Get Me This Dog

Playing in the snow is cute enough, but throw in that he's too dumb to know where the squeak is coming from, and we've got us a winner.

Didn't Even Know U.S. Central Command Had A Twitter Account

.@CENTCOM was just hacked by "ISIS" http://t.co/LDUlybfRpP pic.twitter.com/QO2xV7X1A5
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 12, 2015

Let's Go Grab Some Wings, Honey

Bar Fight After Cowboys Game by EgotasticMedia

Nothing like respect between fan bases.

I'm No Weatherman

@wfaachannel8 view from ATT Stadium moments ago as the cold front pushed the cloud cover south. #wildweather pic.twitter.com/uWk7n5gHpU
— Josh Stephen (@joshstephenwfaa) January 12, 2015

But doesn't a cold front come in from the North? So how is Decatur in full cloud cover right now when the front has moved through Arlington causing, oddly, a clear sky.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• I just noticed that the theme from St. Elmo's Fire plays at the end of those Rob Lowe commercials.  
• Bridgeport's Colin Jones of the Carolina Panthers got some face time during Saturday's playoff game.
• CBS ran a one hour tribute/documentary about Verne Lundquist in November that I had recorded and finally watched. It was beyond fantastic. It was called In Your Life if you can find it.
• I also watched A Football Life on UT's win of the National Championship in 2006 in the Rose Bowl. Also really good. But do I dare say it: Vince Young's failed pro career seems frighteningly similar to RG3's current situation. Both won Rookie of the Year and then things began to wobble.
• Another reason to hate Mark Cuban: He's throwing this party. (By the way, I follow the guy on Twitter and his account has become an infomercial for a ridiculous app that he owns. He's trying to compete with SnapChat, and it is destined to fail.)
• Sting was at the AAC last night in what might have been the most unpublicized event of the weekend. Tickets for the nosebleed section were going for less than $10. 
• Fox New is running a commercial dogging Dish for not carrying the network over a contact dispute. Bill O'Reilly appears and says that Dish "is censoring us." Sheesh. Really? It's about money, hoss.
• There are sex offender lists. There should be a list of prosecutors who are known to have withheld evidence. Those type of prosecutors, quite frankly, are more dangerous.
• Jury selection will begin in a crazy Graham County murder case where a guy is accused of killing his two year old and six month old sons and then sending a photo of their dead bodies to their mother. It made national news.  The case was moved to Tarrant County on a change of venue.
• So last week Troy Aikman said he "expected" Jason Garrett to go for it on 4th and 6 but yesterday he disagreed with the Cowboys going for it on 4th and 2 with less than five minutes to play? 
• Baylor went for it of 4th down a shocking 34 times this season (led the nation) and converted 73% of the time.
• Horrible story: A Tarrant County child on Sunday after being in a coma since a 2009 DWI crash. Although he'll get no sympathy from the public, it is stunning that the defendant/other driver is still in the Tarrant County jail awaiting trial. (Related note: Applebees got sued over the wreck.)
• I'm not sure I can do the "Above the Fold" posts with the Messenger's front page because they have tricked up -- in a bad way -- their digital downloads. 
• There's a "Camel Kisses Ranch" near Wichita Falls where there are actual camels. At least there is for now: One of the camels trampled two people to death over the weekend. 
• Weird college basketball moment. Baylor was up by 7 on TCU in overtime and it looked like time expired as the ball went out of bounds off of TCU. The ref then stopped the game and went to instant replay and then put a fraction of a second back on the clock.   (The game also featured a ref who went down with a hamstring injury -- he looked like he had been shot.)
• Trashy girl I can't take my eyes off of. 

Welcome To Controversy-ville

"If a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact by an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball throughout the process of contacting the ground, whether in the field of play or the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete."

Crazy rule. Correct call. (Welcome to my world: Dealing with insane laws on a daily basis.)

