Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• The Tarrant County Jail is now releasing its total inmate population on a daily basis. Yesterday:  4,247. Wise County had 183. For bordering counties, that really is a mind-boggling difference.
• This would be legal in Texas.
  
  
• I stumbled upon this information on the Montague/Young/Archer County DA yesterday which I didn't know. She was 30 when elected, graduated from Texas Wesleyan Law School in 2012, got a job as assistant DA but was let go once the position was eliminated, and then decided to run against the DA who hired her. And she, according to the two year old story, is married to a Wise County Sheriff's deputy. This is the margin she won by:
  
• Pretty crazy story of a guy with a gun who "was off his medication" and hid in "between the walls" of a locker room at Paradise High School yesterday evening. Messenger story here.  (I noticed that the school superintendent referred to the guy as a "perp." I've never met the guy but now I'm picturing Joe Friday.)
  
• In my continuing rant about people being criminally prosecuted for traffic accidents, the subject of the Texas Monthly story I've written about before was just released from prison after the appellate court granted him a new punishment trial and allowed bond. His case could still could go higher in an attempt to wipe out the conviction. (On a related note, yesterday a different appellate court in San Antonio threw out a criminal-conviction-because-of-an-accident case.)  
  
• Trump went to Toledo Dayton and El Paso yesterday in a somber mission of healing. Let's check and see how it worked out. 
• This is in between cities when I'm sure he was emotionally shaken.
  
  
  
• I didn't think he could possibly screw up a hospital visit, but he did. Official White House photo: 

What the hell is wrong with everybody?

• The rest of us . . . .
  
• Trump barred the press from being with him in the hospitals because "it wasn't a photo op" but was able to produce a slickly produced campaign video of his visit in Dayton in less than an hour after he left.
  
• Senator John Cornyn probably didn't think about Matthew 6:5 when he campaigned with Trump in El Paso later in the day.  "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others."
  
• "My rhetoric is very—it brings people together.” - Trump on the White House Lawn yesterday morning. Later:
  
  
• And while you weren't watching, ICE rounded up 680 people at Mississippi food processing plants yesterday.
  
• This photograph for the legendary album cover was taken 50 years ago today.  Today is also the 50th anniversary of the murders directed by Charles Manson. 
  
• We were probably too hard on Fox News' Tucker Carlson for saying the White Supremacy is a hoax. David Duke has come to his defense. 
  
• I can't envision a "Red Flag" law that could be written without getting into the impossibility of predicting future crimes. How would it begin? "After notice and hearing, a person found by a preponderance of evidence to be likely to commit a crime of violence using a firearm in the future . . . . " Good lord. Unless a person has past history of convictions -- and sometimes even then -- that can never be done. And if a person has any prior serious convictions he can't carry a gun any way. Then you've got the practical problem of trying to keep guns away from a now very pissed off guy if a judge were to make that finding.