The Skies Opened Up Saturday Afternoon

Minutes later . . .

Above The Fold

Readable front page.

This Week Has Beaten All Of Us Down. Let's Get Out Of Here.

More Audio Than Visual -- But Disturbing

I am so scared. pic.twitter.com/jw88QnKGXG

— Allison (@allisongriz) July 8, 2016

We Have An ID

#Breaking: Dallas gunman is ID'ed as Micah X. Johnson, 25. No known criminal history or ties to terror groups. https://t.co/svut88i3A7

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 8, 2016

Side note: How does an LA paper find this out before anyone else?

Edit: May or may not be him depending on the source:

Edit:

A Wise County Case That Will Never End

If I remember correctly, it settled right before trial but then the settlement fell though.

Then this happened:

Yesterday this happened:

It has more lives than the Terminator.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• Latest Dallas update: Twelve officers shot. Five dead. Two civilians hit. One suspect dead after a bomb carried by a police robot detonated.
• I had a similar feeling after 9/11: I can't believe it was orchestrated and pulled off.
• Dallas Police Chief this morning: "We don't feel public support on most days."
• More: "Gunman was upset about police shootings, wanted to kill white people, especially white officers."
• Fox 4's Shaun Rabb was the first one to come out and say, without saying it,  there would be multiple fatalities. This was shortly before 10:00 p.m.  He kept citing "my sources". I later learned he is married to a Dallas police officer.
• The national Fox News inadvertently was the first one to report the shootings by showing footage of officers down in the street via split screen without knowing what they were broadcasting. (Video.)
• Fox News also had the bombastic "Sheriff Clarke" on this morning who blamed the President for the shootings. Incredible. 
• Texas AG Ken Paxton tried to capitalize on the tragedy by immediately issuing a press release saying his office would provide all needed support.  At that moment, officers were crouched behind police cars in downtown Dallas. And this morning he is at it again by showing up in Dallas and appearing on Fox and Friends. Buddy, there is nothing your office of spare lawyers in Austin has to offer. Not now. And not in the future.
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• Paxton, for some reason, pointed out that "I wasn't here when the Kennedy assassination happened in the sixties." He was 11 months old. 
• The most graphic video shows a shooter on the street and not elevated as many reports said. (The time stamp on the video was from around 11:50 last night and had a "courtesy of" banner. Was that live streamed by a private citizen and simultaneously broadcast by the local Fox 4 affiliate and others? If it was, we had the media broadcast a murder live.)
• Fox 4, for almost an hour, had a tip line phone number on its screen. Unfortunately, the number was preceded by the words "For Information:" The number was to receive information - not get it.
• The Fan was out of its league this morning. I flipped over during a Ticket commercial break and heard their soft piano return music. They said they weren't talking sports and opened up the phone lines. The first two callers said the Dallas shootings were in response to Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and many other police shootings. The host (who is black) basically remained silent. The other host (white) jumped in and said, "We are opening up the phones but his is not a day for platforms!" The black host said he was "torn" on the issue. A reporter from KRLD was invited on who basically said how can you talk about the shootings without bring race and retaliation into this.
• Dallas Police were irresponsible identifying someone as a "suspect" last night. (He was quickly cleared.) They didn't even utilize the useless "person of interest" term:
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• If the media ended up paying Richard Jewell for misidentifying him as the person responsible for the Atlanta Olympic bombing, this guy is going to be paid. (The tricky part is that the media should be able to rely upon the Dallas PD to have its facts correct before releasing a photo of a suspect.)
• He wasn't defamed? The Ticket's Corby Davidson called him a "killer" and a "murderer" on Twitter based upon the Dallas PD's information. (He later took the Tweet down).
• A former Congressman handled the whole situation maturely and with a measured response:
  
• The slain DART officer was the brother of the Navarro County DA.
• In other news, the U.S. Capitol was just placed on lock down.
• I still remember when a Dallas officer was shot and killed in downtown Dallas by a McDonalds in the late 1980s when racial strife was beginning to rise. If I remember that, I'll remember last night forever. And you will to. 

Become A DPS Trooper - Make Just South Of $90,000 + Benefits

Gun boat negotiable?

It's Been A While Since We've Had A Courtney Stodden Update: She's Pregnant

More.

Texas Drug War: The Cover Of The New York Times Magazine

Remind Me Never To Mess With These Guys

Not only can you get knocked out in one punch, but his buddy is prepared to bring the weaponry if needed.  And the driver doesn't even car in One Punch Guy makes it completely back into the car before hitting the gas.

