Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Ten years ago to the day four very little children were killed in Bay City, Texas. Remember it? 

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• Another day in America where you send your kids to school and they die. This time in Michigan. Will we remember this one?   
  
  
  
• Watch this video if you haven't seen it. 
  
  
  
• And the dead have names and faces.

  

  17 year old Madisyn Baldwin

  
  

  

  16 year old Tate Myre

  
  

  

  14 year old Hana St. Juliana

  
  
• It almost seems wrong to write about anything else. 
• The Update has story about a murder in Boyd last night.
• The Ghislaine Maxwell trial got started off with a bang. 
  
  
  
• There was a heck of a Republican fight between the Jewish Space Laser representative and a South Carolina representative yesterday.
  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
   
• Despite what you will hear, we'll learn very little in oral arguments today in the Mississippi abortion case.
  
  
  
• I'm not saying that it's the beginning of a Winter Surge, but it could be the beginning of a Winter Surge. 
  
  
  
• A couple of facts have been revealed in the case of the alleged drunk driving death which killed an off duty police office in Lake Worth.  According to an affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram, the driver submitted to a breath test that came back at 0.144, and he "arrived at 11 a.m. Saturday at Fuzzy’s and began drinking, and left about 1 p.m."
  
  
  
• I can't believe the Elizabeth Holmes trial is still going on -- she's been testifying this week -- and we learned this is an example of how she would write out her schedule. If your schedule is so packed, that seems like a lot of time wasted in writing it all out. (She actually says this was proof of the demands her boyfriend put upon her as he controlled and manipulated her.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Another prosecutor story. "When one woman broke off a relationship with him, he subpoenaed her phone 33 times over two years, according to the indictment. She repeatedly told him to leave her alone, but he persisted." Yep, he was using grand jury subpoenas to spy on his past flings.
  
  
  
• In this day of college coach turnover, it drives me nuts when people don't understand the term "buyout." Here we go: If a coach decides to leave before his contract ends, his contract "buyout clause", if there is one, will obligated the coach to pay the school a set amount of money (although the tab is often picked up by his new school.)  But if it is the school who fires the coach without cause (almost always the case), he is owed ever dime still left on the contract. Here's an example of a buyout paragraph: 
  
  
  
• Some people get it absolutely backwards and say, "If there is no buyout clause then he gets no money if they fire him." Nope. If he gets fired, he gets all the money due him.  
• The revised Big 12 will be on display this weekend in two championship games. 
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold 

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

I stand by that.   

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• I still can't get over that Lubbock shooting video I posted yesterday. And I've learned a wild twist: The shooter, at the time of the killing, was married to sitting district judge. Their divorce was finalized two weeks after the incident:
  
  
  
• State Rep. David Spiller of Jacksboro has an opponent and, get this, he was arrested in April for taking part in the Trump Insurrection! He lives in Forestburg. He also deserves to receive zero votes. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Since self-defense is a big player in the news these days, here is an interesting case out of McKinney. The jury rejected self-defense but she got a victory anyway in that they acquitted her of murder, found her guilty of just manslaughter, and then gave her probation. (It's a good thing they acquitted her of murder -- a jury can't give probation for that offense.) The deceased was a football star at Abilene Christian. Toby Shook was the defense lawyer. 
  
  
  
  
  
• But those that shared that viral story last week told me they did their own research online.
  
• LSU stole Notre Dame's Brian Kelly last night. This is amazing. Despite there being a very real possibility that Notre Dame is in the four team playoff less than one week from today, their coach has bolted. Insanity. 
• There are some reports that Kelly will get $15 million a year. I'd tap the brakes on that. But I bet it's in the $10 to $12 million range.
• An actual sentence from a 1982 Sport's Illustrated story about Texas A&M hiring head coach Jackie Sherrill: "Six days earlier, the 38-year-old Sherrill had stunned the college football world by signing a six-year contract with the Aggies for—hold on, folks—$267,000 a year, a total of $1,602,000. That makes him far and away the highest-paid college coach in the land." That was true. The highest paid coach ever. 
• Speaking of old Aggies, former coach R.C. Slocum is doing a good job battling cancer. He "rang the bell" at Baylor's Scott and White.
  
