5.25.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts





Sandy Hook was not exactly 10 years ago. December 14, 2012 to be exact. But you get the point. 

  • Again, indeed.

  • At least 19 dead children. 2 dead teachers. And nothing will change.  I've said it before: If 20 dead children at Sandy Hook didn't give America a wake up call, nothing will. And, sadly, this won't either. 
  • DPS said this morning the dead children were all in the same 4th grade classroom. I'm sick. 
  • DPS also said this morning that it was an AR-15 "style" weapon used by the 18 year old shooter. He bought two of them on his 18th birthday according to his now deleted Instagram account. It was easy. That weapon of death should sound familiar. It's always an AR-15.

  • Well armed, the teenage killer fought his way into the school.  Credit to the DPS spokesman for being so candid with Anderson Cooper last night. 
  • Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, and Greg Abbott are scheduled to be there, too.

     
  • They should be playing and laughing today. Instead their parents are shopping for little coffins.  
    • Xavier Lopez, 10

    • Oh, there's more. Many more. Don't look away.
    • Mekenna Lee Elrod, 10.

    • Uziyah Garcia, 10

    • Nevaeh Bravo, 4th grader

    • Amerie Jo Garza, 10


    • Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10

    • Ellie Garcia, 4th Grader

    • Tess Mata, 4th Grader

    • Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10

    • Alithia Ramirez, 10

    • Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10

    • Jailah Nicole Silguero, 11

    • Miranda Mathis, 11

    • Elijah Cruz Torres, 10

    • Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio, 10

    • Jose Flores, 10

    • Rogelio Torres, 10. Difference maker.

    • Eva Mireles, 4th grade teacher

    • Irma Garcia, 4th grade teacher

  • Nothing else matters today.

    • at 8:25 AM

    5.24.2022

    Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts






    Are schools still doing the "Every 15 Minutes" program? That pic was from Bridgeport's version 10 years ago. 

    •  In addition to the run-offs in Texas, the Georgia primaries are today.
      • Incumbent Gov. Kemp, who refused to overturn the 2020 vote, should win over Trump recruited opponent David Perdue.  (Mike Pence was in town campaigning for Kemp last night.) 

      • Incumbent Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to overturn the 2020 vote by refusing to "find 11,780 votes", should win over a Trump recruited challenger.
      • Senate candidate and former football star Herschel Walker, who lied about graduating from the University of Georgia and is dogged by domestic abuse allegations, is expected to win because stuff like that doesn't matter any more. 

    • Wise County may have the worst Congressional representative we've ever had in Ronny Jackson. First the Inspector General of the Department of Defense found that he made sexual comments, drank alcohol and took Ambien while working as White House physician,  then the January 6th Committee wants to talk to him about why the Oath Keepers were looking for him to protect him him during the attack on the Capitol, and now we have a new ethics investigation. 



    • That's what I guessed was behind the three deaths. 

    • This will be built at the corner of the North Dallas Tollway and Highway 380. 

    • Dear Jack in the Box in Decatur: It's about time you get that sign fixed. That bugs me.  

    • Warning. Nerdy legal stuff. Stay with me here. I'm trying to do a Supreme Court explainer.


      • Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of two men. For the sake of simplicity, I'll just refer to it as one case involving a guy named Ramirez.  
      • This is important. The rules for appeals in death penalty cases in general are this: 
        • (1) You have State Action #1 where you have on appeal "straight up" to the appellate courts in the state where you were convicted at trial where the lawyer normally argues about trial errors, then . . .
        • (2) once that is over and there was no success, you have State Action #2 called the "post conviction habeas action" can be brought in state court again. This is normally where an ineffective assistance of counsel is normally brought -- that is, a claim that the defense lawyer during the first trial was very, very bad. You've got a right to bring in new evidence of bad lawyering (for example, failure to present mitigating evidence or, worse, evidence that he defendant was actually innocent), and after that . . .  
        • (3) if you lose the state habeas action, you can file a different post conviction habeas action in federal court, I'll call it Federal Action #3, saying the state court got its review of the state court post conviction habeas Action #2 wrong. 
        • So there is a #1 state court direct appeal, a #2 state habeas action, and a #3 federal  habeas action. 
      • This case will involve the the third one: the federal court post conviction habeas and what can happen in it. And this is important, too: Ramirez had three different lawyers in all three proceedings. 
      • In the case decided yesterday, Ramirez had followed those rules and in action #3 (the federal habeas action) he had said the state court had wrongly held against him when it decided his action #2 (the state habeas) where he had alleged ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. Got that? He had urged in federal district court that the state got it wrong in Action #2 when it found that the he did not receive ineffective assistance at trial. Moreover, and this is the key, he had brought in new evidence in federal district court that showed how the lawyer at trial screwed up.  That is, he had in fact presented new evidence of ineffective assistance in federal court in action #3 that a different lawyer had failed to bring up in the state habeas action #2. 
      • The Supreme Court was asked to decide that question: In the federal habeas action #3, can the defendants do just that, to-wit: bring in new evidence of ineffective assistance that should have been brought up in the state court habeas action #2?
      • The Supreme Court said no. You are stuck with the record of any evidence of ineffective assistance that was brought up in state action #2, the state court habeas. You cannot bring in more evidence in action #3, the federal habeas action.
      • But wait, doesn't that mean that if a defendant actual had two bad lawyers, ineffective at trial AND ineffective assistance in state habeas action #2 for not bringing in evidence about how bad the trial lawyer was, that he's screwed? That is, you can be entitled to a new trial if you have an ineffective trial lawyer but not if you have an ineffective state habeas action #2 lawyer who failed to bring in evidence that the trial lawyer was ineffective? Yep, that's what the Supreme Court said.  
      • But why that result? You can read the opinion but your eyes will start glaze over because that's what's hard about reading Supreme Court opinions. They always go off into some meandering prose which make you (1) think you no longer understand what the case is all about, or (2) want to scream "Get to the point!"
      • The problem is "the point" is generally very underwhelming. And here was the meat of it from Justice Thomas (no surprise) which basically reveals his love affair with the states over the federal government.

