And it turned out just to be as bizarre as it sounded. He was shot "26 times with an AR-15 assault rifle" at an intersection by a guy who had been drinking beer and had "taken anti-depressants." No illegal drugs involved. The shooter, Mark Anthony Gonzales, was tried and sentenced to death in 2016. "In his opening statement, prosecutor Bill Pennington said Gonzales, who had been drinking all day and taking Xanax, had bragged to friends about his rifle, which had a halo scope and a high-capacity magazine." In his closing argument, "He also reminded [the jury] that the firing pin on the alleged weapon had been altered." I wonder if that was a bump stock like in the Las Vegas mass shooting.
- A Southwest Airlines flight attendant had two teeth knocked out by an idiot passenger this week. We now have video.
- It's 40 miles from Waco. What could go wrong?
- If you haven't seen one of the dumbest plays in baseball history, you must. I bet I watched the video 10 times trying to justify the first baseman's action. Was he trying to bait the runner coming from third to try and pull off a double play? Then I realized there were already two outs which made the whole thing stupid. But the underrated part of it is the batter signaling "safe" before realizing that no one was covering first, and then taking off towards it. So much going on here.
- Greg Abbott made what was nothing more than a campaign appearance in Fort Worth to continue the age old fear-mongering cry on "The War on Drugs." Considering the taxpayer funded salaries of everyone in the photo, what did this cost you?
- DPS's publicity wing is always over the top. Are they trying to say they prevented the Holocaust x 3?
- Speaking of Abbott, he had another strange photo op this week. Yep, that's real.
- Speaking of the War on Drugs, there's a brief article in the Wichita Falls Times Record News that got my attention about a drug raid yesterday afternoon. Observations: (1) Look at that militarized vehicle, (2) 43 cop cars showed up for the raid, (3) one person was "detained" because of it all, and (4) there was no mention in the story of any drugs being found.
- The case is still weird. For some reason the cops just won't come out and charge the guy with murder (technically a capital murder charge since the child is under six.)
- And Channel 11 tracked down an arrest warrant affidavit of another incident involving Brown where he picked up a two year old in the course of a burglary.
- A Decatur lawyer has sued a travel company over a dispute regarding a vacation package to the Olympics in Tokyo.
- A ruling was expected today, but is now delayed until next month. Uh, Baylor fired Art Briles in 2016. Who is still there to punish?
- Stay with me here for this ridiculous bullet point. A faithful reader was elated to tell me at the courthouse yesterday that he had watched Leprechaun In The Hood because he knew I'd get a kick out of it. After I disputed the existence of such a movie -- there's no way, right? -- I later confirmed via Wikipedia that, yes, it does indeed exist. But get this: The plot is described as "An evil leprechaun, who searches for his magic flute that three hoodlums stole, kills anyone who gets in his way." A flute? Wait a second! Does this explain the guy in the famous St. Patrick's Day viral video about the Alabama leprechaun "up in that tree" who held up the scaffolding coupling and described it as "a special leprechaun flute which has been passed down for thousands of years"?
- Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 693 days.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
The Casey Anthony trial began this week 10 years ago. And the defense worked. The whole trial was so insane. Her dad was called by a witness for the State and denied involvement at all. Casey didn't testify (although she did tell detectives early in the investigation that the child was kidnapped by a nanny.) She was convicted only of misdemeanors of lying to police.
- Bloodshed America.
- Gun violence is so common that you will forget this story by the end of the week.
- Pretty good little graphic from the Texas Tribune for the current state of legislation at the Texas capitol right now:
- I was wrong on this legal prediction: Yesterday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found the 2015 Texas Revenge porn statute constitutional. (Legal nerd stuff: To save it, the court had to write a culpable mental state into the statute and then even found it passed the "strict scrutiny" test. Interestingly, they designated the opinion as "Do not publish.")
- More legal nerd stuff: The opinion starts off with a major mistake. How does the legislature amend a statute in 2017 in response to an opinion that came out in 2018?
- Over-the-top legal nerd stuff: I tried to figure out those footnotes. The statute in issue in the case, Ex Parte Jones, was enacted in 2015 making revenge porn a Class A misdemeanor. That's what the defendant was charged under. It was amended in 2017 like the footnote says but that amendment only increased the penalty from a misdemeanor to a State Jail Felony. (See page 19, line 19 of House Bill 2552.) It was amended again in 2019 to add the culpable mental state element of "with the intent to harm", and I'm guessing that's the legislative change that the court meant to reference. I hate it when I go down these rabbit holes.
- Which office does he go to in order to get his reputation back?
- They've finally decided there are too many Wise Countians going into Tarrant County every day.
- My calculation of inmates in the Wise County Jail who have been there over 300 days.
- The Supreme Court's Obamacare opinion still hasn't been handed down. (Remember that the case started with a Fort Worth federal district judge's decision to strike the health care law down in 2018.) It could come out today at 9:00 a.m. CST, but the Supreme Court has gone Hollywood over that last few years and tends to release the most publicly watched cases on the last possible day.
- Whatever happened to this criminal case against Netflix filed by a small town Texas DA? I can't find an update.
- We've got Las Vegas over/under lines released for total wins for the upcoming college football season. Link for all schools.
- When scanning front pages across the state today, I saw this story on the cover of the Wichita Falls paper. I could only hear Rodney Dangerfield say, "Country clubs and cemeteries are the biggest wasters of prime real estate!" from Caddyshack (which is now 41 years old.)
- I was reminded yesterday that the Decatur football stadium still has a grass field. I think even the softball field in Boyd has artificial turf.
