1.17.2020

It's Friday. Let's Get Out Of Here.







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Random Friday Morning Thoughts



  • Two men are dead in Fort Worth after their pickup went off the bridge on University Drive spanning the Trinity. 
  • What I Said on Last November vs. Fox News Last Night:
    11/20/19

    1/16/20
  • Whatever happened to Former Dallas DA Susan Hawk? (Shout out to my courthouse buddy who asked me this question yesterday.)
  • The Astros cheating story is nearing the level of the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 as proof plausibly shows that Jose Altuve might have been wearing a device which allowed him to be tipped off to pitches during home games.  Here's the alleged "Don't rip off my shirt" video.
  • He did that weird thing again yesterday. Video.
  • But, then again, he was stressed.
  • The impeachment trial will be the first trial ever that Chief Justice John Roberts has presided over. 
  • Odell Beckham Jr. has an arrest warrant out for him for slapping a cop on the butt in LSU's locker room during the celebration after winning the national championship. The Victim was telling players to put out their cigars or face arrest. Beckham was acting a fool, but this doesn't help the "Are there too many cops?" mantra. Video. EDIT: IT WAS A SECURITY GUARD which makes this even worse. 
  • Fox News vs. Washington Post this morning.

  • Another local news personality is leaving the business. Turnover in local affiliates isn't new -- here's a list of comings and goings from just last year --  but the number which are choosing a completely different profession is a growing trend. I think started locally when Fox 4's Lari Barager left to be the PR person for Duncanville ISD a few years back. (Which was a great loss, because no one's ears perked up more about a wheels off Wise County story than Barager.)
  • Baylor will officially announce on MLK Day that they have hired an Hispanic coach.
  • Actually discussed on the radio this morning which is absolutely correct: If criminal trials were resolved by "Trial by Combat", the State would be provided better weapons than the Defendant because the State has the burden of proof.  That is a shockingly true analogy, and I might use it during voir dire. (This is the current news story that prompted the discussion.)  
  • Oh, the humanity!:



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1.16.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




  • It just keeps coming: Last night indicted Les Parnas was on Rachel Maddow and implicated Trump, Barr, Pompeo, Nunes and Pence in the Ukraine scandal.  Part 2 of the interview is tonight, and Rick Perry's name has been previewed. 
    • Moments before it aired, Devin Nunes decided it was a good idea to admit on Fox News that he had met with Parnas.
    • Over on CNN, Kellyanne Conway was saying she had never met Parnas. Uh: 
    • Over at Fox News as well, Eric Trump was saying that he "had no idea who that guy [Robert Hyde] is."  Recall Hyde basically acted like a wanna-be hit man intermediary with Parnas based upon the texts released yesterday. Uh:
  • That was bad karma for Drew Pearson to throw a party of his Hall of Fame Induction announcement that never came. 
  • NBC 's Dateline contacted me again yesterday on a Wise County case, and I'm glad they are involved. 
  • Never expect an appellate court to bail you out. A trial court judge, who knows BS when he sees it, is justice's best friend. And if he doesn't see it, you are normally screwed.  Here's Colloff's story. 
  • This building will soon be gone. You'll either recognize it or you won't. 
  • The "House Managers" delivered the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate yesterday. I don't know why, but I think that's a bad look. I didn't like how it appeared when they did the same thing to Clinton, and I don't really like it now. (Side note: Hey, I was just in the room! That's not the actual main rotunda but kind of a mini-rotunda on the way to the House Chambers -- chambers that you can't even look at as a taxpayer even when Congress has all gone home for the holidays. There are a ton of statues just crammed next to the walls in it. I had been standing in the background of this photo and noticed Brigham Young's statue was shoved in the corner. He never served in Congress. I was confused.)
    See those statues in the background?
    My exclusive photo of Brigham Young which I took while
    I was stewing about how limited the tour was.
     
  • One last thing about the D.C. trip since I just saw it, this might have been the tastiest sandwich I've had in a couple of decades. (Actually from the Baltimore harbor.) 
  • Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn has endorsed the opponent of Congresswoman Kay Granger because he wants a "hungry, unapologetic, and conservative fighter." He even spoke on behalf Southern Wise County. (You may remember Wayborn for saying last year, "These drunks will run over your children and they will run over my children” in reference to illegal immigrants in the Tarrant County jail.)   Let me tell you something, the old-school Tarrant County politicians  -- District Clerk Tom Wilder and Congressman Ron Wright to name a couple -- are really way-out-there-hard-liners in a county which voted for Beto over Cruz.
  • Heard on the radio: "Is that the song she [Billie Eilish] sang on Saturday Night Live when she danced around the room? That was cool."  I have no idea why I googled it, but it wasn't what I was expecting at all. I thought it would be Ellen DeGeneres-like dancing around the room.
  • Nothing makes me want to pull my hair out more than to have a client say, "If you can get a plea bargain of [x], I'll take it!" You work forever on getting them x, you tell them you've got x, you set it for plea to finalize x, and then on the day of the plea they tell you, "I don't think [x] is a very good deal."  It really only happens about once a year, and that's a good thing because I really have to control myself when it does. 
  • I know that I over parenthesize. (I just can't help it.) 


