Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Well, the Trump administration has officially told Congress they won't cooperate at all with the Impeachment Inquiry. It's Game On. (I don't know who the president's lawyer is firing off this defiant shot, but I'm guessing he puts "Esquire" behind his name based upon his ridiculous signature.)
  
• The murder of the witness in the Amber Guyger has been solved with the ol' "drug deal gone bad" narrative. Observations: (1) When the first guy you arrest is a gunshot victim, his self-defense claim might work better than Guyger's defense, and (2) who in the world travels from another state to Dallas to buy weed?
  
  
• Goodbye, Allsups. They are all being sold to Yesway.  (What's a Yesway?)
  
• Layoffs in Bridgeport: "Other Stevens Tanker facilities closing in towns across Texas included Asherton (6 employees), Bridgeport (16 employees), Bryan (24 employees), Cresson (40 employees), Dilley (10 employees) Pleasanton (44 employees) and Waelder (8 employees)."
• A national writer (whose true crime stories often show up in Texas Monthly) questions the reliability of the confession of the United States' most prolific serial murderer (allegedly). 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I've failed to mention the goofy judge who sentenced a man to 10 days in jail and then a year of probation for oversleeping and missing his first day of jury duty (and then completely rescinding the sentence once public outrage caused him to then, and only then, realize how moronic that was). He was called out in The Hill in an article which pointed out that one our country's criminal justice problems is that many, many judges are former career prosecutors. And I love the title. We might as well face it . . . 
  
  
  
  
• On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether the Constitution requires individual states to have unanimous verdicts in criminal cases. At one point, they went down and interesting road: If you are a criminal defendant and forced to choose, would you rather be tried by a jury of six where the verdict must be unanimous, or a jury of 12 that requires at least 10 to agree to convict? I don't think that's an easy decision. 
• And in a bizarre moment in the Supreme Court yesterday, the character of "Pat" from Saturday Night Live came up during arguments in the gay discrimination case with Justice Alito saying he wasn't familiar with that reference. 
  
• I successfully replaced two of these in my Dell laptop, and I now feel qualified to perform brain surgery. (It took a while to get up to speed because I kept running into new precision tools I had to buy. I'm guessing most guys don't have, say, a T8 Torx screwdriver laying around.)
  
• Last year an assistant district attorney left our local DA's office to try her hand at high-tone civil law. That didn't last long as she's now the assistant felony chief of the "Special Victims Unit" at the Tarrant County DA's office. 
• The GOP lead Senate Intelligence Committee finally said yesterday what we all know: The Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election to help Trump get elected. 
  
  
• Flashback to Trump at Helsinki: "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be." He'll be the last man on earth to believe it.
  
• For you Baker Mayfield haters who saw Nick Bosa mock Mayfield's "planting of the flag" on Monday Night Football, take a look at this quick loading split screen video of the two events. 
  
• There are new allegations against Matt Lauer being revealed in Ronan Farrow's new book. (The Today Show addressed it this morning.) His abrupt overnight firing from that morning show is still a very bizarre event in American pop culture. 
  
• This was Monday. A long time ago, perhaps three years ago, a blatant lie like this would destroy a presidency. Now you don't even hear about it because it is so common. (Side note: He lies all the time, but he'll actually signal he's lying whenever he uses "sir" in a story.)
  
• High school volleyball seems to have really upped its game over the last few years. And it might be the most entertaining high school sport of all. 
• The attack of the Kurds has officially started. Just now.
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold