Arkansas Frat Boys Perform Katy Perry's "Firework"

After watching that, I feel more manly than I ever have in my life.

What Am I Thinking Of?

I originally thought that Micky and the Motorcars was a one hit wonder from the 1990s. What band am I thinking of? Killing me.

(Bono's is in Decatur.)

Friday Morning Pick Me Up

But you might not want to be her passenger.

Punishment News

That's on the No Body Murder Case

And a Wise County jury is deliberating punishment on the Intoxication Manslaughter case right now. Edit: He received 20 years. The maximum. (The prosecutor asks for no less than 12.)

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• I think we're having the 5,000th slumber party to night at the house. That is, after they all get back from the Justin Bieber movie. Think they'll be ratcheted up? 
• The Texas Senate has passed the Sonogram Bill. It's comical that Rick Perry has designated it as "emergency" legislation.
• If all the school districts have to layoff people for the next school year, they'll have to make that decision pretty quickly, won't they?
• Azle motorcycle death.
• DPS had a press conference yesterday and released surveillance footage of a potential suspect in the fire at the Governor's Mansion. Hey, that fire took place in 2008! What took you so long?
• I updated the post yesterday but you may have missed it: The guy who was arrested for poisoning the trees at Auburn says on his Facebook page that he is a former Texas DPS Trooper.
• Preseason Rangers prediction: They won't make the playoffs.
• I jogged with an OU T-shirt yesterday and met a guy wearing a Longhorn T-shirt. He looked genuinely angry with me. Funny. (I bet I've got 20 different T-shirts with random college names on them. I even got one for Vanderbilt.) 
• The Star-Telegram has a headline/story today that says a jury has "recommended" a 25 year sentence in case involving the death of a baby.  A jury never "recommends" a sentence. What they say is the sentence. 
• Weather talk is boring, but is this not the craziest February ever? One week in the deep freeze and then two weeks of the warmest February weather I've ever seen. 
• I've preached for years that conservative Republicans will lose power in the future for one simple reason: Demographics.  Yesterday's Census data proves the point. And is there any doubt that the percentage of Hispanics will be significantly greater in the 2020 Census?
• Other Census nuggets: Bridgeport is 42% Hispanic. And Bridgeport has only 66 less people than Decatur.
• Did you realize that Jerry Jones hasn't been seen or heard since the Super Bowl?

Dallas Officer Reprimanded --- Wise County Ties

Channel 8 had a story last night on a Dallas police officer who posted some "inappropriate" things on her Facebook page. She lists herself as a 1996 Bridgeport High School graduate.

Another Reason Obama Will Be Re-Elected

I can write his campaign speech: "At the time I was sworn in, the stock market had plunged unlike anything since the Great Depression. But from that moment, based upon my Administration's sound economic policy, the market has recovered. The American People truly believed in Change That We Can Believe In, and we are once again the economic power that the world can look up to."

Yeah, it's all BS, but it'll work.

Jury Deliberates Punishment On No-Body-Murder-Case

Yeah, I'm borderline obsessed with this case. It's because we have rules that we live by, and one of those rules is that no one will be convicted unless, after considering all the evidence, there is no doubt about that person's guilt in any of the juror's minds -- that is, no doubt that they consider to be reasonable.

My problem with this case is that (1) We don't know the lady is dead, (2) If we assume she's dead, we don't know she was murdered, and (3) is we assume she was murdered, we don't know who did it.

Nothing proves my point more today than the prosecutor's argument during the punishment phase today.

In summation, prosecutor Cary Piel told jurors that he was not going to presume to tell them the number of years they should assess as punishment.

He told them to close their eyes and imagine the murder.

"You don’t want to do it, but you have to,” he said so quietly that those not in the jury box barely heard him.

“You know it was some sort of hand-to-hand thing.”

He said she likely knew she was dying and suffered.

What a load of crap. If every juror, at that moment, didn't realize they have no idea what happened because the government failed to prove it to them, they aren't smarter than a 5th grader. But I think the prosecutor realizes that. 

Our Own Little Egypt: Protesters In Wisconsin State Capitol Right Now

Wisconsin Police officers are looking for Democratic lawmakers who left the capitol before a scheduled vote on a bill that would strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights on Thursday. And it is those state workers that are protesting. Full story.

