2.14.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




I had forgotten that Dish bought Blockbuster before its demise. 

  • We had a brouhaha in Clay County on Friday night where a spectator came out the stands at the Petrolia-Seymour  high school basketball game and slugged a player. A student will also be charged. (Video in the link.)


  • Eminem was instructed to not "take a knee" during the half-time performance. Those you expect to be offended were indeed offended.  

  • Let's check in on how the MAGA crowd handled the hip-hop halftime performances in general. 
    • Charlie Kirk:

    • Sean Spicer (to which someone had a retort): 

  • Fun Fact: For the Super Bowl halftime in 1988, they brought out Chubby Checker as an "oldies" act to sing "The Twist." He was 46. Last night, Dr. Dre clocked in at age 56, Snoop at 50, Eminem, at 49, and 50 Cent at 46. 

  • If crypto is money why aren't there commercials for money? 
  • Hot sports opinion: Why is everyone calling that a great game? Cincinnati almost won despite their only touchdown in the second half being a fluke play on a horribly underthrown ball coupled with a non-call of the receiver throwing the defender to the ground by the facemask, and the Rams "game winning drive" was saved by a flurry of penalties near the goal line. 
    "Let me launch you while I have to hit the brakes to go back to get this ball"

  • A play in Three Acts:
    • Act I (two weeks ago):

    • Act II (during last night's game):

    • Act III (after the game):

  • The guy who was on the staff of the California Angels who is being tried by the feds in Fort Worth in connection with the overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs would seem to have some hope. 

  • Lots of people have pointed out that this inflation news seems to coincide with profit headlines. 

  • As Austin news station does its own investigation into threats in the legal and political community and cracks the case! So who did it? The station published the big story which leads you to this line: " KXAN is not identifying the individual . . . ." Oh, come on. 

  • Democracy is much safer when Cruz is in Cancun. He's trending toward Marjorie Taylor Greene territory. 

  • Someone did a bit. (It turned out to be a couple of teenage girls.)  

     
  • Below is the front page of the Cincinnati Enquirer, but for the life of me I don't understand the "ntucky" that the helmet is obscuring. (It's a USA Today publication which has a bunch of regional newspapers, so I wonder if something got screwed up in the rush.)

at 8:30 AM

2.11.2022

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

(One year anniversay of this one.)
at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts





The drive-through at Whataburger in Decatur got the attention of a faithful reader. 

  • We knew the drop was coming, but it's still amazing to see.

  • Oh, my.

  • We had a nice 100 in criminal filings yesterday in Wise County: 66 felonies were indicted and 44 misdemeanors (Class A and B) were filed.  Edit: Yep, that was the actual math in my head. 
  • Say what? I completely missed this from two days ago. 

  • Trump had a Trifecta.
    • Taking "clearly marked" classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after he lost the election. 

    • Gaps in the call logs for January 6th.

    • Getting rid of documents by flushing them down White House toilets. 

  • I still don't understand what happened with Hispanic voters in the Valley in the last election when compared to the last two presidential election years. (Chart's source.)

  • Sarah Palin's lawsuit for libel against the New York Times may go to the jury today. (She sued them over an editorial linking her to the shooting of Rep. Gabby Gifford in Tucson, Ariz. in 2011. The Times had issued a retraction.)  Assuming she can get past the threshold of proving the Times had a reckless disregard for the truth, she has other problems. The first one is damages since she testified she had some "sleepless nights" over the editorial, but that's it. The other problem came to fruition yesterday when the judge ruled that the jury would not be asked about punitive damages because there was no proof of "ill will." From trial watchers: 



  • We had a pretty good instance of Republican on Republican violence yesterday.
    • It started it when Rep. Jeff Leach called out the Republican opponents of other Republican incumbents over being too pro-life.

    • Then one of the opponents came back and pointed out that Leach had actually sponsored the failed death-penalty-for-women bill that he was complaining about. 

  • There was an assault last night at Clemson. Video.
  • Aggie payday. 
  • Hot sports opinion: I never for one single second thought Ware was a Hall-of-Famer while he was with Dallas. 

