Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The hostage situation in Sydney, Australia is bizarre.  The guy wants an ISIS flag? Sounds like a lone wolf. 
• Edit: The hostage taker has been identified: "Monis lost an appeal Friday to have charges against him overturned for sending 'offensive and deplorable letters' to the families of servicemen who died in Afghanistan. Monis was also charged with being an accessory to murder in his ex-wife's 2013 death, and was charged this year with indecent and sexual assault of women in 2002. Monis was hit with an additional 40 charges in October."
• A van rolled over on the freeway early on Sunday morning in Bedford and nine people were ejected? Nine? Ejected? All of them? Is that right? Shouldn't that be pretty big news.
• Last night a guy got kicked out of a bar in Arlington and came back and fired 20 shots into cars and into the bar. 
• Emmitt Smith, after every touchdown, used to keep the football and hand it to a guy who would mark it and put it in a storage case for safekeeping. Whatever happened to all of those?
• For some reason, I re-watched The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and The Reluctant Astronaut over the weekend. (Those are old Don Knotts' movies from my childhood -- I've got a full throttle life going on.) Verdict: Still pretty, pretty funny with some very subtle and shocking adult jokes thrown in. But Mrs. LL did a lot of head shaking. 
• Knotts has been dead since 2006.  I put up a quick post about him at the time and referenced The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. 
• Lake Bridgeport is now officially more than 24 feet low. And sits at a shocking 38% of capacity. 
• What timing: On Friday morning I created a post below criticizing the grand jury system. On Saturday, a Tarrant County Assistant DA penned a column for the Star-Telegram in defense of the system.  He wrote, "The old saying that 'a DA can convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich' has never applied in Tarrant County."   If I had the number, I would insert at this point the number of cases the Tarrant County grand jury indicted last year and the number they no-billed. 
• And Another update: DNA comes back negative and kid recants. Case dismissed. She was indicted by a grand jury by the way. 
• The Sixth Grader in the House notified me that she also has a catapult project due. Oh, great. I've still got the one for the Junior in the House but that would give rise to an ethical issue.  But then I learned the new project can't involve the use of wood. Which has me very confused.
• The Wise County Commissioners, or more specifically the new judge, has "added to the agenda a community forum, in which citizens may share comments or observations related to county business. There is a three-minute time limit, and large groups should designate a spokesperson." My guess is that they will rarely hear from anyone.