8.22.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




I didn't remember this at all, and I'm not sure I heard any remembrances about him when the sequel was released this summer. Tony Scott directed lots of blockbusters.

  • By last night, it seemed like the forecast for flooding was a massive miss. But it looks like it is hitting us now.
    • It first fired up overnight with parts of the metroplex being hit with around six inches of rain by 2:00 a.m. Most of the other areas at that time, including Fort Worth and Wise County, were still basically dry at that time. This is the screenshot at 1:59 a.m. with the flash flood warnings:

    • This was I-30 near downtown Dallas earlier:

    • The numbers at 6:00 a.m.:


    • And those will change dramatically. DFW airport is already officially over 7 inches.
  • I will never be more torn in my life than if Trump becomes a champion for the Fourth Amendment (which he apparently just discovered once the conduct of law enforcement actually impacted him.) But he might want to pick a better test case than one involving a search warrant signed off on by a federal magistrate.  A "major motion" won't get far in his case.

  • Good grief. 



  • I'm absolutely convinced that your average juror doesn't know how big $1 billion really is. 

  • Kim Jong-un loves Rodman. Putin? Not so sure about that. 

  • This got a Florida state house candidate permanently banned from Twitter. It might appeal to his base, but we can't normalize these nutcases.

  • But isn't limited to small time state politicians. “Are they [IRA agents] going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s . . .  ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa?” -Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)  (Video). Even the old guard is saying crazy stuff. America has changed so much in just five years. And what's an AK-15?

  • I normally don't mention traffic accidents in other countries, but what happened in Turkey on Saturday was wild. They had two different incidents, 150 mile apart, where someone plowed into emergency vehicles and people which had gathered at a previous wreck. Fifteen people were killed in one and 20 in the other. Video caught one of the them as it it happened. (Graphic warning.)


  • St. Jo is a little town in Montague County. We don't know much about this murder other than the lady was beaten to death in her own home. She was actually found alive on August 5th but died late last week. It doesn't sound like they have a suspect. 

  • I missed on Friday that a bestie of the The Little Ball of Insurrection™ who was on the same private jet pled guilty for her part in the January 6th Insurrection.

  • She's not wrong. 


  • Fox News has reservations about the Republicans chance of taking control of the Senate based upon some of the primary selections. 

  • Heck of a paragraph in this story about the death of a veterinarian in a Fort Worth. 

  • If I see this meme one more time I might pull my hair out. However, here's the back story about the people in the pic if you are interested.

  • A national sports broadcaster and sometime Ticket fill in host confirmed this picture was taken in a backyard in Irving on Friday. That thing's big. s

  • I think I'm one of the few people who can't stand Jordan Speith. In this week's tournament, he received unwanted attention for ignoring his caddy's advice to lay up and ended up putting his ball in the water instead. But that's not what bugs me about him in the video. It's his constant talking. Sheesh. Say all that stuff in your head. And just shut up and hit the ball. Video

  • Since everyone is praising it, I watched the Netflix Manti Te'o documentary over the weekend. Huge thumbs up. I might even call it a "must see." And while most docs save a big bombshell for the middle or late part of it, this one hits you over the head in the first five minutes with a sledgehammer.

  • I'm not sure the caption under the photo of the home is correct under this front page . . . 
at 8:29 AM

8.19.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




He would be gone in less than 18 months. 

  • A little excitement overnight. "According to DPS, Amarillo police contacted the Texas Rangers to ask for help locating Rivas. They believed he was traveling to the DFW area. With the assistance of Texas Highway Patrol troopers, DPS aircraft, Fort Worth police, and Dallas police, Rivas was located in the DeSoto area . . . .  Because Rivas traveled through Wise County and it was the ranger from Wise County who arrested him, Rivas was transported to the Wise County jail, according to DPS."


  • Back in 2021, Officer Rex Richie, then with the Rhome Police Department, was shot in the leg by Royce Woods. Woods pled guilty to the charge this week, but his punishment trial is ongoing and is covered in today's Messenger. Go buy a copy or subscribe, but this caught my eye: 

  • Everyone needs to tap the brakes on the possibility of the search warrant affidavit being released in Trump's secret documents case. Let's wait until we see if the redaction's dark blocks cover more space that the released text. 

    • Despite Trump's bluster about wanting the release of the affidavit, his lawyer -- a former OAN employee, no less -- showed up in court yesterday and did not take a position on the release.  (She was probably too busy thinking, "Oh, this is what a courtroom looks like.")

    • Bobb then appeared on Fox News last night to say how much she really wants the affidavit released. Laura Ingraham, not amused, then told her she should have argued that in court or at least joined in with the media's court filings urging the release.

  • The contrast of two worlds:
    • I turned on Morning Joe this morning and heard a round table voicing concern about how the Trump Republicans, as well as Fox News prime time lineup, are putting the lives of FBI and IRS agents in jeopardy as they also bang the drumbeats of a civil war. Someone, and I don't remember who, had this great quote: "They are aroused by the belief that the federal government is their enemy." That's perfect.

