Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Did Steve Castor have a financial side deal in this weird move in the Impeachment Hearing yesterday? Are we to believe he just happened to use a Fresh Market bag instead of a brief case and that Fresh Market just happened to promote it after the fact? Do we have the ultimate ad disguised as a news story?
  
• The Richard Jewell movie looks good, but there's no way it will be: Clint Eastwood is directing it. A horrible script and especially horrible dialogue is a guaranteed. See, e.g., Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, The 15:17 to Paris.
• And the movie is already knee deep in controversy for depicted a now deceased female reporter sleeping with a source when there's no evidence she ever did. 
  
• Oh, my. 
  
• Well, what did we learn from the report by the Justice Department’s inspector general charged with "investigating the investigators"?  There was no Deep State, there was no "Witch Hunt", Trump's penthouse wasn't bugged, the investigation began before the Steele Dossier, and, as a bonus, Ivanka Trump is a long time friend of Christopher Steele. (Side note: Would you really bet against the existence of a compromising tape of Trump actually being in the hands of the Russians?)
  
• Look out. Trump is not happy this morning. Is he about to fire another FBI Director who doesn't kiss his ring?:

  

  *current*

• I bet he does fire Wray: The FBI Director is also out there telling the truth that Ukraine didn't interfere in the 2016 election despite Trump's promotion of this conspiracy theory. (Ted Cruz amazingly peddled that lie this weekend on Meet the Press.)
  
• The Democrats need her back in the debates for entertainment.
  
  
• It's time to admit it: I am better at weather predicting than Delkus. I'll probably get an Honorary Doctorate from some weather school after yesterday.
• This was before noon. 
  
• Let's check on Trump's schedule today. 
  
• Political info: Some Texas Republicans running for office next year had to file with the state and others file with their county. The last day to do so was yesterday. The State list is here. The Tarrant County filings are  here. Wise County isn't listed online. (By my count, 39 people at the state level waited until the very last day.)
• This was quite the Everyone-Needs-To-Know-This "statement" released by Judge Sotomayor in a case the Supreme Court decided yesterday not to here. Wow. (Note: She's talking about the "Fifth Circuit" in the Louisiana state system and not the federal Fifth Circuit.) Crazy fact: Louisiana has more people sentenced to life without parole than Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee combined.

• The NFC East is 10-28 against teams not in the division. 
• Major League Baseball has removed marijuana from the list of banned substances even in the minor leagues. The stuffiest league in America no longer cares about players smoking weed. (Texas will arrest you.)
• I've preached for years that prosecutors have no idea how high the standard is for "criminal negligence" or "reckless" because they prosecute for simple accidents all the time. That being said, the El Paso DA not criminally prosecuting this horrible accident used a completely inapplicable standard of "criminal intent." 
  
• After the Fort Worth Court of Appeals stopped the jury selection in the Lottery Winner's Son Sexual Assault trial in Wichita Falls last Wednesday, the court ordered it to go forward on Friday.
• A Houston police officer was killed in the line of duty two days ago. Then the Chief of Police took a shot at politicians: "I don't want to see their little smug faces about how much they care about law enforcement when I'm burying a sergeant because they don't want to piss off the NRA."