Official Census Data To Be Released Today

What we know so far:

• Latinos now make up 38 percent of the Texas population, up from 32 percent in 2000, according to the AP
• The Texas Anglo population has now dropped to 45.3 percent, down from 52.4 percent in 2000. 
• About 11.5 percent of the population is black, unchanged from 10 years ago
• Wise County's new population is 59,127

.

For My Twitter Friends

I've discovered a bug. If someone tries to mention someone else but goes over the maximum characters (i.e @bsgsomeoneelse), there's a chance that person's name you tried to mention gets truncated and you end up referencing someone else. Like me!!!!

That was funny. At least until I clicked on @shakesthesky's profile and found out it was a guy.

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Uncle Leo from Seinfeld has died. (I never really liked that character.)
• There was a double murder near the SMU campus last night which prompted the school newspaper to immediately post a story about it. Judging by the comments, the story contained a photograph of a dead body that was later taken down because of complaints.
• We've always said we need to close the borders, just not this Borders.
• Not sure I needed to see Mark Davis and Bob Ray Sanders yell at each other about John Wiley Price for the first 13 minutes of Fox 4 News last night.
• That computer winning the Jeopardy match should be bigger news. Truly, that was a machine that could listen to the question and come up with the answer. There were no tricks. And Time has a feature article this week on what happens when computers become smarter than humans (which, at the current rate, would be in about 30 years.)
• Someone commented a couple of times saying "Why does Egypt mean anything to me?"  Well, let a few more countries go down and have one of them launch an attack on Israel, and you'll learn very quickly what it means to you. 
• Wise County lawyer the other day said that he thought "all that Egypt stuff was just some kind of pyramid scheme." (Insert WBAP Hal Jay wheeze laugh.)
• Saw a guy on a small motorcycle on 287 yesterday going 55 mph and you could tell he was getting bounced around by the wind. Scary.
• Wondering what ever happened to Marcia Clark?
• I never watch NASCAR but I saw where Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the pole position last weekend for the Daytona 500 and then wrecked the car yesterday. Now he has to use a backup car and start at the back of the pack. That guy is a knucklehead.
• The Intoxication Manslaughter case is still going on in Decatur. I really haven't had time to follow it but I did see a Messenger reporter in the gallery yesterday.
• Girl attaches camera to her booty and films people checking her out. (Credit bagofnothing.com)
• Any comments about the No Body Murder Trial can be left on the post down below, but I'll say this morning that it's most disturbing criminal justice verdict I've ever heard of.
• A very innocent and normal question that for some reason I find very intrusive: "Where do you live?"
• How music has changed: Glee has had 113 singles on Billboard's Top 100 list in less than two years breaking the all time record of Elvis who had 108 over the course of his lifetime. 

Bizarre Vandalism Admitted To On Radio Show?

Georgia has the Hedges, Ole Miss the Grove, and at Auburn Tiger fans have the 130 year-old live oaks that sit at famous Toomer's Corner and are "rolled" after Tiger victories. But sadly, thanks to the work of one unknown vandal, Auburn may not have them much longer.

The University announced this afternoon that the trees have been intentionally poisoned with a lethal dose of herbicide, and though every effort is being made to save them, are unlikely to survive. A police investigation has been launched to identify the vandal.

In the biggest twist behind the story, the only-in-Alabama tip that alerted Auburn authorities to the poisoning may also become the lead towards apprehending the culprit:

The university learned that a caller to The Paul Finebaum Show, a nationally syndicated radio show based in Birmingham, on Jan. 27, claimed he had applied the herbicide. As a precaution, soil samples were taken the next day ... and sent to the lab at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., to expedite results. The lowest amount detected was 0.78 parts per million, described by horticulture experts as a "very lethal dose." The highest amount detected was 51 parts per million, or 65 times the lowest dose. 

More.

And here's the audio of the call to the radio show.

Edit: Arrested. And he identifies himself as a former Texas Trooper on his Facebook page!!

The No Body Murder Case

Story on closing arguments this morning.

A Denton jury is on the clock. A high school Civics class would acquit this guy in five minutes.

(They actually misspelled his name in the headline.)

Edit: At 9:24 p.m., the jury returned a guilty verdict. Stunning is not even close to my reaction. I'll bet my house it will be reversed on appeal because even with the standard of "reviewing the evidence in a light favorable to the State, no rationale jury could have found the defendant guilty", it will happen. But this verdict should scare each and every one of you.

