in Wise County. They were both voted into Northwest ISD.
• I heard The Hammer on The Fan say that those TCU kids who bought from those "TCU drug dealers" better be worried because their purchase was "probably caught on tape" by the cops.  No way. There's not a chance in the world. The buyers (and even the suppliers to the "drug dealers") have nothing to worry about. These "stings" are just what you see: Controlled buys. Nothing more, nothing less.
• I'm always bold enough to make personal bank deposits through the mail. I've done it for years and normally the deposit is posted within 24 to 48 hours.  This time I made it on a Wednesday and it didn't make it to the bank's post office box until seven days later -- the post office box which is on the same property on which the deposit was mailed.
• And thanks to the nice lady (Rebecca?) over at First Financial for checking for me. But I sometimes wonder when I asked for help if a person doesn't secretly think, "Is this the crazy blog guy? I cannot screw this up!")
• Heck, even my friends will often say, "This is off the record, right?"
• A "court of inquiry" has been established to determine whether a sitting district judge and ex-DA withheld evidence that led to a wrongful conviction. Ninety-nine percent of Texas lawyers have never heard of such a court, and I'm in that group. (And after glancing at Chapter 52 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, I'm not exactly sure what what the court's purpose is.)
• That crazy "Zombie Apocalypse Survival" seminar in Decatur that I referenced a few weeks back now has Bridgeport Guns and Ammo as a sponsor.
• The wrongly accused Austin Carpenter in the TCU "scandal" is the great-grandson of John W. Carpenter who has a Dallas freeway named after him. (Which is also Highway 114 so we now have a Wise County connection to the TCU story!!!)
• Bud Kennedy of the Star-Telegram seems to think the TCU busts were much ado about nothing. (It was posted last night and already has more comments than the paper ever gets for a single story.)
• The Ticket listed the number of drug arrests of Texas college students by campus from 2006 to 2010 this morning and TCU was at bottom with four. Baylor had ninety-something. North Texas was in the three hundreds. Does anybody have that chart? 
• Heard on the radio this morning: "You know who else is against the legalization of marijuana? Marijuana dealers. That tells you there is something fundamentally wrong with the policy."

Meet Honey Boo Boo and her "Go Go Juice"

Honey Boo Boo and Momma (When Momma's All Dolled Up)

I saw the "go go juice" episode on Toddlers and Tiaras the other day before ABC News did a feature on it. It's not earthshaking by any means, but it's hard to take your eyes off of it. 

Stop Talking About TCU Pick Me Up Of The Day

Jennifer Nicole Lee doesn't even know where TCU is.

Cryptic Warning Posted By TCU

Link.

Those Police Affidavits Never Contain Mistakes?

This could be huge.

The kid who was was falsely accused is named Austin Carpenter. From the story, it sounds like the cop made an undercover drug buy, thought the man's name was "Austin Carpenter" (nice effort on the cop's part),  and an arrest warrant was issued for the wrong guy.  What's not clear from the story is this: If that cop pulled up Austin Carpenter's DPS driver's license photo, said "that's him", swore in an arrest affidavit that the Austin Carpenter in the photo was the same one he interacted with, and that's why the warrant was issued, the cop just handed anyone else he arrested in this sting a bag of gold.

It may be that he's proven he can be wrong in the area of eyewitness identification -- even when he was so sure he was willing to swear to it under oath.

(The Austin Carpenter arrest warrant affidavit was released yesterday before the warrant got pulled, but I haven't located it yet.)

Edit: Thanks to those that sent me the arrest warrant affidavit. Here's the key paragraph:

Edit: Now the word is that the arrest warrant is being "redone" for a different Austin Carpenter.

Edit: The Dallas Morning News says the picture on the arrest warrant affidavit was of the wrong Austin Carpenter. That's why it had to be redone. So back to the point of this post, if the officer picked that wrong Austin Carpenter's photo as the man who sold drugs, there are big problems.

Edit: Yep. The police are after a different Austin Carpenter whose attorney says, "Just dare me."

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• There's a theory developing out there that TCU officials wanted a high profile arrest roundup to counter the bad press associated with multiple assaults and other crimes on and around campus over the last couple of years. Kind of a "We Are Cracking Down On Crime" PR campaign. The fact that TCU police were so involved in the case along with the well planned press conference yesterday gives legs to that idea.
• Seriously, once TCU officials knew that four football players were selling a little weed, wouldn't one "cut-that-crap-out-or-you're-gone" meeting with Coach Gary Patterson have solved that problem?
• Which gives rise to another conspiracy theory: The academic minded administration thought Patterson was getting too big for his britches after  his fantastic success over the years. Thus, the Ivory Tower Boys wanted to send a reminder of exactly who is in charge at TCU. (Had they been influenced by the news over the last six months of how Joe Paterno had been the most powerful man on campus at Penn State?) If Patterson is to be believed,  he knew nothing about the investigation until yesterday morning. 
• And why would the arrest affidavits contain completely irrelevant quotes from the targeted football players that anywhere from 60 to 82 football members had failed a recent drug test? Those statements don't have anything to do with establishing probable cause for a warrant, but they do embarrass an entire football program. And Patterson. 
• You think the Auburn, LSU, Florida or any other SEC campus police will ever be involved in an investigation of a football player for weed? Not in a million years. 
• "They broke the law. That's all I need to know." - That kind of comment always blows my mind. What's your message? Be a good little boy and do what your government tells you to? Hey, does Rosa Parks ring a bell?? The Boston Tea Party? Draft avoidance during Vietnam?
• Changing gears . . . 
• SMU's basketball team scored 28 points last night. That was for the whole game.
• You have to be over 40 to understand this, but can you believe Josh Hamilton gave an interview to James Robison?
• Finally had someone come out to to take a look at my faltering (hot) water heater. After weighing the cost of repair vs. getting a new one, I got a new one. (The old one was about 10 years old.) But, man, I hate spending money to replace things.
• A day does not go by that I'm not stunned by the gullibility of the fans of Sean Hannity.
• That crazy Parker County torture case kind of brings to mind Silence of the Lambs.
• I've watched about five minutes of it, but I learned that the "bad fingers" civil case being tried in Wise County is a medical malpractice case.  One thing I heard the female Plaintiff say regarding the pain she had gone through was (slightly paraphrasing), "I've had two children. I would rather have 50 children than go through the pain I've experienced with my fingers."  After the verdict, I'll give you my thoughts on that. 

"

Governor, One Time Tea Party Favorite, Just Lost A Few Votes

More.

Gas Chart Spin

Red lines by Liberally Lean Graphics Department

Republican: "Since Obama took office, gas prices are now 83% higher!"

Democrat: "Under President Obama, gas prices are the same now as they were in February of 2007 and are far below the all time high under George W. Bush."