5.13.2024

Ramdom Monday Morning Thought




Now he's in a run-off for Sheriff. 

  • Michael Cohen takes the stand this morning in Trump's business records case. This will be a disaster.
     

  • This happened in Fort Worth last week. The  video is insane.

  • A Decatur teenager is turning heads in the bull riding circuit -- especially after this weekend in Fort Worth. 

  • Wise County Judge J.D. Clark got royally complemented in this opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News.

  • No way Melania was going to let him do it once she found out about it. 

  • Heck of a photo.


  • The Dallas Morning News has a long feature on tollways, and had this graphic. Although it focuses on Texas, how does Oklahoma have so many toll road miles?

  • This new New York Times poll is both relevant and concerning as it looks at the battleground states. 

  • Pop culture deaths:
    • It is one of the greatest scenes in cinema history. Video.

    • In 1968, when protestors took over the president's office of Columbia University, this guy's photograph appeared in Life magazine. 


  • Legal quick hits: 
    • Holy witchcraft! In one of the craziest indictments you will ever see, the Collin County D.A.'s office charged a person with aggravated assault by "soliciting an unknown individual to put a  spell" on someone and used his hands as a "deadly weapon" while doing it.  And the defendant pled guilty to it! Thread.

    • The Fifth Circuit's far right wing judge James Ho is now just casually citing to the Bible.

    • On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against a "wrongful life" claim -- suing a doctor when he screws up a sterilization procedure and a healthy child results. Opinion

  • I saw a TV ad of Gov. Greg Abbott telling me that "he cannot trust Andy Hopper" and telling me to vote for Dr. Lynn Stucky in Wise County's run-off race. 

at 8:30 AM

5.10.2024

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




The "inappropriate relationship" surge might have peaked at Odessa Permian 
when there were five allegations within one year.

  • Those storms went across the top of Wise County just missing Bridgeport and Decatur yesterday afternoon.
  • The testimony is now over. I still think it did more harm than good. 


    • The reason I hate this Trump prosecution is because the New York law is dumb. It's a crime to make a "false entry" in an internal business record even if (1) I don't present it, or intend to present it, to any third person and (2) there is no intent to deceive a third person.  That's silly. 
    • And the entries were false, the prosecution says, because they went down as "legal expenses" internally. To me, all Trump would have to say is that "the reimbursement to Cohen, plus payment for his work on the matter, was all legal expense it seemed to me. I routinely reimburse lawyers for any and all expenses they incur when paying their bills. So for everyone in my world, we called it a 'legal expense'. It wasn't false at all. We all knew what it meant." Then he's home free.
    • Side note: Today is Day 14 of the trial. It wouldn't have taken more than two days in Texas. For some reason, we have a different definition of "relevant evidence" down her. 
    • New this morning: The judge just denied Trump's request to subpoena Mark Pomerantz, the former prosecutor for the DA who wrote in People vs. Trump: An Inside Account that the Stormy Daniels file was referred to as the "Zombie case" while he was there since no one wanted to pursue the prosecution of it.
  • Ronny Jackson has embarrassed us again. No details have been released yet but the "committee has until June 24 to release more information on the Hunt and Jackson investigations."

  • This looks like a fascinating story ("dark web", "bitcoin", etc.), but all the news stories about it just quote the press release from the prosecutor's office. Back in the day, local media would have been all over something like this. Now we just learn about it directly from, and from the prospective of, the government once the case is over. 


  • Luka's post-game press conference last night was derailed with unexpected audio of, well, let's just say it could have come from Stormy Daniels in her prime. His expression was golden.  Video

  • I couldn't help but focus on the John Wayne picture on the wall. They realize he was just an actor, right? And that he lived in Beverly Hills and not Dodge City in the 1880s?


  • It's just an $11 million accounting error that ended up as bonuses. 

  • Cuban might want to be careful with this.


  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 4 years and 311 days.



at 8:30 AM

5.09.2024

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts






He actually got a new punishment trial, but it backfired as he received 99 years in prison. Then the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent him back for good. 

  • This lawsuit was filed yesterday which involves a rodeo family in Decatur on both sides of it. I'm not sure what it is about.

  • Late yesterday, the Republican Jewish Space Laser congresswoman tried to take down the House Speaker, but she was defeated when almost all the Democrats voted to keep him.  The final vote count was 359 to 43. She was widely booed when she made the motion. Video.


  • Barron is going to be a Republican Convention delegate?  I would guess that he would be the one to get the microphone to announce Florida's votes for Trump. 

  • Story Daniels resumes her seat in the witness box today as cross-examination continues. I was looking over the transcript from her testimony two days ago and trying to see all the times that Trump's attorney's didn't object. What I found was that in the rare case they did object, it was to a question which actually helped them. (See below.) Why? I'll let a prosecutor break every evidence rule in the book if the evidence they are presenting helps my guy. 

  • This one is interesting. She was at the January 6th riot, and got really close to the capitol building during the insurrection, but never entered it and was never charged with any crimes. Nevertheless, she was fired from her Bexar County deputy job. Now she is entitled to civil damages for a free speech violation. That actually makes sense to me.

  • Lots of money grabbing going on here.  At least one of those cases was worth trying because those facts are really, really bad. 

  • The Dog Killer cancelled her apology tour yesterday and can't believe people are so upset with her. 

  • Updates on the handling of RFK Jr.'s claim that he had a worm in his brain.
    • Hannity brought in an obvious brain injury expert, Ronny Jackson. 

    • How far we've fallen. 

    • Hold that guy's beer:

  • This seems very convoluted. Young people who are charged with minor crimes and placed on pre-trial diversion in Dallas County are sometimes so poor that they can't afford to travel to meet their probation "obligations" (meeting with a probation officer, community service, etc.)  So the Dallas County DA's office got a $12,500 grant to help pay for their transportation. 

  • Legal nerdy stuff: Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on whether a couple of "rap videos" should have been admitted into evidence in a capital murder trial (they shouldn't have been), and ended up quoting the Urban Dictionary and citing southern "trap" music in a footnote. 

  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM
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