    • Then and I got in my car and listened to WBAP where Hal Jay and new co-host Ernie Brown gave the floor to weatherman Brad Barton to repeat a conspiracy theory he had heard about the raid at Mar-a-Largo. Barton (who comes across as an absolute wild man whenever he fires off political opinions) said that said he's hearing that the FBI raid was secretly an attempt by the FBI to recover documents which contained the names of federal agents behind the "Russian Hoax" investigation which Trump had removed from the White House and was about to expose. Even Hal Jay and Brown pushed back against Barton.

  • Former Cowboy great Michael Irvin, wearing a fantastic "captain's hat", tried to break up an argument in a bar. He was unsuccessful as it turned into a fight. Video. 

  • News about local morning news this morning as the replacement for the retiring Tim Ryan on Fox 4's Good Day was announced.  I thought Hannah was going to get it.  

  • You see this headline and your going to have to track down the video, right? (Spoiler: That might get her in trouble in Finland, but it's not getting her in trouble in America -- at least not in today's America.)

  • Does this correlate to where the most book banning activists are? Seems to. 

  • And those Trump supporting activists are even causing election officials in heavily Republican Texas counties to resign. They are sick of putting up with them when they are just trying to do their jobs.  

  • This is a jaw-dropping amount of money. And CBS, who the SEC left to go to ESPN, immediately trolled the SEC by releasing a promotion of the Big 10 overlaid with the the SEC's long-time and familiar theme music which had to drive the SEC hard core fans nuts.
    • New Big 10 deal is for seven years. Hold that thought:

    • So what's the SEC thinking? They just signed a 10 year deal with ESPN about a year and a half ago which now looks like chicken feed. The Big 10 will get to sign another deal with the networks even before the SEC's deal has run its course: 

  • Update about yesterday's "10 Years Ago" about the lady who allegedly backed over swimmers in Lake Grapevine. A faithful reader sent me an archived story he found which said "Authorities identified the driver of the boat as Amanda Renee Harrolle, 33, of Lewisville. She was arrested Sunday and released from the Denton County Jail a few hours later after posting $20,000 bail." 
    • A search of Denton County records show that she pled guilty to a lesser included offense of Boating While Intoxicated and received 24 months probation which she successfully completed in 2018. (Case No. F-2012-2571-D. Bruce Isaacks represented her.)
  • 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: 3 years, 45 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:29 AM

8.18.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




The link to the story in the Star-Telegram is dead, and I can't find this old story anywhere. 

  • The was crazy flooding in West Fort Worth last night while other parts of Tarrant County didn't see a drop.

  • The Texas legal machinery of death was back in business last night. 

    • Hot opinion about it:

    • Last words:

  • There's no way the actually affidavit is released. It will be at some point, but not at this stage. 

  • These headlines are so misleading. This would make you think a mass of kids were found and rescued from some big room somewhere. In actuality, it involved 391 different state and federal investigations involving over 200 different agencies across the entire country with the numbers being the totals from a two week period. 

  • Rudy in a wheelchair last night at the Atlanta airport after his testimony before a grand jury investigating his election interference. 

  • If I had to bet right now who the Republican nominee for president will be, I'd bet on Ron DeSantis. But it's early. And I wouldn't bet a lot. 
    • But I don't know what this guy is thinking. He doesn't stand a chance, but he was in New Hampshire yesterday in an obvious campaign feeler move. 

  • I agree. Those deputies that run security at the Denton County Courthouse come across as soulless jerks. 

  • Random NBA news from yesterday.  With the new contract's guaranteed money, LeBron will have earned a total of $532 million in the league from salary alone during his career.

  • Random poster from boyhood. I can't remember if this was just an ad in a magazine, or if it was a full poster I got from dad's store in Bridgeport.

  • Nerdy legal stuff. A judge on the federal 2nd Circuit lambasted the prosecutors yesterday. That last line is fire. 

  • Extremely nerdy legal stuff for practitioners only: 
    • It's always a point of contention as to whether past bad conduct of cop is admissible by the defense in a case the officer worked on if his past bad act didn't rise to the level of a criminal conviction (which everyone agrees is admissible.) 
    • There was a Texas case which was reversed on appeal yesterday because the State only disclosed after the trial that an officer had improperly accessed a government database to get dirt on his wife and lover so he could use it in his divorce proceeding. 
    • The court held that the defendant was entitled to a new trial because that evidence could have been used to impeach the officer because it was relevant. Specifically, there had been a search and seizure issue submitted to the jury under 38.23 which would turn on the officer's truthfulness. It looks like the question involved whether images on the defendant's phone had been located "inadvertently" while the officer was handling the phone (with limited consent to see if was capable of "making a call") or whether he was intentionally rooting around on it. Since the past bad act was relevant to show the officer had done some illegal rooting around on computer devices without authorization in the past, it's relevant.
    • Bottom line: Not all bad acts are admissible, but they will be if you can nicely tie it to an issue in the case. 
    • The defense lawyer on trial and appeal was Jake Spiegelhauer out of Bryan, Texas. Good job. 
  • I'm into the second season of The Morning Show. It's very good, but I can't believe I went into thinking it was going to be some feel good comedy. 


at 8:31 AM
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