That Whistleblower Lawsuit In Decatur Just Settled

Story.

And to answer the obvious questions: "The state’s whistle-blower act allows a government employee to file a lawsuit in any county within an established council of governments where he or she lives, such as the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which includes Tarrant and Wise counties."

Breaking: FEMA Don't Like West, Texas People

Story.

And look what I'm doing here because I'm fair and balanced. Here is an excerpt of President Obama's address at Baylor during the West Memorial Service:

And to the families and neighbors grappling with unbearable loss, we are here to say, you are not alone.  You are not forgotten.  We may not all live here in Texas, but we’re neighbors, too.  (Applause.)  We’re Americans, too, and we stand with you, and we do not forget.  And we’ll be there even after the cameras leave and after the attention turns elsewhere.  Your country will remain ever ready to help you recover and rebuild and reclaim your community.  (Applause.)

Weirdest Thing You'll See All Day

This video of a naked man terrorizing a San Francisco subway station is INSANE thebea.st/1a3J9Bg
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) June 12, 2013

Michael Jackson's Bedroom Pictures

There's some civil trial going on regarding the responsibility of Michael Jackson's death. These photos are now part of it.

I have three rules in the house: Don't bad mouth Paul McCartney, Steve Martin, or Michael Jackson. I catch a lot of grief for that last one.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Gov. Perry continued to honor the constitutional right to abortion by adding various unconstitutional anti-abortion bills to the just announced Special Session. At least he's consistent. 
• I could see Rick Perry selling gold in late night commercials some day. At least when Texas becomes  a blue state in, say, ten years? 
• Google's CEO in 2009 on the issue of privacy: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Kill me. 
• Lots of focus is on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but I'm stunned to learn he actually worked for a private contracting firm, Booz Allen, who has 25,000 employees and was hired by the NSA. With $1.3 billion in government contracts, Booz has a Vice Chairman  who bounces employment back and forth between the NSA and Booz and who has churned the Booz stock for $1.8 million this year. 
• The rest of us who get up and go to work are just suckers, right? 
• A Wise County church is inviting people to a Father's Day service with a chance to win Rangers baseball game tickets and a Chevrolet Silverado. 
• Some TCU kid helps T. Boone Pickens nephew get high but unfortunately the Pickens boy dies. So what does the Tarrant County DA's office do? Indict the kid for murder.  
• Mrs. LL has discovered three mice in the garage and a little hole they are getting in and out of it. She wants me to get them out without killing them. 
• Dallas motorcycle death last night was described as "horrific". (Link with photo.)
• Get ready for a day of people twit-picking pictures of their car temperature gauge.
• There was a pretty good baseball brawl last night. 
• The Mom and Kids In The House have a list of house projects for the summer. Let's see how that goes. 
• Dallas pool party "Hey, nows" . Here. Here. Here. Here. 
• I love that Wise County judges specifically tell jurors not to read "the local blog" while a trial is going on. 
• The Fort Worth Weekly is doing day by day coverage of the whistleblower trial going on in Decatur.
• Bad cop? An Arlington officer being investigated by the FBI for computer fraud killed himself.
• Dumb cop: Arizona cop arrests a guy for DWI despite having an alcohol concentration of 0.00. He must be on drugs then, right? So the cop brings in a "Drug Recognition Expert" who checks him out and says, he ain't high on drugs. 
• Funny: Star-Telegram opinion piece accidentally quoted Onion-like fake stories to support its position on graduation speeches.

The Girlfriend Of The NSA Whistleblower Is A "Hey, Now"

The debate is going on as to whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a danger to national security. This settles it. Get that guy the Congressional Medal of Honor. 100% American.

Slideshow.

Muscle Flexing

Austin American Statesman: Perry vows veto of state integrity unit funding unless Travis County DA Lehmberg resigns shar.es/wBUCN
— Jennifer Emily (@dallascourts) June 11, 2013

Our own Phil King has been trying to get the Austin DA to resign ever since her DWI conviction a couple of months back.  To screw with her in general, he even tried to move the Public Integrity Unit out of her office. ("Oversight of the Public Integrity Unit, which investigates public officials for ethical misconduct, has become increasingly political over the past decade. While every district attorney in the state has authority to investigate public officials, the DA in heavily Democratic Travis County is the only one that gets state funding to do so.")