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Good, lord. On the heels of a fatal police shooting of a black man in Baton Rouge, we've got a new one in Minnesota. This video doesn't show the shooting but has the bizarre narration by the female driver with the image of her boyfriend dying as he sits in the passenger seat. She says the stop was for a traffic violation and that the soon-to-be dead man had a concealed carry permit.
• This is not hard: Deadly force is a last resort. Police are supposed to be experts in defusing a situation -- not lighting the fuse.
• Kudos to the attorney who challenged the red light camera "ticket" in Richardson, won, and received over $25,000 in attorneys fees. Those things are beyond illegal. To just label something as a "civil" case instead of a "criminal" case doesn't magically make all due process go away.
• They still haven't found the body of the SMU police officer who presumably drowned in Turtle Creek.
• Who knows what the back story is of the home invasion in Pleasant Grove but a woman sure got beat up:
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• Of Fox 4's "Trending Topics", two are ads and I'm not sure about #5:
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• A game warden killed the blind 30 year old alligator in Lake Worth because it was a "nuisance"? Oh, the irony.
• "Bill O'Reilly reveals unseen photos of Barack Obama in traditional Muslim dress claiming they were taken at half-brother's wedding where he served as best man." So? 
• Misspelling in an email to courthouse employee which I want back: "I caught five strippers before sunset yesterday." 
• It was finally announced yesterday that the death of the president of the aTm-Commerce was a suicide.
• The local DA in Baton Rouge immediately jumped to the defense of the police. That's one of the reason the Feds are on the way. (Broadcasting that you're part of a good-old-boy system will do that.)

This Won't Help

Story and video.

Is This Real?

Come find someone that steals your heart, and not your guns! https://t.co/8jrv2s6Oha

— TrumpSingles (@trumpsinglescom) June 8, 2016

Trouble At Fox News

Story.

The lawsuit.

Above The Fold

Readable front page.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• I got jumped by the neo-cons on here on Monday for saying, in a tongue in cheek fashion, that "I missed Saddam".  (I kind of long for the days when Iraq was stable and people weren't being blown to bits on a weekly basis.)  Last night Donald Trump one upped me by praising Saddam for torturing and murdering people who he considered, by his definition, to be terrorists.
• Snoop Dogg will headline the Democratic National Convention. If the Republicans are thinking Lee Greenwood, Charlie Daniels, Toby Keith, or any one of the thousand of Bro Country bands (singing about trucks, beer, creeks, fence posts, etc.), this race is over. 
• Get ready: Baton Rouge police executed a black man while he was restrained on the ground. Video. Protests have begun.
• I posted the other day about Walter Lynn, the former KLIF talk show host, who had essentially become homeless after plummeting into alcoholism. He's been located and now staying with his brother. But I'm not sure what I think about the "Go Fund Me" page for him which has appeared. Interestingly, yesterday the goal was $25,000 but now it is $5,000. This morning, $961 has been raised.
• Someone called Wordkyle out yesterday by saying that every criminal case has an element of intent. That is 100% wrong. Criminally negligent homicide has no element of intent. DWI has no culpable mental state at all. 
• I want to travel with just a backpack.
• There's a 17 year old Plano baseball star who had signed with Oklahoma State who now sits in jail after allegedly sexually assaulting two young kids. One of the children, age five, said she recalled being assaulted all the way back to age three. That should send off warning signs to the investigators. (And since he's 17, he's an adult for criminal purposes so everyone knows his name -- guilty or not. Maybe if he clears his name he can buy a beer in over three years.)
• I don't fly that often but I'm not changing planes to get to a destination.
• The Austin American Statesman has released its Pre-Season college football poll. It begins (1) Ohio State, (2) TCU, (3) Alabama, (4) Baylor.  Is everyone drunk in Austin? Baylor is the biggest wildcard I've ever seen, and TCU probably isn't in the top fifteen.
• A North Carolina couple is charged with assaulting each other with pizza rolls. It may be no big deal (and maybe not even true) but at least the book-in photo looks like two people charged with such a heinous crime.
• Should I see a psychiatrist if I want to kill that annoying Progressive Insurance gal?
• I'm probably wrong, but I get this weird vibe about the SMU cop who is missing after his car was found in Turtle Creek.  There is grainy video footage showing him exiting his car before it went into the creek although it is presumed that he was swept away. But the media reports use weird phrases like he "reportedly" was drowned, his body hasn't been found, his identity has not been released, he "calmly" reported rising water after he called 311 instead of 911, and it wasn't even the lead story last night. Like I said, I'm probably wrong about having the weird vibe. (That, my friends, is covering all basis.)

Dallas Lawyer Shows Up In Wise County To Read Declaration of Independence

All 1,300+ words of it. (I guess our founding fathers couldn't have just written, "It's not you. It's me.")

The local Tea Party read the Declaration on the courthouse square within months of President Obama's election. I remember watching it from the courthouse balcony with an assistant DA who went on an anti-Obama rant. "I'll tell you one thing," he said. "He will never get a second term."

Edit: The reading wasn't as dramatic as it was in Tyler where one criminal defense lawyer (and, amazingly, past president of the State Bar of Texas) embarrassed himself by refusing to participate because a "defendant" was reading the Declaration as well. That defendant?:  Kerry Max Cook who will soon become the next poster child for the Wrongfully Convicted.