Random Monday Morning Thoughts

 

• Texas hospitalizations: 3,081 (-165 since Friday)
  
• Trump will now try to fill the Supreme Court seat of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 
• To ram it through before the election, he can't afford four Republican defections in the Senate. Two (Collins and Murkowski) have already done so and have said the next President should make the pick. Mitt Romney is a definite wild card. 
• Lindsey Graham had previously committed that he would be one of the four, but we already knew he is a liar and hypocrite. He had said: "If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term we'll wait to the next election . . .  Hold the tape." And that was even after the Kavanaugh confirmation. He said he was just kidding about that over the weekend. 
  
  
  
• Trump will want it done right away and won't gamble with a post-election confirmation because (1) If he's a lame duck, he won't care one iota, (2) We know that he'll lose at least one senator when one of Arizona's seat switches from McSally to Kelly and he'll be seated by Arizona law before November 30th. He can't risk that. 
• This just hit me.  Why doesn't Trump refuse to nominate anyone and instead use it as election bait? "If I win, I will immediately give you another Supreme Court justice. But if I lose, you also lose that seat." Of course, no other president would ever do that because it would be an obvious and a blatant effort to put self over the importance of the court. But this is Trump. His base wouldn't care if he used that trick.
• But, in the end, I bet he nominates someone right now and gets it confirmed before the election.
• He keeps saying the quiet stuff out loud: 
  
  
  
• Uh . . . 
  
  
  
• Look out. Big West Texas oil money from Empower Texans is bankrolling Shelly Luther. They say it is, uh, a "loan." You know, I bet she makes the run-off and might win the dang thing. North Texans are suckers for people like her. 
  
  
  
• Legal stuff. One technically boring but eye-opening. One about political incorrectness:
• Hey, criminal law practitioners, look at this under-the-radar opinion out of Amarillo which came out last week where the court held that the lack of a trial due to COVID-19 entitles and incarcerated defendant to a PR bond. It's seems pretty broad and all-encompassing. (In-the-weeds stuff: (1) It is somehow designated "Do Not Publish", (2) The court didn't find a 17.151 violation but a constitutional speedy trial violation. If that's true, isn't the remedy dismissal instead of a PR bond?))
• From the "Oh-My!" Department: Want to hear a lawyer last week during oral arguments before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals utter the words "technological retard" as he was referring to himself. Here you go. It sure be cued up at the right place at the 14:40 mark. 
• Cowboys:
• In trying to figure out what the special teams coach told the Atlanta players before the onside kick. I'm guessing it was something like, "They can't touch it before 10 yards and if they do, it is our ball. So don't worry about anything before 10 yards." That's all true but you might want to add a couple of things. 
• Everyone was dogging Mike McCarthy for deciding to go for two when down nine points. I absolutely would go for it there. You're going to have to get it then or after the next touchdown. If you miss it now, at least you know what you have to do -- which is exactly what happened. 
• Fun fact:
  
  
  
• I watched Richard Jewell over the weekend. It is, of course, the story of the security guard who was wrongfully accused of planting the bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta. 
  
  
  
• Its theme sounded very familiar to me. A solo-lawyer who some thought was in over his head representing an innocent and downtrodden guy against the government who jumped the gun by accusing him of a capital crime.
• I thought it was a little over-the-top and had to be loose with facts (especially since it is a Clint Eastwood film), but once you read the fantastic Vanity Fair article upon which the movie is based, it's pretty spot on. 
• The biggest cheap shot that Eastwood took was accusing an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter of blatantly exchanging sex for an FBI tip. She's died a few years back. That was indeed a cheap shot.
• Richard Jewell is also dead. (Side note: We are all here for just a blink of an eye, aren't we?) 
• After I watched the movie, I was very confused why the Atlanta Journal ended up paying Jewel in his libel suit. What they wrote was technically true. He was the target of the FBI. When I looked it up I learned  refused to settle and the case against them was ultimately dismissed.
• I would have named the film "The Profile of Richard Jewell."
• Yes, I'm still all torqued up about you know what, but I thought I'd give it a rest today.