Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• When I mentioned yesterday that "first responders" were having a bad week, I totally forgot about the Hunt County deputy who hit a pregnant woman. And Hunt County Sheriff Randy Moon Meeks came off as a buffoon yesterday. Looking like Buford T. Justice, he called a press conference to say there were two different "narratives". He went on to say one "reads:  'Hunt County Officers Beat Pregnant Woman' . . . Another narrative could read:  'Pregnant woman attempts to take Deputy’s gun'.  Now, you can draw a conclusion by looking at the 31 second clip that could be a possibility?  I believe that we can say that is a possibility. . . .So, which narrative is correct?  I don’t know." Thank you, Sheriff, that clears it all up.  Edit: I'm not sure why I typed Randy "Moon" but I think he was with Wise County Probation in the 1990s and my brain misfired. 
• I'm not a NASCAR fan but I feel sorry for the Texas Motor Speedway attendees this weekend since a lot of storms are predicted. 
• And Texas Tech is sponsoring a car at the race? Is this common? Is it just a one race deal? 
• The Texas House worked late into the night and considered bills to increase the types of synthetic drugs/marijuana that should be made illegal. It seems the synthetic drug manufacturers just slightly alter their product's molecular structure to make them legal and the legislature has to catch up. But with each tweak by the drug manufacturer, the stuff becomes more volatile, unpredictable and dangerous. Anyone see a problem here? What do you think is going to happen after the new law passes? 
• There was big wreck on 114 in Wise County yesterday which involved two people from Weatherford in separate vehicles. Didn't I mention another Wise County wreck a couple of months ago that involved Weatherford people in different cars? 
• The first item about a felony sexual assault trial in the Update is bizarre. A lawyer in the courthouse told me yesterday that the female "victim" and the defendant spent the night before the trial began in a hotel together. She testified at trial that "she no longer considered [an incident in 2013 to be] a sexual assault and it was instead a role playing sexual encounter."
• A long article that I hope to read: A former UTEP basketball coach had his career spiral downwards and ended up mysteriously dead while coaching in Vietnam. 
• This is pretty complicated, but the bottom line is that it looks like a Collin County Grand Jury has possibly gone rogue and focusing on new Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.  The interesting part is that it looks like the DA has no control over their investigation (and there is nothing the DA can legally do to stop them.)
• I keep forgetting that the Boston Marathon Bomber trial was a federal case. Then I began to wonder how the federal government had jurisdiction in addition to the state of Massachusetts.  I looked at the indictment (which gave me Tired Head) and it appears to be a variety of federal crimes that invoke "interstate commerce." The same clause that lets Congress do anything they want also lets the federal courts obtain jurisdiction over any crime they want.