- No slowing down.
- Plano ISD instituted a mask mandate. This is probably why. If we are going to have an insane outbreak in schools, we should know it within the next seven to ten days.
- With the full approval by the FDA of the vaccine by Pfizer, local Texas governmental entities (cities, schools, counties, state agencies) are no longer prevented from mandating that its employees get that vaccine. The wording of Gov Abbott's order, which had hamstrung those entities previously, had this limiting language:
- The new re-constructed Bridgeport City Council voted last night to "have a full time paid fire chief [noting that] the city manager is committed to bringing a professional selection process back to the city council" to fill the position. (Emphasis added.) There is a lot going on behind the scenes, but this Messenger article seems to be what the vote was in response to.
Credit Messenger report Austin Jackson for the thankless task of covering
local government which has a value we don't appreciate. - I've watched most of the video of the field sobriety tests and arrest of Allen West's wife. Hot legal opinions:
- If I had to guess, the blood test may very well come back clean. And that would explain Allen West going so far out on a limb and going scorched earth on the the cops. He knows it'll be clean.
- The Chief of Dallas PD came out yesterday and defended the arresting officer. But this line stuck out to me: "Regardless what the lab results show, I believe that she believed there was probable cause officer to think there was something impacting her driving." Translated: The blood results my clear Mrs. West and I'm not saying I would have personally arrested her, but the officer honestly believed there was probable cause to do what she did so everyone get off her back.
- Mrs. West didn't sound drunk. She sounded scared.
- The video is a perfect example of "failing the field sobriety tests." According to the manual all cops use, she did fail the Walk and Turn and One Leg Stand tests. But from a practical standpoint and from a jury's perspective, she didn't. However, the officer was forced to follow that nationally mandated manual which has its own scoring system -- a scoring system which is, and always has been, worthless and ridiculous.
- If this had been a simply refusal case without a blood test, I could win it every time.
- Very legal nerd stuff: There was only one clue in the HGN test. That's enough to seriously question everything the officer did. That can't happen.
- The scary part of the whole case is that the government can stick a needle in your arm based upon those facts.
- I warned about these being in place for years, but at least they aren't hiding it any longer.
- The jury in the Familial DNA Cold Case saw a video of the defendant's "confession" yesterday (he said "I guess" when asked if he raped and murdered the victim, but other parts were more incriminating), but I noted how both detectives, once the defendant was on the verge of a tearful confession, patted him on the knee as a fake act of compassion to encourage him to keep going.
- I got to tour the new Wise County courthouse annex yesterday. It's very nice and very functional. The one problem I saw was that a person in the witness chair in the County Court at Law #1 can't see the person in the far right chair. That chair is normally occupied by a defendant who must be identified by a witness. (You really can't tell it from the photo, but the judge's bench obstructs the view based upon my own very scientific experiment of sitting in the chairs.)
- Missed this from the weekend.
- People tell me all the time that they are glad I turned the comments off on Liberally Lean. Eliminating them has literally changed my life. I was absorbing other people's anger. That's not healthy for anyone.
8.24.2021
Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts
8.23.2021
Random Monday Morning Thoughts
(1) I used to run all the time and at strange times. I was lucky I wasn't mugged. (2) There really was an assistant DA in Tarrant County who told me that. He was briefly with that office and was in the juvenile section in 1991-1992. That conversation stuck with me because the victim had never been identified publicly, and she wouldn't come forward until 2003. (3) Little did I know that The Central Park Five would be a hit in 2019.
- The record set last winter was 14,218.
- I'll sometimes roam around the social media for Wise County to see what the masses are thinking. I don't want to alarm you, but I've found out there's a lot of people that are willing to ingest a horse dewormer because they fear the COVID vaccine. I guess they want to see a hospital one way or another. I stole this photo from someone's Facebook page who was encouraging people to take it:
- If you haven't seen the video, it's wild.
- An Azle senior high school student was killed in a plane crash on Saturday morning. This was the type of plane:
- "Henri" for the name of a hurricane is very pretentious.
- Republican governor candidate Allen West has attacked the police for arresting his wife for DWI claiming that the "breathalyzer" read zero and posted receipts where she had just been at P.F. Chang's where no alcohol was purchased. There was a blood test but obviously we don't know the results. Quick thoughts:
- It's possible a portable breath test (a little handheld device) was used at the scene, but cops normally don't tell the driver what the results were. But one problem with Allen West's statement is that his wife previously said the officer told her that "I was doing [the breathalyzer test] wrong." She probably wasn't blowing hard enough in the officer's opinion to get an appropriate reading. I'm guessing it didn't just read "zero."
