Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

The Ticket's Norm Hitzges got married 10 years ago, and I had found their wedding album online. Alas, it is now gone. The album, not the marriage. "Norm and Mary" are still together today.   

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•  I watched some of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial yesterday.  Random observations:
• From an optics standpoint, he is a nightmare for the prosecution. Boyishly young, white, and clean cut. And he looks, well, innocent. 
  
  
  
• I've said that I thought the prosecution will have a difficult time getting a conviction, but I've been focusing on the death that occurred on the street when he was retreating.  But that first killing by the boarded up store, where we don't have a good video of it, might be a lot more troublesome for him. He shot the guy in the head. If I'm the prosecutor, I would have indicted him on that one alone and focused on it. 
• Man, you get to see all the unedited videos taken that night if you are watching this trial. (Just search for the trial on YouTube. There are a number of live feeds.)
• The judge is much smarter than I expected, but he's also a nut.  In considering a hearsay objection, he went on a long dissertation about the Hearsay Rule which was actually spot on about a very complicated subject. But then he went on to its historical background and began referencing the Apostle Paul while he was in prison.  He certainly has never learned the first rule of being a judge: Say as little on the record as possible if you don't want to get reversed.
  
  
  
• Then he went on a rant about legal experts on TV and even brought up Jeffrey Toobin. Watch it here. 
• The defense lawyer doesn't know the evidence rules. 
  
  
  
• The prosecutor is ready to push the rules and no one is calling him on it. While playing a video, he would suddenly stop it and, without objection, would then address the jury with something like, "What you are seeing here, and this is undisputed, is the defendant . . . ."  Sheesh.  This isn't a One Act Play. 
  
  
  
• Hey, that guy kind of looks like Gary Oldman in Batman Returns.
  
  
  
• He's unhinged. 
  
  
  
• Teacher salary scale in the metroplex is here.  It lists 1 through 49. 
  
  
  
• I'm not exactly sure how the prosecutor in the Raider player's deadly DWI case got the detailed information below so quickly. It seems like you would have to jump through some constitutional hoops to get access to the "black box" information. And that would also be record speed to get a court admissible alcohol concentration from blood.  
  
  
  
• The Cowboys will wear these 1976 helmets on Sunday. I'll say it: That's a bad look. 
  
  
  
• Lots of truth to this. 
  
  
  
• A few people asked if my assistant made it to the Rolling Stones. Yes, she did. Got there at 3:30 p.m. for general admission standing room on the floor of the Cotton Bowl and didn't sit down again until after 11:00.  You have to really love the Stones to do that. 
• Louie Gohmert and the QAnon Jewish Laser Beam Congresswoman did a publicity stunt together in support of the January 6th Trump Insurrectionists.  They showed up at the D.C. jail demanding admittance. (They were told to hit the road.) He even has a cute little hashtag for the seditionists. 
  
  
  
• I'll never understand how these nuts want to normalize the attempted overthrow of the United States Government. I'll forever be pissed off about it. 
  
  
  
• Prosecutors cannot intentionally use their peremptory strikes (removing x number of jurors from the pool without the need for the judge's approval) on the basis of race alone.  But that rule also applies to the defense lawyer. Someone pointed out to me last night hat there is one huge difference: If the prosecutor objects to the defense striking all minorities and the judge overrules the objection, there will never be anything the prosecutor can do about it if that white jury then finds the defendant not guilty. The state can never appeal an acquittal. 
  
  
  
• Random new Gallup poll on marijuana legalization (including historical results): 
  
  
  
• Mrs. LL has an unusual philosophy for teenage trick or treaters. She thinks they ought to get full sized candy bars as a reward for not instead being out and doing hood rat things.
• Interesting. Wise County voted against a Proposition that passed the state wide election: "Texas Proposition 2, Authorize Counties to Issue Infrastructure Bonds in Blighted Areas Amendment." I wonder if the word "blighted" had anything to do with it.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

This one is fitting. Last night Ron Washington finally got a World Series Championship ring, and ten years ago this little guy made his appearance on Liberally Lean in anticipation of the Rangers Game 7. (The kid actually did that bit in 2010, a year earlier, but I re-issued the pic for good luck. It didn't work.)     

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• A big crowd showed up at Dealey Plaza yesterday to see the return of the late JFK, Jr. who would then install Donald Trump as president.  Make no mistake about it: These people are all around you. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• The Tarrant County DA will not get a new $116 million office after a bond proposal was rejected. That's never going to pass as a stand alone item. 
  
  
  
• A lot of school bonds failed across the state.   I'm not sure it's a good idea to put multi-million dollar bonds on a ballot right after all the voters have received their jaw-dropping property tax bills in the mail. 
• But Fort Worth ISD managed to pass a $1.2 billion bond by 42 votes. 
• Constitutional amendment elections are a scam.  An example is below. It would be nice if it told you how the eligibility requirements were changing. 
  