  
  
• OU quick hits:
• The last picture of Lincoln Riley ever on the field as an Oklahoma Sooner:
  
  
  
• Dude! TCU, Baylor, OSU, Tech, et. al. had to find out OU and Texas were leaving the Big 12 by reading the Houston Chronicle.
  
  
  
• More coaching news this morning: Texas Tech's Offensive Coordinator Sonnie Cumbie is headed to Louisiana Tech as head coach.
• Briefly last night:
  
  
  
• I watched a short documentary on Amazon which I knew nothing about: The Bombing of Wall Street in 1920. I love learning about stuff like that. 
  
  
  
• Rare baseball bullet point: "At 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Dec. 1, baseball's current collective bargaining agreement will expire. If no agreement is reached, we will have a lockout." I think we are going to have a lockout. Fun fact: They are meeting in Irving right now. 
• The Wise County Messenger is running a deal for $20 a year which is both print and online. Buy it. Support local media.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

There needs to be a documentary about this. She was convicted by a jury and then cut a deal instead of having the jury or the judge assess punishment. (She faced possible prison time.) She was then later found* "actually innocent" on the charges, and sued the prosecutors for malicious prosecution. They escaped because of immunity law. Amazingly, her lawsuit against Collin County is still alive after a Motion to Dismiss was denied at the district court level in May of this year. I suppose that is now on appeal. She got her law license back and tried to run for judge in 2019 but got kicked off the ballot by the Republican chair for a very technical reason. (*Nerdy stuff: I haven't confirmed it, but I bet she waived her right to appeal as part of the plea agreement, but the agreement failed to say she couldn't raise an actual innocence claim by a writ -- assuming it can be waived.)

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• This video out of Lubbock is one of the most horrific things I've ever watched (and I urge caution before you decide to click on it.)  And I think the self-defense claim is a reach. From the moment he went and got the gun, it feels like he intended to kill the man.   Another shocking aspect of the video is just how everyone reacts so casually as a guy lays dead on a porch. Story. 
  
  
  
• Good grief. 
  
  
  
• An off-duty Euless detective was killed by an alleged drunk driver in Lake Worth on Saturday afternoon. There's a connection to Fuzzy's restaurant (but not the one in Decatur). 
  
  
  
• I mentioned the former Bridgeport resident and current  Lake Worth PD chief on Friday. Little did I know he had to deal with that the next day. 
  
  
  
• This wreck on Stemmons Freeway on Saturday injured a Dallas deputy. That's a heck of an impact. 
  
  
  
• I said on Friday that the new COVID variant would be named "Nu."  Well, it was supposed to be until the World Health Organization thought that people would confuse "Nu" with "New". The next name up, "Xi" just happens to also be than name of a certain Chinese man. So it got named Omicron.
• Matthew McConaughey says he will not run for Texas governor. It would have been a good bit. 
• Rep. Louis Gohmert may be the dumbest man in East Texas, but Wise County's representative comes close. Jackson is, somehow, a doctor. 
  
  
  
• Legal stuff this week: (1) Arguments in a Mississippi case targeting  Roe v. Wade is in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, (2) Jury selection begins toay in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial in New York City, and (3) jury selection also begins for the trial for Minneapolis female cop who killed the guy when she mistook her gun for her taser in April of this year. That's taser case got to trial quickly.
  
  
  
• Lincoln Riley leaving OU for USC is about as shocking of football news as I can remember. 
  
  
  
• And some speculate that he was bolting because he wasn't a fan of OU going to the SEC. I scoffed at that at first, but then I saw some takes like the one below. That guy's right. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Aggie, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Texas, and OU can't all be winners when they are in the same conference. 
  
  
  
• Within hours of Riley's announcement, OU's top running back recruit, top QB recruit, and top WR recruit decommitted. Earlier in the afternoon, this guy saw it coming: 
  
  
  
• I don't know how anyone thinks the NFL can compare to college football.  Saturday I watched Baylor escape Tech in a bizarre and wildly entertaining game, Alabama and Auburn go to 4 OTs, Oklahoma State hang on to dear life against an OU miracle drive, and even SFA and Incarnate Word going to overtime in a playoff game. It was all glorious. And I just saw the highlights of Aggie/LSU and only parts of Michigan and Ohio State. 

  

  When Alabama tied it up in regulation.

  

  After Michigan's win. 

  
  
  
  
• The Star-Telegram has started a new thing every Sunday . . .