5.19.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts





And Dallas ISD hired him back in 2015. He currently has a contract through 2024 at $351,750  a year (in addition to the retirement which is actually paying him $200,000 a year.)

  • Greg Abbott knows he's in political trouble so he's overcompensating now by issuing an "order" telling all levels of government in Texas that they can't require a mask. That would include everything from a high school class, to an Aggie football game, to a district courtroom. 
  • Abbott's order is really a strange legal twist. In essence, he is claiming he has emergency powers ("Executive Order 36") because of a pandemic to mandate that all Texas governmental entities can no longer do anything to fight the pandemic. 
  • Decatur drug bust update: Brooke Melton finally bonded out of jail yesterday according to Sheriff Office records.

  • I've always liked Dale Hansen, but all of the evening sports anchors have lost their significance over the years. We all used to watch them because it was the only place where, for example, you could see an Aggie or TCU highlight. There was literally no where else to go. 

  • Deputies won't face charges in the death of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina after they attempted to arrest him on (surprise!) a drug warrant. "The deputies fired 14 shots that day, nine from a pair of Glock 17 pistols and five from an AR-15 rifle . . . .  Deputies were seeking to arrest Brown for allegedly selling cocaine and fentanyl-laced heroin to an undercover detective." I have serious doubts about whether they needed to unload on him as he was driving away, but what got my attention was how militarized the cops were as they approached his house to make an arrest for a penny-ante drug deal. If you go looking for a war, you'll find one. 


  • We have another arrest in the metroplex of a Trump Insurrectionist. This time it is a 41 year old guy out of Trophy Club. 

  • The controversial lawyer for the "QAnon Shaman" gave quite the interview. His defense is that all the insurrectionists are "short bus" people. Oh, my. 

  • Wild legal stuff: "A man died by suicide inside a federal courtroom in North Dakota after he was found guilty, officials say. [T]he man was on trial at the Fargo courthouse and the jury had returned a guilty verdict when he 'produced an edge weapon and cut his throat' in front of the judge, courtroom staff and others. The jury had already left the room."

  • I was going to do a post about how the incredibly progressive DA in Philadelphia,  Larry Krasner, won re-election in a landslide last night, but I got sidetracked when I stumbled across the story of how a girl was once found dead in his opponent's bathtub. That's a double "Oh, my."

    • It's such a skeleton in his closet, that the opponent, Charles Peruto, had to try to address the issue on his campaign website. (Uh, a 0.45 alcohol concentration is off-the-charts high, but it doesn't mean what he says it means.)


    • By the way, PBS had a great multi-part documentary on "liberal DA Krasner". Part 1 is on YouTube, and it is great. 
  • Luka Doncic gave a rare interview on The Ticket yesterday. He was blasted afterwards for being disinterested and aloof. It truly was a PR disaster. 

  • Legal stuff I missed: The following drugs were found in the vehicle of an Austin attorney during a Live PD episode. The charges were dismissed. 

  • I would never invest in any crypto currency. Bitcoin over the last week: 



  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:34 AM

5.18.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts





The video is still up on youtube. By today's standards, I no longer think it is "over produced."  

  • That case of the murdered four year old in the Mountain Creek area of Dallas is still weird. I was skeptical about whether there actually was home surveillance video from inside the house showing the child abducted, but police have confirmed it in a search warrant affidavit according to the Morning News. But there's a lot of sorriness in this case:
    • The kid wasn't even staying with his parents. He was with the "girlfriend" of the child's father -- a father who hadn't been seen since March.
    • The child's biological mother didn't know where he was and had been "looking for him." 

  • This story out of Arlington was confusing as well. "[T]he man was parking in front of a home in the 1400 Comanche Court when he had a 'medical episode' and drove through a fence, then into the pool." Here's the street and satellite views. How exactly does this happen on the short street?
    Just two pools on that dead end
    Looking into the cul-de-sac

  • Remember Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia) who said that those involved in the January 6th Insurrection looked like they were engaged in a "normal tourist visit"? Well, some have reminded him of these photos where his image was captured. 


  • Lumber prices are finally tumbling but still very high. 

  • 60 Minutes had a segment on UFOs last Sunday which has everyone talking. Here's a local radio hosts take on the subject. Point #4 is, uh, interesting. Aliens are "scripturally proscribed."

  • President Biden released his tax return. It's the 23rd year he has done so. 

  • The Onion pulled no punches after Israel bombed the AP offices in the Gaza Strip because it said Hamas had an office there. 