• Republicans got a big win in Virginia and are getting real close in New Jersey which is currently too close to call. Heck, both races have razor thin margins. But Virginia is weird. Since 1976, every time a new president has been elected to the White House, the other party wins the Virginia governor`s race the following year.

  

  Virginia

  
  

  

  New Jersey still being counted

  
  
• Virginia, on the same night, elected a Democratic black and female Jamaican immigrant as Lt. Governor. Edit: Oops. She's a Republican. The gun should have tipped me off. 
  
  
  
• "Saginaw police say they got the call at 3:55 a.m. Monday reporting shots fired at a home on Babbling Brook Drive. Investigators say Russell had gone to three or four homes, knocking on the front doors. According to police, one homeowner answered the door and told Russell to go away. 
Police say at some point, Russell started to leave but then rushed back toward the homeowner who then fired multiple rounds, killing Russell." I'd bet there will be no criminal charges. 









• The fact the Rittenhouse trial is televised is great. I'm telling you, it's going to be hard to get a conviction. When a whole criminal trial revolves around whether someone's conduct was "reasonable", the prosecution is in for a huge uphill battle. 
  
  
  
• Jenna Ryan, the Little Ball of Insurrection™ and realtor from the metroplex, will face sentencing next week. In the Justice Department's sentencing memo, prosecutors mention that she tweeted that she's not going to jail because she is white and has blonde hair. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Everyone had a lot of fun with the UT coach's stripper girlfriend monkey story yesterday, including the finding old tweets from the Pole Assassin herself. From a liability standpoint which she might be facing because of her monkey biting a child, this ain't a good one: 
  
  
  
• An excerpt from the SCOTUSBlog article about the abortion/procedural oral arguments in the Supreme Court on Monday: 
  
  
  
• According to the Messenger, with the Rhome city secretary resigning this week, that makes the fifth city secretary in Wise County to quite or be forced out since August. That's amazing. 
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

The death of Elizabeth Lightfoot actually remains an unsolved mystery. She had gone out that evening and ended up with a strangely high BAC of 0.317 after leaving friends at Yourway Burger in Farmer's Branch ). But then went by a grocery store afterwards and bought Ramen noodles. Police investigated it as a homicide, but the ME's office surprised everyone by calling it an "accident" (for whatever that's worth.) 

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• Oh, my. The girl who was shot to death in her car in Irving, after finding a tracker on her vehicle a few days earlier, was a stripper at Rick's Cabaret near the airport. And the man arrested in connection with her death was a frequent customer. 
  
  
  
• "A well-known Wichita Falls, Texas, man was arrested Wednesday on a tougher charge for an alleged road rage incident that occurred in 2020, court documents show . . . . Wise County District Attorney James Stainton of Decatur is the specially appointed prosecutor for McDaniel’s case."
  
  
  
  
• My one and only assistant is a huge Rolling Stones fan, and also has the worst luck. 
• In 2016, she traveled to Las Vegas to see them only to have the concert cancelled at the last minute when Jagger contracted laryngitis.  
• In 2019, she bought tickets to see them in New Orleans only to have the concert postponed due to a hurricane, and she couldn't make the new date. 
• She bought tickets for the Stones in Dallas for their scheduled concert in May of 2020 but it got cancelled due to COVID. 
• Tonight she has tickets for them at the Cotton Bowl with heavy rains predicted. 
• I've buried the lede! The big story of the day is a UT special teams coach and his girlfriend's monkey.  (The USA Today has some pretty funny coverage of this saga.)  Here we go . . . 
• From January: 
  
  
  
  
• From last night:
  
  
  
• And, finally, here is the "Pole Assassin's" apparent confirmation that the little monkey at least did something (and then she deleted her Twitter account.)
  
  
  
• Just to recap, allegedly the Special Teams coach at Texas, who coached at Alabama, left his wife for a former stripper, who went by the name of Pole Assassin and had a pet monkey who she incorporated into her act, and then he, the coach, brought that former stripper and her monkey with him to Austin, where it, the monkey, bit a kid on Halloween in 2021.
• This all seems so 1950s.
  
  
  
• 34!? There was no way they were walking away from that gig and all the retirement benefits: 
  
  
  
• The Anti-vax crowd used to be a very small fringe movement championed by Jenny McCarthy.
• There are a lot of things I don't understand about QAnon, but their infatuation with JFK Jr. being alive is right up there at the top of my list. 
  
  
  
  
• Dak was announced to be a "full go" for Sunday's game, but he didn't look like it as he ran like an old man to catch up to Cooper Rush after the game. 
  
  
  
• If you want to see how a small town Sheriff's Office can get in over their heads while trying to solve a murder and fall victim to tunnel vision about a particular suspect, watch the 45 minute stand-alone episode named "Joyride" in Season 2 of Netflix's Confession Tapes. It's crazy.  
  
  
  
• I don't think Gary Patterson gets another high profile job.