Random Law Enforcement Social Media Post

An officer posted this after a defendant accepted a plea bargain on gun charges during the middle of a trial. That's the prosecutor on the left.  The guns had been tagged as evidence.

Not exactly the exercise of the best judgment in the world.

Source.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Donald Trump continues to soar in the Republican polls. Fox News is giddy about this. I'm giddy about this. How crazy is that?  I'm searching for an analogy because I think this is a train wreck/self implosion in the making while others think he's the conservative savior. Help me out.
• If you refer to Ted Nugent as "Uncle Ted", I'm worried about you.
• College Game Day is coming back to Sundance Square to kick off the college football season. I went down there last year and will probably do it again. (Get ready for an Alabama invasion.)
• The Messenger is about to give us a bunch of pictures of the new V.R. Eaton High School which is off of 287 past the Saginaw cutoff.  That place is massive and seems to be surrounded by more athletic fields than Valley Ranch.  Question: How is traffic going to work for that thing?
• This morning Mark Davis promoted an upcoming investing seminar in Tyler presented by "Pastor David Mitchell". I googled it and this is what is on the "buy tickets" page for the seminar: "BUY 1 TICKET FOR $99.95 ($4,500 VALUE) GET 1 FREE!"   You kidding me? On a different page, they actually have a $4,500 button below the $99.95 button in an apparent effort to prove it really is a $4,500 value. My incredible distrust for this group and desire to run as far as possible away from them is only exceeded by their hubris. (And there seems to be a strong Baylor presence in that group.)
• I will continue to offer Liberally Lean for free for the foreseeable future -- That's a $4,500 value.
• I learned Jason Garrett has 28 nieces and nephews. I have two.
• Anyone want to justify this: Video shows third grader handcuffed (around his arms) by Kentucky deputy.  (That caused me to yell at the TV last night.) 
• BagOfNothing writes about going to Burger's Lake yesterday. I went there when I was 17 years old -- in the middle of a spell of teenage heartbreak angst -- and have never been back. That's amazing because I loved that place. Afterwards, my two buddies and I stopped at some place on Lake Worth and jumped off a platform which had to be over 50 feet tall.  They dove. I just jumped.
• I was working for my dad at his store on that day, and I timidly asked to take the afternoon off. He did. But he also said, "You need to decide if you want to work or you want to play."  There are the oddest moments in your life that you will never forget and which will have an impact forever. 
• As expected, Boyd ISD named the high school football stadium after former coach J.G. Cartwright last night. But I got caught up by this extra sentence about the story in this morning's Update: "Trustees also awarded the Boyd Elementary roof project to American Pride of Dallas."  In addition to being an odd fact to add to the story, I started to laugh at a company which named itself "American Pride".  What are the chances of there being a bald eagle in the company's logo? Spoiler alert: They do.  How they don't have Lee Greenwood automatically playing has to be an oversight. 

President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho?

We are heading towards Idiocracy at warp speed.

She Is Saying, "Welp, Monday Is Over"

Man, The Cops Can't Catch A Break These Days

OK, All Ye Who Mock

So I mentioned my bathroom project where I temporarily rerouted the water to fix the toilet.  Almost immediately, my many admirers called me an idiot for not shutting off the water to the entire house since the inline to the toilet wouldn't completely close.

I'm stupid but not an idiot. I thought of that!

I went to in the front flower bed and found it. It's new school and simple. It pretty much is this:

The house is probably 12 years old or so, but I bet that shut off value has never been turned. Why do I believe that? I couldn't budge it! I used WD-40. I tapped it with a rubber mallet. I used tools for leverage. Nothing.  I would have used a vice grip but there is not as much room on the neck as the one depicted here.

But given the option of snapping that thing off and/or having Old Faithful come to life, I let well enough alone. I'd used PVC pipe and comedy to fix the toilet before I'm screwing up the water supply to the entire house.

So here's my question: Are there any tricks to getting that thing to turn? I really don't want to call a plumber for that but it needs to work.  One of these days I'll have a busted pipe and that won't be the time to try and figure out how to get that thing to turn.

