Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

You would have thought that DPS firing 19 shots from a helicopter into the bed of a pickup killing two men would be more (in)famous. Article from last year here. The unedited DPS video used to be here but is gone.

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• Is there any chance that inflation is a ruse and what actually is going on is that we are being ripped off by increasing corporate profits fueled by the jacking up of prices while using inflation as a cover/excuse? And is it also possible that the Fed doesn't realize this (or is in bed with them) and is screwing us over with higher interest rates?
• Exhibit A is the earnings just announced:
  
  
  
  
  
• Expected Exhibit B was yesterday:
  
  
  
• Early voting in Wise County has picked up the pace this week. Total so far is 13,017 which is about 26% of registered voters.
• New Fox News poll on what might possibly be the race for control of the Senate. As expected, the debate changed nothing.  
  
  
  
• He agreed to 20 years to do in this case. Unless the State conceded some allegations in the plea bargain, he'll have to serve at least 1/2 of of it.
  
  
  
• Protestors of the Dobbs abortion decision interrupted oral arguments inside the Supreme Court yesterday. I didn't ever remember that happening but apparently protestors were removed on two different occasions in 2015 according to that link.  You can listen to what happened yesterday here, but I was distracted how incredibly fast the lawyer was talking before it happened. 
  
  
  
• Another indication that the Justice Department might seriously be considering indicting Trump over the document scandal.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Emails of John Eastman, one of the main architects of the Trump Insurrection, delivered to the January 6th Committee were released yesterday by Politico after Eastman's lawyers accidentally disclosed them in a court filing by failing to deactivate a Dropbox link. 
• Most of the headlines were about how the emails revealed how they were relying on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to steal the election for them. Who knows, Ginny Thomas was probably telling them that.
  
  
  
• But my favorite email was this one was from Eastman to Trump where he felt it was necessary to explain to Trump -- probably rightly so -- who Neville Chamberlain was. 
  
  
  
• City of Fort Worth grandly announced about six months ago that it had its own bit-mining project. I said at the time it was a big bag of nothing.
• I predicted it would make about $270 on the high end. 
  
  
  
• It actually made $1,019 after six months. I was a little off, but that still constitutes a stunt. They admit it now, but didn't then. 
  
  
  
• Very nerdy legal stuff for criminal practitioners only: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals finally resolved an issue and it wasn't in the State's favor yesterday. And it is a big one since it impacts a common excuse that cops use to stop a driver for a highway traffic violation. The holding: For a Failure to Maintain a Single Lane violation to occur, it must be done "unsafely" or it is not a violation at all because the statute requires it. The opinion begins in a way that I love -- they answer the question right off the bat:  
  
  
  
• Note: This isn't the same violation as Driving on an Improved Shoulder When Prohibited or crossing the yellow no-passing zone line. This situation normally involves two or three lanes going in the same direction on a divided highway and a car drifts out of one lane partially into the other.
• Extremely nerdy stuff: Look at the shocking concurrence by Justice Slaughter where she actually coaches prosecutors on how they might win next time. 
• Triple extremely nerdy stuff: Look at footnote 35 in the majority opinion explaining the difference between a "plurality opinion" and an opinion resulting in a "tie." 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Chris Christie somehow caught flak for welcoming President Obama who was visiting in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

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• The Collin County DA and his top assistant of have been accused of sexual harassment by one of his investigators and three other employees. Here's the PDF of the 75 page federal lawsuit. 
  
• Good lord. Listen to her brave little voice. New 911 tapes. 
  
  
  
• And always remember what Gov. Abbott tried to sell us right after the slaughter of 19 children: 
  
  
  
• What's up with all the crazy verdicts? The defendant here was FedEx and the trial was in federal court in Houston. The lawyers aren't listed. 
  
  
  
• County Judge J.D. Clark sends along this fantastic photo taken from the under-reconstruction Wise County Courthouse. It is taken from the gutted elevator shaft looking straight up. (He was standing on a makeshift platform on the third floor.) This is really amazing. Back in the day, the building was cooled by open windows which caused the air to rise up through that shaft where there was no elevator. Heck, even that skylight -- which I have never seen in my life -- wasn't there in the beginning days as the open air extended up towards the bell tower.  
  
  
  
• I'll say it again, the reconstruction of the Wise County Courthouse to its original version is the greatest project in Wise County government history. 
• Shot . . .
  
  
  
• and chaser . . . 
  
  
  
• I noticed that Richard Greene has resigned as editor of the Messenger to move on to a different opportunity. That comes on the heels of Kristin Tribe leaving that position last year. 
  
  
  
• A Twitter blue checkmark means that Twitter has verified that you are who you say you are. Well, it used to. Now it just means that you are paying $8 a month.  And it means you have sold out to The Man for a vanity tag. 
  
  
  
• Lots of people in the struggling newspaper industry say this is spot on: 
  
  
  
• This is an irresponsible headline in the Dallas Morning News. It should read that toddlers may have been exposed to THC at a private daycare in the middle of the afternoon on Monday.  Instead, this will turn into a THC-or-Fentanyl-In-Your-Kids-Trick-Or-Treating-Candy lie after its filtered through Facebook a million times.
  
  
  
• In another blow to the Rumormongers, the break-in was caught on video.
  
  
  
  

  

  Uh.

  
  
  
  
• Ewwww.
  
  
  
• I don't have an opinion about Taylor Swift one way or another, but look at the size of those venues she is playing on back to back dates. There are few artists, if any, who have ever been capable of filling up stadiums two days in a row. 
  
  
  
• Zeke Elliott was Edward Scissorhands for Halloween.
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

That was way before Trump's attempted wall. 

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• The conspiracy theories promoted by the nutcases out there were tossed to the side yesterday after the FBI released the details on the political attack on Paul Pelosi. Always remember that the most gullible people in society are all around you.  
  
  
  
• From the federal criminal complaint:
  
  
  
• This is not in my old-man-wheelhouse, but a lot of people seem very upset over this breaking news this morning. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I hardly ever see stories about big medical malpractice verdicts, but today each of the local papers have the headlines below. The plaintiffs lawyers listed are Seth McCloskey in the Fort Worth case and "Charla Aldous and Brent Walker [who] worked with Bruce Steckler and Austin Smith" in the Dallas case.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Four days left in early voting. Wise County has now had 10,354 people vote which is around 20% of all registered voters. 
• Tarrant county criminal case:
• 2018 headline:
  
  
  
• Last week was the murder trial:
  
  
  
• Let's check in on Elon Musk.
• He wants to charge $20 for a blue checkmark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• He got rid of the board of directors.
  
  
  
• Grapevine is getting another hotel waterpark but . . . 
  
  
  
• . . . Timeshares?
  
  
  
• Greg Abbott is as close to Wise County as he's going to get this morning. He's at Tarrant Parkway and Beach Street in North Fort Worth beginning right now. It sounds like a big crowd. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Bias training: A video depicting a mock trial, produced by Texas Justice Court Training Center, was formally shown to Justices of the Peace in Texas to teach them how to handle those kind of cases. The fictional defendant in the case was named "Danny Deadbeat." Uh, you see a problem here? The video has now been taken down but, of course, it was saved. (Dallas Observer story.)