Oh my

	Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson)
1/9/15, 8:03 PM Shot of the century by Trevor Booker. #Thunder #Jazz vine.co/v/OpUK9bQhDzI

Barry

New Jersey Paper Taking You Into The Weekend

Special Weather Report From ESPN

It's frigid in Ft. Worth! David Pollack is doing his best to cope... pic.twitter.com/fdY2HSRSyr
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 9, 2015

Tarrant County Iconic Prosecutor Takes A Shot At New DA

Ex-prosecutor Jack Strickland's stinging letter criticizes @TarrantCountyDA @SharenWilson4DA http://t.co/P1rJq2WhIQ
— Bud Kennedy (@BudKennedy) January 9, 2015

You hardly ever see a former and respected prosecutor take a shot at a new DA.  And he's a pretty mild mannered guy.

Something weird is going on. Keep you eye on the DA's office.

Up At The Courthouse All Morning . . .

. . . only to come back and find that the French police went all Rambo on the terrorists.

And to think we once dishonored that country by renaming our tasty fried potato product as "Freedom Fries." We didn't know who we were messing with.

I'm Conflicted By This Bit

Girls pretend to find $100 underneath lady's chair. Lady swears (to God, no less) that it is hers.

But the pranksters were pretty proud of themselves. That was some serious laughing as they fled.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• I didn't know there was a Texas Music Office which is an actual government entity in Austin.  Any way, it has had one director for the last 25 years. Then Gov. Abbott fired him yesterday.  (I wonder if Abbott will hire Lawrence Welk IV or someone like that?)
• The other day I meant to say Bill O'Reilly didn't really write Killing Kennedy but only slapped his name on it for publicity. I called him a "ghostwriter". Wordkyle pointed out that word means the exact opposite of what I intended. He was exactly right. 
• The most "diverse" new congress in our nation's history is 80% white, 80% male, and 92% Christian.
• The Sixth Grader in the House was doing the "drop an egg from nine feet" without breaking it experiment last night. I think she went through a lot of eggs. 
• Newsweek had a cover story on the accuracy of the Bible a couple of weeks ago. Stuff like that really interests me but the subject is sure a lightning rod. Last time I checked there were over 2,500 comments.
• Elvis Presley played what is now the Fort Worth Cowtown Coliseum in Northside four times while age 20/21.
• Ted Cruz reported for jury duty this morning. If he ends up on a criminal jury panel, the defense lawyer should automatically be given an extra strike. 
• Economic news this morning: Unemployment down to 5.6%. 
• Things are getting confusing in France this morning. They've got the two remaining terrorists cornered but now we've learned they have a hostage.  And now there's a second hostage situation which involves the guy who shot a police officer the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
• I read some of the background on the Leroy Burch/John Yarbrough scandal yesterday after I linked to a federal appellate opinion. There was definitely some bad stuff going on, but the U.S. Attorney's really had to shoehorn it through some vague federal statutes to make it a federal case. (Basically every federal crime has to impact interstate commerce for the feds to have jurisdiction.) 
• Jimmy Johnson is one of the 15 finalists for the the NFL Hall of Fame but most think his career was too short.  But hasn't the NFL allowed "other contributions" to count? I mean, he's been a fixture on Fox pre-game for over a decade. 
• The NFL sanctioned "independent investigation" found that the NFL never had possession of the Ray Rice elevator video. I wonder if the authors wrote their conclusions their first day on the job. What a charade.  
• Guy saves drone from going in water. Kinda funny. But look closely in the background at 1:24. What is that creature going under the bridge? Alligator? Snake? Loch Ness Monster? That sucker is big. 
• Kind of odd that the Morning News and Star-Telegram both went with the same old picture today and the same "Frozen in Time" headline:

That Was One Weird Error!

Wait RT @KySportsRadio: This is a really bad error in Elizabethtown newspaper...I mean really bad: pic.twitter.com/dAgvAO8TKN
— Isaac (@WorldofIsaac) January 8, 2015

From the website:

Misquoted? And the corrected quote is to delete the entire quote?