- It sounds like there was not an official breath test on the Intoxilyzer 9000 done at the jail.
- Since there was a blood test, she either agreed to it or the cops got a search warrant. Late yesterday, West told the Texas Tribune a warrant was issued so we know she initially refused to give a sample. We'll know the results normally in a month or two but this one might get expedited.
- It's possible that the case only involves prescription medication. Or it's possible she got liquored up before going to P.F. Changs. Or it's possible she is completely innocent. I really have no idea. The case is admittedly off to a strange start.
- Here are the receipts. The stop was 8:44 p.m.
- I also think it's weird that we didn't hear anything about any poor driving. She claims she was stopped for failing to signal a turn. It helps a DWI case to have some really bad driving facts.
- Allen West says he Backs the Blue. But in a video posted yesterday he demanded that DPD Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot visit his home and apologize. He's probably got one of those special blue American flags on his porch. Oh, he also wants the arresting officer fired.
- Where was Allen West? He wants you to know “I was down in Waco, Texas, having dinner with Ted Nugent and some other people." If you are impressed with that, he's your guy.
- I'll say it again. No one is ever arrested on "suspicion of [insert crime]." The phrase "suspicion of" is incorrect and sloppy reporting.
- The case is actually a State Jail Felony because there was a child under 15 years of age in the car at the time of the alleged offense
- This tweet by the Tarrant County DA's office is unusual because it was fired off during the ongoing trial on Friday. I've never seen them do that before. And they didn't do any follow-ups.
- The flooding in Tennessee is horrible as is this photo from Loretta Lynn's ranch. That guy didn't make it.
- I missed a wild string of arrests of probation officers out of Wichita County. Good lord:
- One officer was arrested for requesting sexual favors from a man in exchange for destroying a urine sample.
- Another was arrested for threatening a pregnant probationer in order to coerce her into letting her adopt the probationer's child.
- A supervisor is under indictment for aggravated perjury.
- "Another pending case involves former officer David Jetton who is charged with three counts of official oppression and one count of sexual assault involving a 26-year-old woman who said she was behind on her probation payments."
- For the first time in my life, I drove down to Nacogdoches this weekend. Let me tell you something, there's nothing wrong with the scenery in that part of the state. Big thumbs up.
- Did you know the NFL has added an extra dead week between the last preseason game and the first season weekend?
8.20.2021
It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here
2020 to 2021
— Josh Warburton (@JoshWarburton2) August 15, 2021
pic.twitter.com/pXH22LowmT
This guy marches to the beat of his own drummer. 🥁😏😜 pic.twitter.com/WvBfmKGdax
— Fred Schultz (@fred035schultz) August 18, 2021
Firefighter catches suicide jumper out of the air
— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) August 14, 2021
pic.twitter.com/jiDd2XrdP3
The last scene in Titanic…😏😂🐸 pic.twitter.com/JhxeeyHZtC
— Fred Schultz (@fred035schultz) August 19, 2021
121 and 114 yesterday pic.twitter.com/UKstNXKyum
— Dallas Texas TV (@DallasTexasTV) August 19, 2021
this is my favorite sports highlight of the year pic.twitter.com/MFiUFhywKO
— Tim Marcin (@TimMarcin) August 20, 2021
Random Friday Morning Thoughts
- Climbing continues.
- Wise County's hospital situation made WFAA.
- Don't get too excited about the Texas Supreme Court late last night "denying" Abbott's request to force schools to honor his No Mask Mandate. AG Paxton, who never knows what he's doing, simply filed it in the wrong court.
- An insurrection loving and gun loving "patriot" shut down part of Washington D.C. yesterday as he threatened to blow up two and half blocks on Facebook Live. "The revolution starts today" and "the South is here," he said. Not being Black (remember?) or Muslim, he was taken into custody alive. January 6th was just a test run.

Didn't I see him in Con Air? 
Yep, that's dollar bills he threw out. - Speaking of, after promoting for months that she "did nothing wrong", the Lil' Ball of Insurrection from Carrollton (who works in Frisco as a realtor) has a agreed to plead guilty. She faces only six months incarceration.