  • Over-the-top legal nerdy stuff: Hey Texas criminal justice practitioners, you want to see a case where that "Judicial Confession" your client signs in a Pre-Trial Diversion agreement was later actually used against a defendant, but the State still lost because of the way it was worded? Here ya go. 
  • I love this quote from an investigator in this Houston cold case: “Once we find that DNA, it used to be a showstopper if they weren’t found in  CODIS [the criminal database]. That’s not even an issue anymore. So what, they’re not in CODIS? We get a good DNA profile, the next step is to begin that genetic genealogy and start building family trees on these cases and find our suspects."

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 952 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold
at 8:30 AM

2.10.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




They were selling small amounts of weed and pills to friends. This skirmish in the War on Drugs led to some of the cases being dismissed and others receiving a short deferred adjudication probation. What wasn't known at the time was that cops abused the civil forfeiture law and took $46,243 in cash; 15 vehicles worth more than a quarter of a million dollars; nine weapons; and nearly $20,000 worth of iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and cellphones. Some of that was returned.

  • Bob Sagat's family said in a statement: “The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma. They concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep. No drugs or alcohol were involved.”  Add this to my long list of beefs with the office of the Medical Examiner.  Medically, they can certainly tell us that it was a head injury which caused "brain bleed" (a subdural hematoma), but they cannot say it was an accident. Maybe it was -- heck, it probably was -- but you can't determine that from an autopsy.  

  • Breaking economic news. This is President Biden's biggest problem right now.  Nothing else will matter if this doesn't stop.

  • It's a heck of a project, but how exactly are they going to pay for it? Answer: "It will be paid for with a 2% increase in hotel taxes and a new state designation that allows Dallas to keep all of that tax money." I tried to find that "new state law", and who snuck it through, but couldn't readily do so. 

  • That's quite the involvement in the criminal justice system for this guy. He was once falsely accused of a quadruple murder in McKinney that has its own Wikipedia entry, and now the DA agrees to overturn a sexual assault conviction because the witness recanted. 

  • I had been warning about this for years, and now they publicize it.

  • Man I wish they had chosen Decatur to film this series. And it's going to be a "series" and not just a movie! I'm so on board with this.  

    • I've mentioned it many times before, but it may be the greatest courtroom drama/true crime story in Texas history.  "Candy Montgomery, who was charged with murder after being accused of hitting Betty Gore 41 times with an ax in 1980 after having an affair with Gore's husband. The women were friends and attended the same church." She was found not guilty.

  • Texas Monthly just released it's newest long-form story, and it's about a Texas lawyer I've never heard of -- but am now interested in. 

  • The prosecutors in the Harris County DA's are getting ambitious. "In 2020 not a single Harris County prosecutor ran in any of the nine local criminal court races; in 2018, which featured 31 races, just one prosecutor ran." But today . . . 

  • Someone needed to tell George P. Bush that riding a 4-wheeler isn't the look he was hoping for. 
    And what's the AG have to do with "tougher criminal penalties" anyway?

  • Anyone know what this is? Is it routine or is something weird going on? It's a filing in the Denton County records by the District Attorney styled "In Re: Ballotting [sic] Materials to be Used by the Denton County Elections Department in the Special Election to Take Place on January 29, 2022 and In the Primary Election of March 1, 2022." It's cause no. 22-0069-393 if you want to look it up. 

  • It was funny to hear her the QAnon/Jewish Space Laser lady confuse "Gestapo" with "gazpacho." Video. 

  • Axios reporter using open records for a public university:

  • The Ticket's Bob Sturm, who is in LA with the station for the Super Bowl, told a story yesterday of trying to buy tickets from scalpers outside of a Clippers game the night before. He couldn't believe that the sellers wouldn't even cut their prices by halftime and chose instead to eat the tickets rather than sell them at a discount. It's not news to me. Way back in 2007, I wrote a blog post about the exact same thing happening to me years before.   

at 8:31 AM
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