Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• This is an update on some old news, but you may recall the Wood County DA Jim Wheeler resigned abruptly last year. Now we know why: He was being investigated after allegations of sexually harassing a female employee.  He was allowed to resign "in lieu of prosecution" (which some would see as favorable treatment and others would consider to be a fair exchange.)
• I was looking through the obituaries in the recent edition of the Texas Bar Journal and stopped down when I saw that of Paul Isham.  When I was with a law firm in Fort Worth circa 1990 we formed a softball team for a lawyers' league. Our team was all young (late 20s or early 30s) with the exception of some "old guy": Mr. Isham who would have probably had been late 40s. He was our pitcher -- a good one -- who just came out to have fun. I remember that he looked athletic and this from his obituary tells me why: "He ran 35 marathons, skied,  and . . .  climbed Mount Kilimanjaro." I hadn't seen him in 30 years. He was 77.
  
• And not that I'm going all heavy on death here, but right beside his obituary was that of Marla D. Jones, 58.  I'm bothered by this because I learned she graduated in my very small Baylor law school class in May of 1986. I cannot place her, and it disturbs me to no end. I learned she even worked in downtown Dallas right out of law school for a big firm so that would have caught my attention back then -- I went to work in downtown Dallas as well.  (She kept a pretty low profile and ended up with Anadarko Petroleum in The Woodlands "until her retirement.")
  
• I almost made a bullet point out of Anadarko last month when there was a bidding war between Occidental Petroleum and Chevron to buy the company .  Occidental won with a bid of $38 billion. 
• In a weird lawsuit, Sen. Ted Cruz decided to sue over election financing campaign laws because he was only able to withdraw $250,000 instead of the $260,000 that he lent it. Yep, he's suing to get back $10,000 from his campaign. That wouldn't normally make news, but it did yesterday when his legal team compared his plight to that of Rosa Parks.  Lawyers can be dumb.
  
• I would think cameras like Ring would make it hard for the old school type home alarm systems to survive.  (Although an ear piercing alarm is probably still a pretty good deterrent.)
  
• Trump appeared on State TV last night with Tucker Carlson. Look at this wild and rambling answer to a "question" about the homeless in California. He is not well.  (He ended homelessness in D.C. by just saying, "You can't do that"?)
  
• You've heard about the death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs in a Southlake hotel, and I really don't have anything to add. This was the scene outside of Angel's stadium less than one hour after the news of his death broke:
  
  
• Then again, maybe you haven't heard about Skaggs' death.
  
• There was one trial in the Waco Twin Peaks/Biker Fiasco, and it ended up in a hung jury. Now in an odd twist the defense lawyer has been suspended by the State Bar for three years "and must pay $59,000 in restitution to clients she failed to serve." The suspension seems unrelated to the Waco case, but its really unclear what happened. I should note it's hard to get suspended by the State Bar.
  
• Look at Trump's announcement yesterday and compare it to what his designee said three years ago. 
  
  
  
  
• Let me guess: You're really not going to buy Nike gear in protest this time. (The flag apparently is used by some White Nationalists. You know, it's a we-were-much-better-when-there-were-thirteen colonies-and-had-slavery kind of thing.)
  
  
  
  
• Amazingly, the Governor of Arizona got mad at the Betsy Ross shoe controversy and has ordered "all financial dollars" to be withdrawn as an incentive for Nike to locate in the town of Goodyear. Taking jobs away from Arizonians is a weird flex, but OK.    (Side note: Nike won't sue Arizona but they could. This is a perfect example of government punishing an entity for the content of their speech.)
  
• I have no idea how you can be an assistant County Attorney in Williamson County and make a shocking $132,000 and, to boot, keep a lucrative private practice on the side.