- Legal nerd stuff: In Fort Worth, the Familial DNA case (using a person's DNA to find a distant relative and then using good old fashioned police work to go up or down a family tree) completed jury selection yesterday. The defense lawyer, when questioning the panel, asked them how they felt about police secretly using DNA services like "23 and Me" -- a perfectly legal technique. As a defense lawyer, you are in a tough spot there. If you are lucky, you'll find five people who say it is "unfair." But (1) if they said they could never convict if the tactic was used by police, the judge will remove them, and (2) if they say they could still be unbiased, the State will strike them with one of their 10 free strikes. So you'll end up losing any of those who at least had a slight chance to be a decent defense juror. In any event, if a jury thinks a guy is guilty, 99% of the time they don't care if the police broke procedures and laws to catch them.
- Paid ad? I was watching WFAA news yesterday evening and the final "news segment" was about this BBQ place expanding. The report just fawned all over restaurant. That caused my radar to go off. Then I saw that the Morning News had a story about it as well. I'm pretty sure (?) Belo still owns both WFAA and the paper. Payola?
- Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on Laura Ingraham last night that, yes, most of those hospitalized are the non-vaccinated but it's not Republicans making up that group, it's Black people. That's a change from blaming unvaccinated Mexicans crossing the border which had been his talking point as of late.
- Some people compare Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban but there is no comparison. For example, what Jerry has done at The Star from a real estate development angle is something Cuban hasn't even remotely sniffed. Not to mention Jones going heavy into natural gas and Legends Hospitality and Prosper. Yet somehow Cuban gets a spot on Shark Tank as some business guru.
- An amazing story out of Philadelphia: A man spends over 25 years in prison for rape and murder until the DNA came back years later revealing it didn't belong to him. And get this: The DA and cops decided to retry the man on the theory that he was still the killer. The jury quickly found him not guilty. Now three detectives who testified in that second trial have been indicted for perjury by the new DA.
- Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 777 days.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
8.19.2021
Random Thursday Morning Thoughts
- Small increase from yesterday. At some point, it will abruptly do a U-turn and head back down, but we just don't know when that is.
- Vaccine "passport" developments:
- San Antonio ISD has cancelled football scrimmages until its players show vaccination proof.
- A federal judge requires a person released on bond to be vaccinated.
- Fox News is requiring all employees to enter their "vaccination status" into a company database.
- The federal government is requiring all nursing home employees to get the vaccine or lose Medicare and Medicaid funding.
- Booster shots will be available on September 20th. Where do I get in line?
- President Biden's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos which aired this morning didn't go well. And you can criticize the "liberal media" all you want, but George started with a haymaker.
- Just own that it was a screw-up, but point out that now the airport is under control and we are getting people out there with flights every hour.
- The guy which allegedly shot a Clay County deputy in his bulletproof vest was arrested in Arlington.
- Lake Bridgeport is on the rise. It was about two feet low due to the Water Board opening up the spillway gates in mid-July to release water to Eagle Mountain Lake, but it's up a foot and a half and rising. Rain got dumped on the watershed above Jacksboro and is still pouring in.
- There was big news last year when an arrest was made in a murder case from 1977 of a girl who was abducted in a bowling alley parking near the Benbrook traffic circle. It was unique because the case was solved using familial DNA research. For some reason, the case is actually going to trial today. The defendant is 78 years old. You would have thought it could have been worked out.
- Facebook has a "major announcement" this morning. I don't know if Facebook will be the one to pull it off, but virtual reality will be the major technological advancement in the future. Our grandparents would have thought a crystal clear Facetime call on a handheld device from across the country was witchcraft. So what's life going to be like in 50 years? (Heck, how about just 10 or 20?)
- Edit: This announcement turned out to be stupid. Facebook will use avatars instead of a life-like holograms of the users.
- Official traffic "stop" numbers for 2020 in Wise County:
- Decatur PD 7,587
- Bridgeport PD 5,272
- Boyd PD 3,398
- Rhome PD 2963
- WCSO 2,501
- That site didn't give me the number of traffic stops by DPS, but my own tracking shows DPS wrote 3,442 actual tickets in Wise County in 2021. That number is misleading low because it excludes "warning only" stops, stops which resulted in arrests but with no tickets/citations, and stops where the person was just let go
- I'm insane now.
- I was all set to make this a bullet point until the coach and a snarky AD showed up in the comments of this Twitter post and said it wasn't true. (Runge ISD is between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.)
- I finally finished Deadwood. Thumbs up. I think that Al Swearengen is one of TV's all-time great characters.
- I've moved on to Billions. After two episodes, it's a little cliched and corny, but I'll give it a chance.
- I finished the book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. The first half on Texas history should be required reading for every Texan.
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