Lady Cites Articles Of Incorporation To Try To Avoid Detention

I give cops the business all the time, but this guy was great. He keeps his cool. He doesn't go nuts. And although the handcuffing isn't caught on film, it sounds like he uses only the force necessary to achieve the purpose.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• I don't know if indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is guilty but his best defense might be that he's not smart enough to commit securities fraud.
• I dog Joel Osteen all the time but a guy who I really have my eye is Frisco pastor Keith Craft. Something doesn't seem right. 
• "The Texas Legislature left it up to county commissioners to decide whether the sheriff, constables, the district and county clerks, treasurer and tax assessor-collector must file" personal financial statements. I did not know that. (The Denton Record Chronicle provided convenient links to all campaign financial reports and personal financial reports last week.)
• You do realize that if someone is pro-choice that they hope there is never an abortion, right? 
• Lockheed Martin's F-35 has been cleared for combat. At a cost of around $100 million a piece, is it worth it? How many drones capable of surgical strikes would that much money buy? 
• Mrs. LL has poison ivy. I keep trying to convince her it is leprosy. 
• Someone asked me what would happen if I fought Ronda Rousey. I feel comfortable in saying that I would be in the fight up until the moment she caught me and then killed me.
• "Boyd ISD trustees will discuss and consider attaching a name to the district’s football stadium at a special meeting tonight."   I suppose it is a no brainer that they will name it Cartwright Stadium but it would be funny if they surprised us and  named it IGA Stadium or Allsups Stadium. 
• Craziest home repair ever this weekend: I had to replace the inner workings of a toilet but discovered that the inline water line would not completely shut off the water (it was a pretty big trickle.) So how am I supposed to disconnect the running inline water connection and fix the toilet?  Uh . . . PVC pipe!! I created the craziest setup where the water drained into the shower while I fixed it. It was right out of the Three Stooges. 
• Blows my mind every time I see it: "With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States holds about a quarter of the global prison population."
• A NASCAR driver almost killed his pit crew.
• Very random sports observation: I watched the end of the Nebraska/Texas 2009 Big 12 Championship game over the weekend and that last minute might have been the worst time management by Mack Brown in the history of ever. I think he would have been fired the next day if that one second wasn't put back on the clock. 
• Had someone ask me if I could do it all over again and could go to any college I wanted (cost and being admitted are a given), where would I go. That really got me thinking. I was torn between the West Coast with options of USC, UCLA, Cal-Berkley, Stanford, or Pepperdine and the South with top options of LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Georgia or South Carolina, and the obligatory Ivy League and Northeast school choices of Harvard, Yale, MIT or NYU. 
• Baylor's Lache Seastrunk might not even make the Cowboys final roster but it's amazing that a guy who holds the all time Big 12 record for yards per carry can't make it in the NFL.
• I saw online that an old girlfriend announced she was getting married for the third time.  I almost messaged her with a line of "So you're telling me there's a chance?"  But age and maturity caused me to walk away from the keyboard.

30 Years Ago Today

And this photo is haunting. I drove by it  in the late 1980s on my way to work every day. I knew that dent was caused by the crash, and I felt like I was the only one who did.

And if you ever want to ponder the Butterfly Effect, think about William Mayberry, 28, who died after his car was hit by the plane on 114.

I Don't Know What I'm Looking At But Oddly Entertained

Full Video:

It's The Weekend: Let's Get Out Of Here

Decatur Is Possessed

Middle of the afternoon, a storm forms over Decatur, and a crack of thunder just rocked the town.

A Decatur Middle School Had An Unfortunate Typo Yesterday

That was what was eventually posted to correct the error.

The first one posted, which was quickly deleted, was exactly the same except for one letter.  What are the chances of someone taking a screenshot and sending it to me for, uh, grins?

Link. (Bad word warning! Bad word warning!)

Hey, social media person, let me paraphrase Tony Romo by saying that if that's the worst mistake you ever have, you've had a pretty good life.

Legal Smackdown Avoided

I always take a look at opinions issued by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals, but I rarely read their civil case opinions since I don't practice in that area. For some reason, I clicked on one this morning because the trial court had been reversed.

Pretty boring stuff. A guy gets hurt. A guy sues. There is a trial. After the injured guy finishes his case, the defendant asks the judge to throw the case out because he hadn't proved anything at all. The judge agreed. Now the injured worker appeals.

However, this got my attention:

 

Whoa!!  It's one thing to ask the case to thrown out because it hasn't been proven, but throwing in that the injured guy is an "illegal" is something else. Whatever your views are on illegal immigration, that was not a legal basis to have the case thrown out. When I saw the [2] at the end of it, it meant there was a footnote and I expected the court would take the lawyer to task. Nope. It was just legal stuff.

But after ruling in favor of the injured guy, they weren't going to let that comment go unnoticed. In a later footnote they said:

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• A few weeks back I referenced a criminal case that was reversed because an idiot judge jailed a potential juror in front of the whole jury panel.  I had no idea that the case, even though originating in Galveston, involved a former Wise County gal. 
• The Coaches Poll, which admittedly means nothing, has TCU #2 and Baylor #4. As a lifelong college football fan, I never dreamed there would be a possibility of seeing those two schools in a preseason Top Five.  And it's terrible that TCU and Baylor play in the last game of the year. The chances of either, or both, being unbeaten by that time is slim. It would have been much better to have met in the first week of October. 
• It's a blue moon tonight. I'd like to announce I was stopped by the courthouse once when Messenger reporters were doing a "Ask the man on the street" bit and the question was, "What is a blue moon?" I had shake voice as I, fortunately, answered correctly. 
• The last thing Sundance Square wants: Two groups get in a fight last night, cops are called, and a cop kills a guy.  (Random thought: Don't all Fort Worth cops have body cams now?) 
• Donald Trump wants to deport every illegal alien  but "we’re going to move ‘em back in if they’re really good people."  Brilliant!  And get your popcorn ready. The first debate is less than a week away!
• Talk radio was ranting about the City of Dallas renting out the convention center for the Exxotica convention arguing that the city could have denied the group permission. One guy argued that the Klan certainly would have been denied a permit.  I've never researched that issue, but I'm not so sure about that. Whenever a city discriminates who they rent to based upon the content of the group's message, the city is on shaky ground.  
• "Texas trooper's boss says there was no reason to pull over Sandra Bland." Wow!!! I clicked on that Fox News story only to see that the headline was totally wrong. The first sentence of the AP story underneath it reads: "AUSTIN, Texas –  The top boss over the Texas trooper who arrested Sandra Bland said there was reason to pull her over for failing to signal a lane change and told lawmakers Thursday that the trooper remains on the state payroll because the investigation is still playing out." (I've saved screenshots if they correct it). 
• That "top boss" is DPS head Steve McCraw who was grilled in that hearing by Tea Party Darling Jonathan Stickland: "For a lot of people, it’s pretty cut-and-dry what happened,” said Stickland, who said he has watched the dash-cam video of Bland’s arrest multiple times. “Somebody’s liberties were stomped on.”
• From office to home, the amount of money I spend on TV, Internet, and Phones is astronomical. I have to be doing something wrong.
• I'll confess I didn't post a few abortion comments left under the Dead Lion post yesterday. First, it was a post about a lion. Secondly, it's just a weird logic. 
• The backstop project is substantially complete but we've got one problem: With the heat and schedules and lack of motivation from all of us, the Seventh Grader In The House has yet to go full test mode on it. 
• This accurately depicts how I put Random Thoughts together every morning.

The Dentist, The Lion, The Talk Show, and The Bible

I was disturbed when I saw this story regardless of whether the dentist did or did not know the lion had been coaxed off protected lands.  I just couldn't imagine shooting a lion.  But I figured there was at least some good reason to do so. You know, the same reasons that Texans give for deer and dove hunting.  I accept those.

So I was listening to the Mark Davis Show yesterday (podcast and it begins at the midway point) when a guy named "Jeff" from the Safari Club called in to justify lion hunting both "ethically and morally".  Ok, I'm about to learn something, I thought! However, he was beyond disturbing. He spoke of how lion hunting on a safari is the ultimate in a hunter's life (although the pinnacle for him is to kill an elephant with a compound bow. Nice.)

Here are some of the things he said:

• Lion hunting is "the sport of kings".  It will cost between $50,000 and $150,000.
• He readily acknowledges you can't eat the lion, it's just for a trophy. This is by far the most disturbing thing I heard -- there is no other reason to kill a lion. 
• "As a hunter you are able to fulfill a desire to hunt . . . one of the most noble creatures and one of the most dangerous." (Davis was pretty funny here when he told the guy that he's not dangerous to you if you don't hunt him.)
• Why do it? "Why would you climb Everest if you know you might die?"  
• "There are few adventures left in the is world."  After hunting all your life, the lion hunt is "truly exceptional" and you get to "match wits with one of the most dangerous, majestic creatures on earth." 
• He's on the lion's turf. "That lion can be on top of me in a matter of seconds." "When I'm out there with a bow, I might as well be out there with a stick and string."  (Yeah, you're a big underdog out there, buddy.) 
• Becoming out of breath, he says, "It is giving me a rush just thinking about it." 
• "There is something spiritual about hunting an animal with a bow." 

In essence, the killing of a lion is simply the ultimate rush for the bored, rich hunter. After you've done all the types of hunting you can think of, let's ratchet it up a notch and go further. Killing for killing's sake, and not for food or purpose, be damned.

I think that mentality is screwed up.  I couldn't help but think of what the mindset of a person would be after he had done the "ultimate" and killed a lion or elephant in Africa. What would be next? What else is there? And then it hit me because it was so obvious and it gave me chills: It's the exact plot of The Most Dangerous Game. 

Finally, let me turn to Mark Davis' reaction which was also shocking. After initially being skeptical to the concept of lion hunting, he finally began to "come around" and "understand" it even though it was not his "cup of tea". But how can it be justified? He said this:

"And the bottom line is that God has given us dominion over the animals and we can do this just because we want to."

I may have yelled out loud when I heard that.

I guess I'll get a bow and arrow and hunt the Family Dog in the back yard tonight. God has given me dominion over her. I can do it if I want to. And let me morally and ethically justify this act by telling you  it's the ultimate desire and sensation for me.

Ted Bundy probably felt the same way.

Mark Davis said there is nothing immoral about killing the lion. He even chastised a meek caller for even thinking that could be true.

Dear lord, Bless The Beasts and Children, indeed.*
_______
* The last four paragraphs were modified from the original posting. Why? I went back and listened to the show and got royally pissed off. Again.

Saw This On Facebook Last Night

That's 287 in Wise County and lots of people saw the same thing.

Anyone know anything about it?

That Was Almost A Moonwalk

WATCH: A man filling his car at a gas pump is nearly hit by an SUV skidding out of control http://t.co/UpKKKtEecj pic.twitter.com/Ci68535H1F

— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) July 30, 2015