Amazing. Shocking. Wait..........a better term........Idiocracy.

Wednesday Afternoon Pick Me Up

From some club in either Dallas or Cottondale named Plush.

$21 Million And It's A Fixer Upper?

Deion Sander's home in Prosper, which is on the market, suffered some water damage during the ice storm. More.

Crazy Arizona Sheriff

I follow this guy's Twitter feed because I like to shake my head in bewilderment. (Is he going to extract the organs of the illegal aliens before they die, because certainly he'll load 'em up in his pickup truck and dump them over the border?)

Yesterday he was on Fox saying he was considering a run for the U.S. Senate. And the most recent poll puts him in the lead!

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• The  Messenger, on the second page of today's edition, has an odd story of a local high school couple who were married on Valentine's Day after they had had a baby together. It seemed to laud the guy for dropping out of school his sophomore year in order to earn money to support the child. Like I said: Odd.
• Stolen tweet from last night: The Westminster Dog Show corners the market on chubby-legged ladies to run the dogs around the ring. (The competition was on TV last night.)
• Best In Show is one funny movie.
• For probably my criminal justice friends: Check out this memo from the higher ups at the Harris County DA's office to young prosecutors regarding a "trial competition". It's all about fun and games as they jack with people's lives.
• The elder George Bush received the Medal of Freedom yesterday from President Obama. That man does not look well (and recall he didn't attend the groundbreaking for W's library in Dallas a few months back.)
• Inflation (something we haven't seen in a couple of decades) seems to be slowly creeping in. During all the stimulus bailout (as well as the Federal Reserve's own money creating bailout), I preached and preached that you can't flood the money supply without that happening. Even an economic idiot like me could predict that.
• John Wiley Price caught flak on the news last night for telling some citizens to "go to hell" during a Commissioners' Court meeting. I promise I meant to write in a bullet point last week that he had transformed himself into a 1980s wheels-off activist to the leader of the Democratic Party in Dallas County.
• But if you saw Heather Hay's interview with him last night at 9:00, you would have sworn she was being mind-controlled by the national Fox News opinion makers. It was as though she was asking questions submitted by Bill O'Reilly.
• And I'm surprised Price didn't jump her when she asked whether it would have been better if he "had just kept his mouth shut."
• Although the funniest bit was Republican election judge, Rev. Bill Lovell, whining into the camera that Price had called him a "fat boy."
• Just thought about old Dallas councilman Al Lipscomb.
• I'll keep you updated on the Intoxication Manslaughter case that is going on at the courthouse. Sorry if I won't post comments that contains purported facts about the case.
• I will point out this oddity: Normally the State and the defense get to strike 10 potential jurors with the remaining 12 jurors being comprised from the remaining jurors. But yesterday after a ton of potential  jurors were disqualified, there were only 23 left. Doing the math, if the defense and State both struck 10, there would only be three left and that's not enough. So what did the State do? They offered to go forward and exercise only one strike even though the defense got ten. That way we would end up with 12 jurors and the case could go forward.
• And our Sheriff was on the jury panel. He didn't make it to the jury. 
• "Houston - A model who had the world's biggest breasts has tried to commit suicide after doctors removed her implants."  I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm guessing she has some issues.
• Mrs. LL had her second carpal tunnel surgery yesterday. Finally, finally a light at the end of the tunnel. But, man, she was out of it last night. 
• Someone commented that the Egyptian people were inspired by the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq? Really? Not a chance. And those people may not be able to handle freedom after all. 

I Thought This Story Would Get A Little Traction

DPS is an odd bunch. The troopers follow strict protocol more than any other agency in Texas, yet at the "end" of a chase they tend to open fire with an unusual frequency.  It was just about five years ago when two separate individuals were shot dead in Wise County after a chase.

But, man, they dodged a bullet (horrible pun) when a three year old wasn't killed when they fired into a car this time. This would be nationwide news if that little kid had been killed.

And the only thing the driver was wanted for at the time was speeding.

Story.

