- Wise County active (as of yesterday): 17. All school districts across the state should have their COVID data published here sometime today.
- Texas hospitalizations: 3,207 (+75). Have I mentioned I've got my eye on this?
- I've got some pretty wild Wise County real estate news fed to me by a faithful reader. In June, 7-Eleven became the proud owner of tract of land in Chico, Texas. I've got the receipts.
- Just saw that Gayle Sayers has died. It's been 50 years since Brian Piccolo died. (I wonder how many readers have no idea who I'm talking about.)
- In Senate District 30 race (the one that Empower Texans is trying to buy for Shelley Luther), Wise County's share of registered voters is only a measly 3%. But so far we have 9% of the total of early votes cast. (Source.)
- You know what's really wild about that chart? Look at the two columns for the total number of voters registered now vs. the total number of votes cast in 2018. Wise County is 51% (44,341/22,718) as are almost all the counties. But look at those percentages for the two big counties: Collin is only 9%. Denton is only 8.5%. That seems so out of whack that is seems wrong.
- Trump, over the last year, has finally overtly revealed himself to be an all-out racist because he simply quit hiding it. What turns my stomach is this all-white crowd cheering to stuff like this that happened last night. Rep. Ilhan Omar is a United States citizen. Over the next decade and beyond the Republicans are going to pay dearly for letting Trump get away with moments like this.
- Whenever Trump tells a "Sir story" at one of his rallies (as in "And the general turned to me and said, 'Sir, I've never heard . . . . '") he's lying. Everyone knows that. Whenever he makes up a story with Melania, he always uses the term "Darling" (as in, "And she turned to me and said, 'Darling, why don't . . . . '" Last night, he mixed them together.
- The 46 year old "cold case" out of Tarrant County is pretty wild (assuming everything the cops are saying is legit.) They solved it by DNA but by using "familial DNA" tracing. As I understand it, you can have a complete DNA profile extracted from the evidence but you might hit a dead end when it doesn't match anyone in the CODIS criminal database. (i.e. the Wise County Lauren Whitener murder case.) You can still send that profile through an expensive (?) genealogical database known as GEDmatch -- the same tool California police used to identify the Golden State Killer -- which might get you in the area of a particular family. It's all based on looking at the male Y chromosome. From there it takes footwork to track down the one individual who will then match the DNA definitively.
- Extra thought: CODIS is the national criminal database. I had always thought that it only contained samples of the DNA of convicted felons. But I was shocked to learn from representing Rodney "Aric" Maxwell that if you voluntarily provide your DNA via a cheek swab to police because you wanted to be excluded as a suspect, the lab will test your DNA and then upload it to CODIS even if you didn't match who they were looking for! So, even though you are completely innocent, your DNA is now in CODIS. Here's proof where the lab said they'd do it with Aric's DNA and three other poor saps:
- Mitt Romney has decided to turn on Trump and will vote on his Supreme Court nominee before the election. You could see that coming. Mormon. Abortion. No brainer. (Or is he just tricking Trump and will actually vote "no" on the actual nominee to really screw him over?)
- The Wise County District Attorney's office is now sending out a "Brady notice" -- notice of evidence which might benefit a defendant -- about a particular former officer if he was involved in the case. I've never seen them do that before. But I applaud it.
- I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm not going to let Williamson County criminal justice news get by without pointing it out.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
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