Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

The Big 10's new deal announced a few weeks back is $7 billion over 7 years.

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• The Star-Telegram has the story on the death of the second grader in the Rhome on Saturday "after she was hit in the head by a falling wooden archway at a party."
  
  
  
• The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office lists that the incident occurred at  211 CR 4651. Google Maps returns that address to a private event center named Humble Hall.  Looking at some of their photos on Facebook, I noticed this one of a wooden archway. I have no idea if it is the same one. 
  [Removed due to copyright claim]
  
  
  
  
• A different Star-Telegram story about Rhome:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• A guy drove around Memphis last night live streaming on Facebook as he randomly shot people.  Four are dead. He was arrested. He 19 years old. 
  
  
  
• That was a wild time while it was ongoing.
  
  
   
  
  
  
• Breaking. This doesn't sound good. “All the Queen's children are either at, or are travelling to, her Scottish estate near Aberdeen.” I mentioned her health on Tuesday.
  
  
  
• An investigative reporter, Jeff German, was murdered outside of his home in Las Vegas on Saturday morning. Yesterday an elected county official, who had been the subject of the reporter's recent articles, was arrested. "The 45-year-old Democrat lost his re-election bid in the primary after German’s findings were published. German also had recently filed public records requests for emails and text messages between Telles and three other county officials, [one of whom] was identified in previous stories as a subordinate staffer allegedly involved in an 'inappropriate relationship' with Telles."
  
  
  
• A Texas Justice of the Peace goes to a rural part of a county to pronounce someone dead (they still do that) and accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway.  That was enough for a guy to unload on her vehicle with six shots. She wasn't hit. 
  
  
  
• A federal judge in Fort Worth, who constantly goes rogue, ruled yesterday that the federal requirement that health care insurance coverage pay for preventative care is invalid if the employer purchasing the insurance  objects on religious grounds about certain specific preventive care that they wouldn't use themselves. In this case, the employer objected to HIV preventive care. It's as crazy as it sounds.  So, under the ruling, your employer's arbitrary religious beliefs controls your health care. 
  
  
  
• John Kelley of Kelley Orthodontics in Fort Worth was one of the named employers who brought the lawsuit and who objected to the HIV preventive care.
  
  
  
  
  
• There were other plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit who weren't employers but just other employees who objected to their co-workers potentially receiving the preventive care under the same group insurance policy.  
• Random Twitter post to ponder:
  
  
  
• Tradition was restored yesterday when President Obama and Michelle were invited to the White House for the unveiling of their White House portraits.
  
  
  
• Those are not to be confused with the other funky official portraits unveiled years ago and which are on display at the National Portrait Gallery which is one of the many museums which are part of the Smithsonian Institution, (Note: It is the Smithsonian Institution and not the Smithsonian Institute.)
  
  
  
• Nerdy political observation: There was a new felony court created in Tarrant County and, as I understand it, the timing of its creation was such that the local Democrat and Republican parties got to choose who went on this November's ballot. The Republicans chose a guy who had the benefit of also being appointed in August by Gov. Abbott to fill out the term of that court until January 1st. The Democrats chose the guy below. If you want to know if Tarrant County is truly trending Blue, watch the down ballot races like this one. I don't think Tarrant County is there yet despite Biden and Beto (when he ran against Cruz) recently winning their races higher up on the ballot.
  
  
  
• Since the documentary on Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame player who was famously catfished, is in the news, this old screenshot I ran across from ESPN's Game Day of signs taunting the guy got my attention. 
  
  
  
  
• Random rare technical football thing I actually know about: The guy below giving a hot opinion about the end of the LSU/Florida State game is wrong (tweet and slow motion video are here.) It's not the defensive guy's effort. It's the blocker on the far right who screwed up. He has to block down and not let the guy get through the gap to his right. He can ignore the guy to his left who is trying to go around -- he'll never get there. 
  
  
  
• You know how I know that? I was that blocker a million years ago and had a coach embarrass me in a film room when I, too, had worried about the guy going around instead of the guy to my right.  Of course, my thoughts at the time were, "That's great coach. You might should have shared that little tidbit of coaching beforehand."

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Above: How it started on 9/5/12. Below: Where it went. 