  • Supreme Court observations from yesterday:
    • The big news was that the Court decided to hear an abortion case when there was no apparent reason to. The lower courts had struck down a Mississippi abortion law that clearly violated Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood so why do they want to hear it?  This guy might be right: 

    • Last term the Supreme Court said in Ramos that it's unconstitutional for a person to be convicted by a jury unless the verdict is unanimous. Makes sense. But what about all those people serving prison sentences right now because that's exactly what happened to them? All their appeals had been exhausted, but can they get a new trial too? Nope. The Supreme Court said the rule is not retroactive. Too bad. So sad. 

    • But, wait! The Supreme Court had said in the past that said "watershed" constitutional cases involving criminal procedure should be applied retroactively.  That's the Teague Rule! What about that? Justice Gorsuch explained: Criminal defendants should know they shouldn't trust us when we say stuff like that:

    • And in a case that got almost no notice because it was just a decision denying the review of a Texas case, look at what the prosecutor got away with:

  • Baylor is using the actual NCAA Basketball Championship Trophy in promotional materials. I had never really looked at it before. That design is extremely spare. 

  • Our County Judge has found another postcard of the courthouse. That's looking east. Notice the old movie theater on the right in the background. And that building to the left  in the foreground now has a second floor on it. I'm guessing this is around 1965.

  • Callisburg, Texas high school Klan video? (Dallas Observer story.)
  • As seen below, the New York Post just crucifies Gov. Cuomo every single day.  But Cuomo subscribes to the new modern day theory about every political firestorm: No matter how bad it is, just ride it out and you'll survive.  


at 8:32 AM

5.17.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




And I still don't think there was.  Background of the accident is here. The families filed a lawsuit in Denton County, but I don't think they recovered anything. (See cause no. 2013-10779-16 with a search here, and see this appellate court setback.)   Highway 380 in Denton County would be expanded to four lanes.

  •  Update on the big "drug bust" in Decatur about three weeks ago.
    • Brooke Melton is still in jail. That's 20 days. 

    • Her husband has bonded out after an attorney posted his bond. (I don't know who that is yet.) 

    • I missed quite the typo last week. 

  • Those Bridgeport numbers for sales tax simply seem wrong. I can't even begin to think of where the money was spent within the city to cause a 130% increase.  

  • This former Dallas prosecutor is only the fourth lawyer to ever lose his law license for withholding evidence that led to guilty verdicts and wrongful incarcerations.  Those guilty of it get away with it all the time. Side note: After working in Dallas, the prosecutor worked in the Denton County D.A.'s office but was fired from it. I don't know why.  He now drives tour buses in Alaska, and still thinks he did nothing wrong. 

  •  "The mother told WFAA her son was sound asleep when the suspect broke in through the back door and kidnapped her son. The mother says surveillance video shows what happened."  That sentence alone causes me to have  lots of questions about the horrible murder of a 4 year old found stabbed to death on a residential street in the 7500 block of Saddleridge in Dallas. An 18 year old was arrested for kidnapping and the only thing we know is that he sometimes "was seen walking in the neighborhood."  It's also curious that the  WFAA story says that the man arrested had a "ankle monitor" on. But the Morning News only references that he had a pending misdemeanor charge for Evading Arrest (and I can't imagine an ankle monitor being ordered for that.)

  • WFAA's color grid for predicted rainfall is screwed up.  If the numbers weren't on this graphic, where do you think that the heaviest rain would fall?  It needs to go from yellow (lightest) to orange to red to purple (heaviest).

  • Of all the videos of the crazy rain in Dallas yesterday afternoon, this one stuck with me. The guy gets out of his car and water can be seen rushing out of the passenger compartment. He then immediately shuts the door to keep the water from escaping.

  • The Colonial golf tournament is next week and you can get an all-inclusive package (food and alcohol) for $475 a day. I think this is new. I don't think this is a bargain. 

  • The suburban Houston tiger was found, and when I saw this story I was sure he was being moved to the Rhome or Bridgeport tiger sanctuaries. Nope, we don't get him. 
  • Scott Baio supporting Ricky Schroder for acting like a jerk to an innocent Costco worker is a pretty good measure of both of them. 

  • Could Israel at least be a little more surgical in their counter-strikes against Hamas so as to not kill 50 children while they do so? 
  • Sam Houston won the Division I Championship yesterday (but we won't mention that South Dakota State's quarterback left with an injury in the first quarter.)

  • Crime wave!

  • Want something to think about all day?: You have three closed doors to choose from. Behind one of them is a new car. Behind the other two is a goat. You choose door #1. The host, who knows where the car is, first opens up door #3 which reveals that a goat. You now have the option to stick with door #1 or switch and choose door #2?  Question: Do you switch because it increases your odds? Amazingly, the answer is yes. Welcome to the "Monty Hall Problem."




at 8:35 AM

5.14.2021

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

at 2:30 PM
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