(And all of that overshadows the very weird statement that most would not be attracted to helping people.)

I Wish Wise County Could Get Funding To Do This

Bexar County in San Antonio has renovated its old historic courtroom

The outside of the Wise County Courthouse is majestic.  I can't tell you the number of out-of-towners from over the years I've seen who have stopped to photograph it.

But inside, it's kind of a dump.  Every nook and cranny is occupied with some kind of office. And wires (some properly encased and others not) run along the outside of the walls because those walls aren't made up of two by fours and sheetrock.

The district courtroom we have is what I would want restored.  I've heard that up until around 1950 or so, it had a circular balcony much like To Kill a Mockingbird. Then a ceiling was put on it and a second courtroom was built on top of it. Obviously, the balcony was removed. It takes a lot of imagination these days to try to picture the way it once was.

Crazy note: I have never seen one single photograph of the courtroom as it used to exist. And I've talked to a ton of folks over the years who are interested in Wise County history that have never seen one as well.  That's pretty amazing.

An Actual Public Service Blog Post

Amazon adding more than 500 jobs at Haslet fulfillment center, Six Flags to hold job fair. http://t.co/FYzY99fHnV http://t.co/9JLRoDnMXJ
— Steve Kaskovich (@stevekasko) January 8, 2015

There's a bunch of Wise County folks who work at that Amazon plant, and here's a chance for some more.

Clippers Owner Is Killin' It

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Kinky Friedman was on ESPN's Outside The Lines yesterday and referred to Jerry Jones and Chris Christie as being in the "most important latent homosexual relationship since Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson."  Host Bob Ley suddenly became very uncomfortable. 
• There was an allegation last year that a Wise County deputy had photographed registered sex offenders in various stages of dress. Now Wise County has been sued in connection with one of the alleged incidents. (Note to Messenger: That's cause number CV14-12-924). I don't know if the lawsuit has any merit but there's an odd reference in it to former Wise County Sheriff Leroy Burch and Chief Deputy Sheriff John Yarbrough. (History.)
• WBAP's Hal Jay brought up some weird study this morning that proclaimed that if you are born during a lot of solar activity you are more likely to die earlier than someone who was born when there was not. When a co-host asked what the solar activity was like in June of 1955, Jay said, "It was June! Of course there was a lot of solar activity!" (He was not joking.)
• College Game Day has set up shop in Sundance Square this weekend for the National Championship Game. Might be a tad chilly. 
• I just learned that The People's Choice Awards was on last night (I wouldn't have watched anyway) but all you need to know is that Best Comedic Actor went to Adam Sandler. Really.  Is this the 1990s?
• It is almost poetic that Cowboy great Jethro Pugh passed away on a week when the iconic image of him digging in the ground for footing during the Green Bay Ice Bowl game has been shown on TV about a million times. 
• Troy Aikman said this morning that he wasn't surprised that Jason Garrett went for it on 4th and 6 last week and "kind of expected it." Riiiiighhhhhttttttt.
• Let me tell you the conclusion of any scientist studying the earthquakes in Irving: "It could be just natural earth movement. We can't rule out fracking but can't say it didn't contribute to it. And we can't predict the number or the magnitude of quakes in the future." 
• Yesterday, Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cautioned that terrorists are still out there “and they want to kill us wherever they can find us.” I didn't realize we were that hard to find. 
• "The pen is mightier than the sword" didn't seem very accurate yesterday. 
• For a couple of years I dogged the Tarrant County DA's office for hiring a Public Information Officer who seemed to be used as more of a campaign spokesman than a government DA's spokesman. (Although she was really good at her job.)  This morning she announced she had quit eight days into the administration of the new DA, Sharen Wilson.  Smart move. Smart girl. Someone hire her. She's a former Star-Telegram reporter.