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1.15.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • I had a congressional candidate stop by my office yesterday stumping for Max Thornberry's soon-to-be vacant seat. This is quite the flyer if you read it closely. (Look for the stream of consciousness as it goes from Virginia gun laws -to- Guns are good -to- Venezuela and eating dogs! -to- She likes dogs -to- She's raised chickens. )
  • Lee Harvey Oswald's last paycheck form the School Book Depository is up for auction. It looks like they put an estimated value of $20,000 on it. Side note: In the 1990s, one of only two or three AP wire feeds still in existence announcing the bulletin of Kennedy being shot was also up for auction. I remember it being estimated at $20,000, too, and I thought that was under-priced. (I found a story about that auction here behind a paywall so I don't know if my memory is correct about the price.)  A 40 foot printout of the UPI wire is at the University of Virginia and can be read here.
  • You know, I wouldn't have said this a month ago, but now I think Michael Bloomberg has a serious, serious shot at winning the Democratic Nomination. 
  • Want to see Meatloaf fall at a hotel in Dallas which prompted him, of course, to sue the hotel? (The link is from TMZ so it is not quick-loading.)
  • With little fanfare, DPS just released its "Texas Domestic Terrorism Threat Assessment" for 2020.  White Power and Guns are a major player. 
  • Did Rudy Guilini's associates have Trump-fired Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch under surveillance and discussing her security team? Do these text messages between his buddy Lev Parnas and Robert Hyde sound like a hit? Remember when Trump said in his "perfect" phone call that "she's going to go through some things"? Remember her testimony before Congress that she was ordered to leave Ukraine "on the next plane"? Remember Trump attacked her by tweet while she testified giving rise to claims of witness intimidation? I used to think the concept of a "Deep State" was a joke. All of this is being submitted to the Senate for Trump's impeachment trial. 
    Robert Hyde
  • This, of course, actually turned out to be a lie. Just 10 years ago this would be a front page scandal. Now you don't even hear about it because it happens every single week. 
  • Art Briles might get the head coaching job at tiny Missouri State today. Edit: The same web site, which I'm now very skeptical of, has just said it'll by Bobby Petrino.
  • Texas has over 145,000 people in cages prison.  Last year, 33 inmates killed themselves. There were 1,380 who tried to kill themselves. Natural deaths accounted for 358 fatalities.  The government intentionally killed 8 of them. There's got to be a better way.  Source.
  • For those who care about such things, the 2020 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was just announced. 
  • Cliff Harris was just announced to the Pro Football Hall of Fame (he's part of the 15 member Mega-Class.) Drew Pearson was passed over. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



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1.14.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • I just happened to buy Mrs. LL a Ninja Foodi for Christmas (her request) and, based upon the couple of weeks which have followed, I think she might divorce me and marry it.  To be fair, it has more utility than me. 
  • For some reason it's a big political story that Elizabeth Warren says Bernie Sanders told her in 2017 that a woman could not beat Trump. Sanders denies it. I don't care. 
  • Let's check in on State TV with their lead story at 6:01 EST/5:01 CST. 
  • Highway 287 between Decatur and Rhome flooded on Friday afternoon bringing traffic to a standstill.  I've seen that portion of the highway flood before, but never after just a single afternoon of rain. It normally takes days of a downpour before it happens. 
  • The last time National Champion LSU lost was at aTm and it took seven overtimes. Also, LSU's Joe Burrow looks like a former Trooper named Petty who worked in Wise County. 
  • Texas finished, #25, Baylor #13, and OU at #7 in the Final AP Poll. (That's the first time Texas has ended up ranked in back to back years since 2008-2009.) Here's the AP's Pre-season poll for those who like to compare and contrast: 
  • Yep, the Fake Babe Ruth is huge.
  • Just when you think he can't embarrass the country even more than he has. 
  • Seems wrong:
  • A man who was a Junior in college (and at least 20 years old?) wants $1 million for wanting friends so badly that he voluntarily was allegedly forced to drink almost a full bottle of licqour to be part of a group that most of us wouldn't want to be in the same room with. 
  • At halftime during last night's Championship Game, Jim Brown was named the #1 college football player of all time. He was before my time, but I know his stats in his short lived NFL career are outstanding. But get this: He averaged just 87 yards a game in college.
  • Crazy NFL receiver Antonio Brown proved he is crazier than we thought he was -- something I didn't think was possible. Language warning. And I mean extreme language warning. 
  • Troy Aikman (16) and Jimmy Johnson in 1983. I wonder whatever happened to the kid on the left.
  • The wife of a current Wise County Justice of the Peace, who was placed on probation for theft allegations regarding the James Wood family, began her four month jail sentence yesterday. The jail time was a condition of the probation -- she'll serve it at the jail in Decatur. (She doesn't show up on the jail list because, I think, it only shows those incarcerated with pending charges.)

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