3.29.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Someone had sent me this picture of six trooper cars parked at lunch at Chili's in Decatur. That photo still seems odd. Today you'd never see six troopers on duty in Wise County at the same time. (And how'd they find six spots together, anyway?)

  •  Final Will Smith/Chris Rock thoughts.

    • Something is weird about all this. 
    • Will Smith's going from laughing to storming the stage in the blink of the eye is bizarre. His rage made him do what could have been a career ending act, yet that rage was the result of a delayed reaction? 
    • Chris Rock's physical reaction to the slap was weird, too. You would think it would stagger him, but he took it soooo smoothly. And another thing: He never once touched his face after being slapped. How does he not do that?
    • Do I think it was all staged or fake? No, I don't. But something isn't quite right, and I can't put my finger on it. 
    • Side note: If you haven't seen Jomboy's video breakdown of the event, it's pretty good. 
  • Chris Fostel, son of the late Judge John Fostel, has passed away of cancer.  (I had reminisced about Judge Fostel's passing last Friday, but I had absolutely no idea that Chris had died the day before.)
  • Liberally Lean Take-It-To-The-Bank Wise County Weather Alert: Heavy rains with high winds during a window from 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.
  • Bridgeport PD is hiring officers (and they've even got a recruiting video.) 
  • Clay County is always a gold mine of fun news. 

  • The Dallas Morning News this weekend had a favorable feature story about the Paradise man who fell to his death off a rooftop bar. (I've long commented about the press and PR savviness of one the family's lawyers, and I wonder if she had something to do with this.)



  • This is a wild video. And narrator, and other people initially standing around, didn't seem to understand the danger that there were more cars coming. 

  • I've said from the beginning I didn't understand why Jerry Jones' alleged daughter filed the recent lawsuit accusing him of being her dad. The lawsuit really didn't ask for anything other than a declaration of parenthood.  Jones response to the lawsuit yesterday gave an answer: She was just following through on her threat to sue him for that declaration if he didn't pay her not to file it. Ugh:  I can't find an actual pdf of Jones' Answer. 

  • Trump Insurrection News:
    • A federal judge yesterday, in ruling that the emails of one of the coup architects. John Eastman, had to be turned over, concluded that Trump likely violated the law. 

    • But the greatest line in the ruling perfectly described the whole insane process of trying to convince Mike Pence to ignore the constitution and not certify the count of the electoral college votes on January 6th: "A coup in search of a legal theory." 

    • And this morning we've now got a Watergate Tapes feel to the whole thing. Seven hours and 37 minutes are missing.  Nixon was sunk because of a missing 18 minutes. 


  • We've got an update on the misdemeanor criminal trials in Tarrant County last week. The State went 1-7. 

  • I don't remember this double murder of teenagers in Weatherford in 1983. Story.

     

  • Legal nerd stuff: The Fort Worth Court of Appeals just rejected a man's attempt to gain access to the Wise and Jack County District Attorney's files by using the Texas Public Information Act. It originated out of an odd procedural posture in that he had already been convicted after a jury trial and his appeal had failed. He never complained that anything in the file was held back during the criminal appeal. 

at 8:29 AM

3.28.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Civil War veterans - from the Confederate side - pose in front of the still-in-use Wise County Courthouse in 1906. Source with background info.

  • Updated standings in the Liberally Lean Pick 'Em Tourney. Trey and Paul might be able to catch John even with my tricked up scoring system.  


  • If you haven't seen it, here is the video, unedited, of the footage of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock last night. (The American audience saw this as ABC was hitting the mute button.)  Here is slow motion video of the slap. Man, this is wild. 




    • All of this was instigated when Rock jokingly addressed Will Smith's wife from the stage: “Jada, I love you: G.I. Jane 2 -- can’t wait to see it.”  Quality humor, by the way, but we have to factor in that Smith's wife has suffered from alopecia, a condition of hair loss. She has a buzz cut because of it. 

    • The odd part is that Will Smith initially laughed at the joke. I think this is a big deal that he didn't take offense at all about it.
       
    • I'm siding big time with Chris Rock on this one. Will Smith was way out of line. 
    • Prediction I heard this morning: Next year Rock and Smith will be joint presenters at the Oscars. I bet that happens. 
  • The White House walked back Biden's off-script comment which I think is something they absolutely shouldn't have done. Then again, if they didn't subsequently tone it down, President Biden would be asked about exactly what he meant every time he comes in front of reporters for weeks to come. 

  • There are continuing to be reports of Russia being willing to settle the "conflict" if Ukraine were to be cut in half as was done with Korea. Little known fact: This isn't a new plan.  Stay with me here. 
    • You probably don't recall Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, oddly shared campaigning polling data to to a Russian named Konstantin Kilimnik.  Why he was doing that was never known.
    • Kilimnik, during the campaign in 2016, flew all the way to the U.S. just to meet with Manafort to get the data and to discuss something which he believed to be very important. The meeting occurred at Grand Havana Room in Manhattan. 
    • Kilmnik, during the meeting, was actually trying to persuade Manafort to get on board with the divided Ukraine plan. (They wanted that part of Ukraine because that's were the oil and the coastline is.) He later told Manafort in an email,  “[A]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push) from" Donald Trump. 
    • This was all buried in the Mueller Report, and the only way I found out about it was when just finishing this book written in 2020. The prosecutor/author only spent a few pages on it, but my ears perked up because those pages dealt with Russia and Ukraine.   