The dead woman was a 46 year old Black woman who was shot in her own home (family members had called the police for help because she was suicidal.) There were actually two officers. One fired his weapon "several times" and killed her. A backup officer thought the only force needed was to use his taser. Ten years ago, the story just quickly vanished off the front page.
- Four people were killed on the Wise/Parker County border on FM 51 late yesterday afternoon when two pickup trucks collided. One victim was from Waxahachie, but that's all I've heard so far.
- A Tarrant County judge fired off a hot opinion. Star-Telegram story link. Video link. (The judge also told her it wouldn't happen if he had been singing in the "choir" instead.)
- I think the firing, or technically the "resignation" of the Bridgeport City Manager caught everyone off guard on Monday. And this quote he made to co-workers at the end of the city council meeting seems to indicate that he took issue with being told that "morale" was one of the reasons for the change:
- It's just a wild guess, but that's something someone says after an exchange of "We've heard there is a morale problem." "Morale, problem? How is there a morale problem?" "Well, the employees don't seem very happy. There aren't a lot of smiles around here."
- Credit: Todays' Messenger for the quote above.
- Dateline El Paso. I'm no headline writer for the Dallas Morning News, but I don't think it was the type of Cheetos that she fed to the monkeys that got her fired. The fact that she got inside the enclosure with the monkeys to do it probably had something to do with it. Video.
- There's something that still bugs me about the abduction and murder of four year old Cash Gernon in Dallas. Something is not right about that case. And the fact that the British tabloid, the Daily Mail, has the exclusive rights to the footage of the abduction indicates that someone in the house probably sold the footage. (Cash Gernon's absentee father read a statement on YouTube defending his absenteeism but didn't show his face.)
- Incredibly minor "damage" to Comfort High School property (including "forking" the football field) led to the suspension of half the senior class including the valedictorian and salutatorian. (Link to the post below here.) Bonus points if you know where Comfort, Texas is.
- Yesterday she deleted the tweet insulting the Republican House Majority leader six minutes after she posted it. She's a walking train wreck.
- That's PGA Champion Phil Mickelson teeing off this morning shortly after 7:00 a.m. at the pro-am at Colonial in Fort Worth. That's a little bit of a different atmosphere from the 18th fairway last Sunday.
- And another. What'd I tell you about getting rich in massive warehouses?
- Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith will get to switch from number 54 to 9, Tony Romo's old number, and the NFL gave him the OK so long as he writes them a check for around $500,000 "to buy out the current inventory of No. 54 jerseys and T-shirts" of official NFL gear that already has his name printed on them. Smith, who will be lucky to be on the roster next year, is a mediocre linebacker who will be lucky to be on the roster after this season. And apparently he's not very smart because he's going to pay it.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
The man would eventually receive a conviction with a probated sentence of four years which he successfully completed. (There was one motion filed by the State to revoke the probation, but it was eventually dismissed. I don't know why.) One odd note: Unless he was in a women's bathroom -- and I don't think he was -- he shouldn't have been convicted at all. The poorly worded "improper photography" statute was declared unconstitutional in 2014. The legislature has since fixed it.
- Texas representative David Spiller from Jacksboro sent a message to the Liberally Lean audience late last night after I mentioned yesterday what a beating that job has to be. Good dude.
- Texas legislature update as we now know which bills will certainly become law:
- Constitutional carry is headed to the governor's desk. An odd part of the bill allows for anyone previously convicted of unlawfully carrying a weapon to have the conviction expunged - a number estimated at 130,000. However, if you received deferred adjudication for the the offense in the past, you are out of luck and it will remain on your record.
- Elected city council members can never decrease the budget of the city's police department even if the face of a budget crisis or a population decrease.
- Any professional sports team which receives government funds must now play the National Anthem before a game. (Can they play it twice as fast? Does three hours before the game count? What about the Rosanne Barr edition being shown on the video screen?)
- Homosexual conduct is still a crime in Texas and has never been repealed.
- I don't know if the Olympics are (is?) going to happen this year.
- Marjorie Taylor Green isn't only a QAnon nutcase, but she struggles with the concept or relative comparisons.
- A 1980s Pop Music Star = Terrorist?
- Richard Marx trolled Rand Paul reminding everyone that Paul's neighbor once attacked him.
- Rand Paul blames Richard Marx for an unrelated subsequent development.
- Republicans are instructed to run to their music "library" and to throw out all of the many, many Richard Marx songs that they own.
- That's quite the love triangle they have going on.
- The NRA is right if the Dirty Libs are triggered by misspellings.
- John Oliver did a whole show on my long championed campaign against "ads disguised as news stories."
- I'm a trendsetter. Here's my post from six years ago when I went on a rant about the exact same thing John Oliver just called out. WFAA had done a segment on a "lip filler" drug which caused my radar to go off. I wrote, "I did a quick Google News search for the product and found on the first page alone that there are four other TV stations which have also presented stories about the [exact same dubious] product. That's a coincidence?" I also thought it was interesting that WFAA's medical reporter who appeared in the story, Janet St. James, quit the following week.
- Couldn't agree more with this from a local Ticket host:
- Here's a 45 second clip of Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship showing how much he hates Bryson DeChambeau. As he was walking loudly behind him, DeChambeau said, "Maybe you should hit it on the right line” after Koepka said he found the greens "difficult to read."
- Baseball meltdown: On Saturday, TCU went into the bottom of the ninth with a four run lead over Kansas State in the last game of the regular season. Three outs would mean they were the outright Big 12 Champion. Instead, they gave up seven runs including a walk off three run homer (video). The loss caused them to be co-champs with the Evil Empire.
- I have no idea if it is true, but I heard Whataburger was exploring a location in Bridgeport by Brookshires.
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