      • Unwavering respect? An affront to the State? Puhleeeze. It's just "states' rights" in a different form. Anyone care about just getting it right? 
      • But there was a hidden shocker in a footnote.  The defendant had a back up plan. He had anticipated the Supreme Court might rule that no new evidence can be presented in federal court in action #3, so he argued a well established rule that says the State had lost their chance to complain about it. That is, Ramirez said that when he introduced new evidence of ineffective assistance at the federal district court, the State failed to object. The government thought it was ok.  So under well established rules, the State should have "forfeited" the exact claim they made before the Supreme Court that new evidence should not have been presented. It's called the forfeiture doctrine. So let's see how the Supreme Court handled that. Oh, my!: 

      • So the bottom line is that the defendant is stuck with bad lawyers whose mistakes resulted in a death sentence, but if the State has bad lawyers who didn't object to the new evidence at the federal district court level, then the Supreme Court will "forgive" that mistake. 
    • Sorry about the legal stuff. It sucks me in once I get started. 



    at 8:32 AM

    5.23.2022

    Random Monday Morning Thoughts




    A massive gator was found in the Trinity River not far from Eagle Mountain Lake, and a controversy ensued as to why it was killed. 

    • Early run-off voting final numbers for Wise County. The 2,458 beat the 2,078 total from two years ago despite having four extra voting days back then.  But we probably have 48,000 registered voters in Wise County, Tomorrow is election day.

    • Seen in Decatur this morning.

    • The Loving County Judge got arrested for allegedly taking lost cattle for his own instead of selling them at public auction after notice as the law requires. Fun fact: The entire population of Loving County, Texas is 117.


    • I finally got to a Texas Monthly feature article on Gov. Abbott on Saturday. This was the most interesting part: The amount of money he has received over his life from a lawsuit filed because a tree fell on him while jogging in the 1980s. He's still getting payments. 

    • In revolution news that Americans just casually brush aside for some reason: 
      • From Friday: More proof that we've got a judicially conflicted Supreme Court Justice with a crazy wife. 

      • Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend was using his own social media network to repost seven QAnon posts and then went further by specifically reposting one urging a "Civil war."  He and his hardcore followers aren't going away.  (Hitler's Nazi party had just 37% of the vote in 1932, the rest of Germany turned the other cheek to his rantings, and he then relentlessly maneuvered himself into the leader of Germany as a dictator. The comparison is in plain sight.) 

      • The Stormtroopers (actually the Hood County constable's office), are now doing a criminal investigation of the "book review committee" of Granbury ISD for not removing "objectionable" books. Note that it's the same constable constable who previously sent out an email instructing deputies to join Oath Keepers -- the same group whose leaders are now under indictment for Seditious Conspiracy related to January 6th. It's all in plain sight.

    • From Saturday:


    • Baylor is getting "woke"?


    • The event upon which this story happened in April, but it is now being picked up nationally.  Reading extremely between the lines, it sounds like the police question whether she was "abducted" from the Maverick's bathroom.  Not that it makes any difference -- persuading a 15 year old girl to run away with you is the functional equivalent of abducting her. 

    • I've seen billboards in Decatur about "Bitcoin ATMs" and now a Fort Worth firm is expanding the practice in convenience stores. If you want to put paper U.S. Currency into a machine in exchange for "digital money" and pay 11% for your trouble, knock yourself out -- but I ain't joining you.


    • Dallas SWAT bragging about recklessly blasting through a backyard fence looking for drugs. (They failed to mention what they were looking for or what they did, or didn't, find. It could have been marijuana.)

    • Random legal stuff: A federal judge issued a wild order last week in a California case where he recused himself because "I lost the ability to trust the honesty of defense counsel [and] I cannot take anything defense counsel states at face value."  Then it got weirder because he "sealed" the order after he recused himself.  Court watchers were able to grab a screenshot before that. Here's a Twitter thread of someone trying to unravel what happened. 

    • Great and shocking thread about how Highland Park ISD was intentionally turned into a white enclave surrounded by Dallas ISD. 

    • Tiger Wood's pain apparently really flared up after a string of bogeys on Saturday. He then withdrew. Told ya. 

    at 8:31 AM

    5.20.2022

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

    at 2:30 PM
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