  • There is security footage of the tornado hitting the gym at Jacksboro elementary. Here. 

  • A guy sent a drone up to take a look at the windmill damage in Jack County as well. It seems like a handful of them were damaged (but it's also a great way to see the number of them that have gone up over recent years. 

  • The only way this is true is if Columbia has far greater drug screening techniques than the U.S.  

  • I'll say it again, for such a high town area, there are sure a lot of shootings in Uptown. And they have this weird shared characteristic of occurring on Sunday evenings. 

  • What's up with hookah lounges? You'd think they'd be a pretty laid back place. We first had a shooting at one in Las Vegas, then I noticed we had one in Dallas, and then I saw this story from the weekend.

  • A faithful reader sent me this pic of  a T-shirt for sale in, of all places, a thrift store in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  • The Tech - UT rivalry bled over into baseball this weekend when Tech won Friday's game via a player stealing home. Video. 

  • The Clarence Thomas failure-to-recuse scandal has already become yesterday's news. Now we can expect Ginni Thomas to be the featured speaker at CPAC. That's the way things work these days.



at 8:33 AM

3.25.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




I just happened to post this grainy courtroom picture back then of an ongoing burglary trial. It now makes me realize how quickly things change. The judge, John Fostel, has passed away. As has the defense lawyer, Jim Shaw. It makes me sad and nostalgic.

  • Here's the Liberally Lean Leader Board. Not a lot of changes after last night. 
    • Nice effort by Tech. I like Tech. What's not to like about Tech?
  • This story, which broke late yesterday, is insane. We learned the wife of a Supreme Court justice is a borderline QAnon nutcase who tried to help overthrow the government of the United States. And now the January 6th Committee has her texts.


    • Even Trump had to distance from nutty lawyer Sidney Powell during the planning of the coup, but Ginni Thomas was all in. 

    • Heck, this is pure QAnon. Just spreading junk from the start with no regard to whether it is true. 

    • Also, this is pure insurrection. She was a party to an attempted coup. 

    • And just a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court had to decide if Trump's documents in the National Archives related to the Insurrection and attempted coup had to be turned over to the January 6th Committee. They ruled 8-1 that the documents must be turned over. And guess who didn't recuse himself but instead went further and said said he wanted to help Trump out? You think he could have been a little worried that his wife's name just might be within those documents? 

    • And guess who was in the two judge minority when the Supreme Court refused Trump's attempt to overthrow the election by using the Court? 

    • The New Yorker tried to warn us in January. 

    • Mark Meadows texted Ginni Thomas that this was a battle between good and evil, spouting Christian Nationalism which always seems to be at the heart of it all. Thomas replied that was discussing it all with her "best friend" -- an obvious reference to her husband.

    • He's right. It is a battle between good and evil. It's about battling those who conspired to overthrow our democracy. Meadows just got the jerseys wrong. 
  • Denver's Mile High Stadium caught on fire yesterday. 

  • If you can find one. Heck, I drive by the car lots of the two big dealers in Decatur in Wise County and there inventory is still struggling -- both new and used. 

  • I'm suspicious of the motives of guys like Rep. Jeff Leach, who having bent over backwards making it easier for Texas prosecutors to obtain convictions, suddenly thinking that something might actually have gone wrong in a criminal case. 


  • Three current and former school superintendents met in Austin yesterday to talk about Critical Race Theory among other things. They were all in agreement: You've been conned. 

    • "There definitely is something that is critical race theory. It's not taught in schools. That was the narrative that was crafted last summer, and it caught on like wildfire. I've never seen anything like it." - Former Richardson ISD Supt. Jeannie Stone
    • "This is a manufactured crisis. This is not real. This is a national playbook by some very smart, organized people who pay people to go out and create havoc," Former Dallas ISD Supt. Richard Hinojosa
    • "I don't think you need to inject truth serum into legislators. I think you just need to a conversation with them individually behind closed doors. And they understand this is a manufactured crisis." - Fort Worth Supt. Kent Paredes Scribner
  • The misdemeanor section in the Tarrant County DA's office had a tough week. And there's still two cases to be decided. 

  • Now someone tells me "the boxes in the back are Reagant narcotic presumptive tests that all officers use before the drugs are sent to the lab" and that they just happen to be in the background.  You know, it has been years since I've read a police report in Wise County where a drug "presumptive test" was used. 

  • Very nerdy legal stuff:
    • If you are a person who likes to read transcripts, this hearing from a couple of days ago where the judge bears down on the lawyers representing conspiracy monger Alex Jones, who was trying to avoid a deposition, is painful to read. (It's never a good sign when the judge says, "God help everyone" if she finds out she's been lied to.) 
    • For criminal law practitioners only: Say you got the judge to release a felony defendant from jail under art. 17.151 because he wasn't indicted within 90 days. Could the judge impose a bond requirement of an expensive GPS ankle monitor if the defendant can't afford it? A new case says "no."
  • Every single week I read about another case solved by familial/genealogical DNA. Yesterday was no exception.  

  • 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: 994 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:31 AM
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