Now Gov. Perry is trying to force her out (even though there is currently a lawsuit pending to do just that.)

This Was Well Designed

Even after reading a news article about it, I'm still not exactly sure what happened. (But don't stop watching too soon.)

It Looks Like This Case Is Getting Started In The Courthouse Today

More background. (As always, if you're on that jury "please honor the admonishions of the Court.")

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Maybe this PRISM thing won't be the controversy I thought it would be. There's just way too many people on the Right saying "If it saves lives, I'm ok with it." Incredible.
• Newsweek had a cover in 1970 proclaiming "Privacy Is Dead".
• Mrs. LL and I were talking about how silly robbing banks and convenience stores is since the cash is limited and the surveillance is great. "If I were going to do something, it would be big and secretive," I said. We then in unison said, "Like moving a decimal point over one position?" -- a reference to Office Space.
• Mrs. LL also claims that if she ever committed a crime she could absolutely cover her tracks and never get caught. She also warned me not to quote her because it would damage her ability to get a way with it. 
• I was on 287 yesterday and was by an eighteen wheeler who had a tire blow out. That is wuch a shocking experience. 
• Northwest ISD Superintendent will now make over a quarter of a million dollars a year per the Update.
• Man, those Fort Worth cops and alcohol: One was arrested for Boating While Intoxicated while another was in a motorcycle crash where drinking is suspected.
• Very Inside Sports: (1) I think college football prognosticator Phil Steele is brilliant, (2) I think Randy Galloway just churns out the obvious with a cutesy writing style, (3) I don't understand 90% of the college football website Every Day Should Be Saturday and that upsets me, (4) I'll admit to watching portions of this NBA Finals, (5) The Fan's Bryan Broaddus never says anything definitive, (6) The only thing I watch on Sports Center is the Top 10, (7) ESPN's Mike and Mike in The Morning is an automatic punchout for me with 15 seconds. 
• I was walking around the block last night and ran into Mrs. LL who was dropping one of the kids off at a neighbor's house. I had on black socks, tennis shoes, plaid shorts, and a 2011 half marathon shirt. "It's not like I don't have style," I told her. "It's that I'm too old to care."  She told me I might want to start caring. 
• If you are planning on going to Mumford and Sons tonight: (1) What's wrong with you? and (2) No you're not. 
• I've stuck with my x-box workout and haven't returned to running. Makes me a little sad. There's something about the running isolation with is soothing. 
• Tebow to Boston!

Chad Johnson Avoids Jail. Slaps Lawyer on Butt. Judge Gets Pissy And Sentences Him to 30 Days.

"Good job. Good effort."

TMZ — Chad Johnson was just kicked out of a Florida courtroom … after the former NFL star playfully slapped his male lawyer’s ass — a move that ENRAGED the judge, TMZ has learned. Johnson was in court in Broward County, FL to face the judge for his recent probation violation in his domestic violence case. During the hearing, the judge and Chad’s lawyer were about to finalize the terms of Chad’s punishment — terms that were pretty favorable to Chad. But the whole thing fell apart at the last minute, when the judge asked Chad if he was satisfied with his attorney — and the ex-NFL star reached back and playfully slapped his lawyer’s ass. Chad smiled … the court erupted with laughter …. but the judge wasn’t amused. In fact, the judge found the move disrespectful — and lashed out at Johnson … asking him if the whole proceeding was a “joke” to him. Johnson replied, “I had no intent to make this a joke, because my life is in shambles right now.”

Man, this judge needs to lighten up. Big time. (But I think my favorite part is the bailiff turning around and smiling.)

News I Missed: Wise County Has Gravel Trucks

Not a scene from Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. Or is it?

Story with a slideshow.

"Get ready to get tazed"

Truer words have never been spoken.

This guy out of Cleburne is yelling about police brutality. I'm not buying it.

Prop Accident

I was going to yell at him, but I couldn't even see the prop.  Those ultra-lights are just intrinsically evil. Death machines even on the ground (although this guy didn't die.)

And it was the first time I thought about the Dallas chick which waled into a propeller a couple of years ago. Not bad.

French Open

I would have ran off the court like a school girl. You have no idea what that nutcase had in mind.

(Fast forward to 1:30.)