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• I'm hearing about a female child's death due to a falling object at a birthday party in Rhome at a rented facility over the weekend. Paradise second grader. Edit: It's in the Update. 
• The public access to Wise county's jail and court records, as well as the regularly updated jail list, is now back online. (They changed a URL and didn't tell anyone.) But e-filing in the county courts and district court is still unavailable as of yesterday morning. 
• We had an interesting timeline by DPS yesterday.
• The Texas Tribune was set to release this exposé about DPS's failure at Uvalde and Col. Steve McCraw's attempt to cover it up and deflect blame.
  
  
  
• Moments before it was published, DPS  -- always in damage control and CYA mode -- suddenly announced that it is taking action against five of the troopers.  (And "taking action" is an overstatement. Nothing will happen to the 5 out of 91 troopers.)
  
  
  
• Regarding the actual Tribune story, I thought these two paragraphs about who finally took charge was about as complete as I've read, especially that last sentence:
  
  
  
• DPS notably put some troopers in Uvalde for the cameras yesterday.
  
  
  
• Breaking news from The Washington Post last night: Nuclear secrets were recovered from Mar-a-Lago. I'm now beginning to believe Trump is actually going to be indicted. 
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
• It looks like an expensive home in Colleyville went up in flames this morning. 
  
  
  
• Austin's airport is completely shut down this morning because it is completely without power.  Even the terminals are dark. And they think it might be due to a construction snafu next door.
  
  
  
• I kind of like commissioners and a county judge fighting in Wichita County about how much to tax people.  
  
  
  
• Trump schedules a rally in Ohio for 7:00 p.m. on September 17th. Anything else going on in Ohio at that exact date and time which those people care about? 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• When I saw this headline I thought it was referring to language interpreters. Nope. The new ruling deals with sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired. 
  
  
  
• My hot legal opinion is that a hung jury should always preclude a retrial on Double Jeopardy grounds. It's not the law, but it should be: The government gets one shot at you and one shot only.
  
  
  
• Kind of legal stuff: If you are interested in the Candy Montgomery axe murder case which was recently featured in a Hulu docu-drama and will get yet another one on HBO this fall, you might also be interested in this new interview of the then 27 year old second chair defense lawyer. 
  
  
  
• The great images from the last time the Cowboys were on the field:
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

We got to see Jerry Jones' personal eyeglass cleaner on Sunday Night Football.  And it's hard to believe that this will now be Jerry's 34th year as team owner. 

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• Number of days Wise County government's court/jail public access website has been down: Six. 
• Students in Uvalde go back to school for the first time today. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I saw a couple of seconds ago that news reporters were in Uvalde for this morning's school drop off. Look at those cars in the background. Can you imagine watching your kid walk away? 
  
  
  
• Lots of gnashing of teeth about this yesterday from the left, but I don't think it's a big deal at all. The Justice Department has already seen every one of the the documents so they know whether a crime has been committed or not. Which, of course, there has been. 
  
  
  
• The plunging carnival ride in India is quite the video. 
  
  
  
• After Boris Johnson's resignation, the UK now has a new prime minister. She met Queen Elizabeth this morning for her formal induction. And the Queen sighting may be the bigger story because rumors of her health over the last month were not good. 
  
  
  
• The Dallas Morning News has a story today about a "Sovereign Citizen" who actually received a prison sentence. He first got the Arlington cops' attention when he sent them a $5,000 bill because of his traffic stop and citation, but he really got in trouble when he lied about a past felony conviction (which he refused to acknowledge and recognize) on a firearms application. 
  
  
  
• And wives, don't be like this.
  
  
  
• The Ticket's Junior Miller posted this photograph of a very large tree that went down during the storms on Sunday in his neighborhood near the Greenville Avenue area in Dallas.
  
  
  
• This video became widespread a few days ago, but I just saw it. The footage is wild, especially since there's audio which catches everything including when a neighbor comes up and slowly realizes what has gone down.  A grand jury refused to indict the man.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This Tarrant County juvenile judge seems to stay in a lot of trouble. Story.
  
  
  
• Far right wing candidate for Tarrant County Judge, Tim O'Hare, had a big fund raiser, and I noticed that "Patriot Mobile" was the first host listed. That's the group spending money to take over school boards with book banners. 
  
  
  
• Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the massacre at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.  I highly recommend the documentary about the event called One Day in September. It's incredible.
  
  
   
• I'm revising my review of The Morning Show. Season 1 was very well done and thought-provoking. But Season 2, which I've now completed, was an unmitigated train wreck of bad writing. Huge thumbs down. Side note: The show also has a horrible theme song and visual intro. 
• My record setting Stadium's Visited List gets a new addition this week: I'm going to Provo, Utah to see Baylor at BYU.