Demi Moore Is Still Killing It

New gallery.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The news was all abuzz over the weekend about a man dragged to death behind a pickup by three men in Milford, Texas. Then we hear last night that it wasn't true at all.
• Got home last night to a dark house, candlelights, three smiling people, and a surprise lasagna dinner. Yeah, my life is pretty much the same as it has always been.
• Courthouse Pet Peeve:  Courthouse regulars engaging in third party light hearted conversations while someone they are there to help/direct/process is looking on with anxiety because its the first time they've ever been through the court system. (If that makes sense.)
• Monday's coverage of the Denton No Body Murder Trial. Still the silliest prosecution ever.
• UTA and UNT set records for enrollment this Spring? I wonder if that's because of the slow economy. And I wonder what the total student loan figure it.
• Decatur Street Sweepers were out in force around the courthouse this morning. I think their main purpose is to blow dust in the air. 
• I'm not saying that the Wise County Courthouse bomb threat was the most exciting news in the world, but you'd think it would at least get a mention on some of the local TV stations. (I didn't see it at all.) In fact, a google news search only turned up this odd little article about it.
• Stopped by to get a haircut late yesterday afternoon and, while waiting, got to hear a 14 year old provide her mother with some hot opinions on abortion. You know, standard stuff about rape and incest that we all hear about while waiting.
• Speaking of, the proposed Texas bill that would require a sonogram before an abortion has the strange exception for pregnancies that are the result of sexual assault or incest or if the fetus has an "irreversible medical condition or abnormality."  So what's going to keep every woman from simply lying and claiming the exception?
• Back to the haircutting place, a guy getting his hair cut beside me mentioned to his "stylist" that he just got a $10,000 raise. I gathered that the last time he got his haircut there he was going for a job interview. Hmmmm.
• The Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is out. I think it was last relevant twenty years ago. 
• Visa had a pre-Super Bowl commercial about four guys that had traveled to every game (which, incidentally, sounds like a  beating.)  Well, one of the guys became sick shortly before the "big game" in Dallas, had to miss it, and then died last weekend.
• I'm helping with jury selection in an Intoxication Manslaughter case this morning. The alleged incident occurred in 2003.

Iran Ain't Egypt

It's one thing to protest in Egypt, but it's another thing to do it in Iran. The police today coming from a distance is quite the show of force, but I don't know if they are firing weapons or tear gas.

Source.

Updated picture

Lady detained in bomb threat (title edited)

Breaking: Bomb Threat At Wise County Courthouse

Evacuation ordered.

Courthouse was notified by Decatur PD and Fire Marshal.

Developing . . .

Edit: At 10:30 people were allowed to go back in (which one have been one of the quickest bomb searches ever.)  Lots going on up there this morning: Commissioners' Court, Divorce docket (on Valentines Day) and a felony criminal docket.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• I was completely out of the loop this weekend - I may need you guys to update me this morning.
• Ate at Nuevo Leon at Northside on Friday. Not bad. But it was one of those weird experiences where we were going to try something new only to walk in the door and realize that we had been there before.
• And I'm not a complainer, but the service was bad.  I've noticed that in so many places in the last couple of months -- which is odd because with jobs at a premium, you'd think people would work hard to keep them.
• Lady GaGa arrived at the Grammy's last night in an egg. Yep, an egg. Since she arrived one time in a dress made of meat, she's halfway to a Grand Slam Breakfast. (Stolen line.)
• I don't relate to the Grammy's any more. I had no idea who Arcade Fire (best album) or Esperanza Spalding (best new artist) were.
• I actually planned Mrs. LL's Valentines's Day gift three weeks ago.
• WBAP was talking about how much the average guy spends on his significant other on Valentine's. They sited one study that said $116. Really?
• Caught some of Desperado last night. Sucks me in every time.
• Also saw an old episode of To Catch A Predator which reminded me that one time Mrs. LL left me a phone message composed entirely of drops from the Chris Hansen soundboard. Funny.
• The Messenger reported this weekend that redistricting might cause Wise County to be cut out of Rep. Phil King's district. Everyone gripes about him, but he's been unbeatable and that's the only way he won't represent us. 
• Ann Coulter thinks New Jersey governor Chris Christie could be President Obama in the next election. In all seriousness, I don't think a fat guy could ever win the presidency. It's a shallow reason, but that's the way we are.
• The No-Body-Murder-Trial in Denton was put on hold all of late last week because of weather and because the judge had "other obligations." 
• Wrong way driver in Dallas last night (but he was stopped once a cop rammed him). Man, that would be terrifying to see on a highway.

Say What?

There's some speculation that she might have actually have been having a stroke last night.