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Insomnia, even for one night, will really mess you up. It made my weekend a beating. 
• The NFL Network has been replaying the more than decade old series of Hard Knocks with the Cowboys. It is fascinating watching a bunch of guys with hopes and dreams when you know what actually happens to them.
• Mrs. LL told me this weekend she really likes Bob Dylan. I had no idea. 
• Mrs. LL told the kids this weekend that it was going to be "hard week" because the house was going to be cleaned fro top to bottom. I can only hope. 
• Every time I watch a high profile tennis match I get hooked in.
• I watched some "unsolved mysteries" type show on the Lifetime channel this weekend, and it focused on a lady who was hit by a cigarette boat on Lake Lewisville in 1995. I had always heard the lady was terribly disfigured but she is beautiful. 
• Unrelated: Erin Brockovich was arrested for Boating While Intoxicated.
• I've got a bad habit of forcing Mrs. LL to watch things on TV that are important to me. 
• ESPN promoted and showed a long sit down interview with Tiger Woods last weekend. Although it would violate every journalistic rule, do they secretly pay him for that?  Twenty years ago I would say "no way." Now I'm not so sure.
• I've got a friend who broke his clavicle in a bike accident last weekend and now is at Disneyworld with his family on a pre-paid vacation. 
• One summer I came up with my own baseball game that I played by myself using a tennis ball that I would throw against the back brick wall of our house. The rules were ridiculously complicated. But I remember I threw the ball so often that all the fuzz wore off the ball to the extent it ended up looking like a racquetball  ball. 
• My post about the alligator gar catch became a story on Fox 4. 
• Several of us in the courthouse were trying to figure out if the clavicle is the same thing as the collarbone. 
• Man, what I would give for summer vacation -- not the trip type but the school's out type. 
• I was wrong about Joshua ISD cutting the mic of the Valedictorian. But it seems like they let everyone know in advance that would be done if anyone deviated from their pre-approved speech regardless of the content of the deviation. 

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• One thing I love is my ability to fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow. Not last night. I mean not right now. I'm writing this sentence at 3:32 in the morning as I suffer from the most bizarre case of insomnia in my life. If you have this problem, you have my deepest sympathies. I hate this.
• I'm loopy, though. No comments from the spelling and grammar police. 
• I think I'm in love with Paula Faris who I had never heard of until I watched ABC's World News Now which is on right now.
• I'm still stunned by the PRISM news. I always thought the Patriot Act controversy was more fluff than substance, but now I feel like I'm living in a science fiction movie.
• I blame Bush. I blame Obama. But more than anything I feel like the government is a runaway freight change that no one is in charge of.
• And for the "well, if you have nothing to hide" crowd, you are beyond naive. I can't begin to wrap my brain around that mentality. And Sen. Lindsey Graham falls into that crowd. He had that attitude yesterday when the spying news was limited to Verison phone records. Watch him backtrack today (but he might be too dumb to even do that). 
• This will be a huge scandal because all sides will jump on it. The Left loves the Fourth Amendment and is stunned by this invasion of privacy. The Right hates Obama and he's on record as saying this wasn't going on. It's the Perfect Political Storm. 
• I read on Twitter that the speech of the valedictorian of Joshua High School had his mic turned off last night when he began to speak about God. I bet that is absolutely not true.
• I just ate microwaved Beefaroni. 
• Jim Adler advertises at 4:00 in the morning. 
• The movie The Internship looks awful. 
• The Dallas DA's Office is trying to get a judge to jack Dallas Cowboy Josh Brent's bond for allegedly testing positive for marijuana. The Motion is here. There's no question it was written with the media in mind because there's no way they go to that much effort every time they make such a request in other cases.
• And one huge development in Brent's case that no one is talking about: His blood results may be inadmissible due to the recent Supreme Court case that threw out such blood results when police failed to get a search warrant (at least under the facts before them.) They didn't get a warrant in Brent's case, and if those results are thrown out it could cripple that case.  Texas prosecutors are now basically taking the position to "always get a warrant" just to be safe.
• Those last two bullet points were written yesterday afternoon. I'm not that lucid now. 

News That Just Exploded: We've All Been Spied On For Years

The Washington Post just posted an investigative report (complete with an amazing government slideshow briefing presentation they got their hands on) which begins: "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time."

You've never heard of "PRISM" but you are about to. This is going to be huge. We have been living in a Surveillance State operating in almost total secrecy.