7.09.2021

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Rihanna's show at the AAC ended abruptly when her stage caught fire ten years ago tonight. Video. That would have been a little scary as it first fired up.  

  • Decatur School Board news:
    • You gotta be kidding me! They are going to have a public execution on the Lord's Day.


    • Edit: The meeting will be available on Zoom here. (Meeting ID: 863 1852 0666 to enter manually.)
    • More fallout: Another football coach has up and left amongst the turmoil caused by the Board.  

    • The Messenger boldly opens up its guns on the school board in today's paper because of the secrecy and shenanigans, and it all but accuses them of Open Meetings violations and Open Records violations.  Go buy a paper. 

    • In a Letter to the Editor today, a current (and brave) teacher blasts the Board although she notes that others are "worried" she'll be "targeted" for speaking out. Recall yesterday that I said that the Board is acting like it has some kind of Joseph McCarthy-like "list". There needs to be a catchy name for this ongoing saga. Perhaps the "Blue Scare." 

    • The Messenger specifically notes that the Board has requested an AG's opinion in an effort to avoid the paper's Open Records request for all communications between the school board president and the superintendent.  Spoiler: Whenever a public entity hides behind the Attorney General request as a delay tactic, they don't want the public to know what it is attempting to hide. We want those audio recordings. 

    • I'll say it again, the burning of taxpayer money is a little noticed aspect of all of this. In addition to needlessly buying out contracts left and right, how much in legal fees has been spent? Let's see an Open Records Request for that amount. 
  • The newly crowned 2021 Scripps National Bee Champion is also a master at tricked up dribbling. 


  • It's hard to think of someone who went from Golden Boy to the slammer in such a short period of time.  He was riding high with the Stormy Daniels representation and then turned into a common criminal. 

  • You trust Gov. Abbott? His campaign sent out a press release yesterday and claimed that its own polling revealed these numbers regarding his handling of COVID. This is straight out of Fantasyland:

  • Governor candidates are coming to Wise County. 

    • If you think Don Huffines is anything other than a poser, listen to 30 seconds of his appearance on the Mark Davis Show on May 12th beginning at 12:10.  He complains that Republicans have controlled Austin for 20 years but can't get their "priorities" passed. Davis, to his credit, asks him point blank to name some. Huffines absolutely panics when he can't. 
    • I note that local attorney Paul Belew doesn't seem to be invited to the October forum despite announcing he was running for governor a couple of months ago. I knew his chances were slim, but I didn't expect him to be completely ignored -- especially by local Republicans. 
  • Last night. Oh, my.

  • I've got an idea: Pay them a decent wage.  Heck, you're selling a 50 cent hot dog for $8. I think you can work out the finances. 

  • If it is true, they picked the perfect guy to feature as the poster child as to why. 
    Dr. Robert Jeffress

  • Ever since I told you the richest guy I know told me he was quietly making his money investing in massive warehouses, I see stories like this everywhere.  "North Texas has the country’s fastest-growing industrial building market. At midyear, almost 29 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space was under construction in the D-FW area."

  • 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: 2 years and 4 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

"The March 23 test results from the DPS showed a 
BAC of 0.234, according to the lab report."


at 8:32 AM

7.08.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts





I had forgotten about this. A person who obtains a protective order against another due to allege family violence can also get the family pet included in the protective order.  In the last 10 years, I don't think I've ever seen it in any protective order in Wise County  -- which means someone forgot to change the boilerplate form.   

  • The Decatur AD/Head Coach is gone and the Superintendent is on his way out.  It's almost like the powers at be have their own Joseph McCarthy-like "list." 
  • I keep waiting for this mystery from last week to be solved but it has not. A pro golfer at a Georgia country club sees a truck drive up on a green and goes to check it out. He's murdered and the gunmen flees. Then two bodies are discovered in the bed of the truck -- one from California and one from Kansas, and there's no indication they knew each other. 

  • Compare the rainfall over the last two days between Hurricane Elsa in Florida and what is going on with an unnamed storm sitting over the Texas coast. And our coast will get pummeled with rain again today.


  • Trump suing Facebook, Twitter and Youtube claiming they violated his First Amendment rights because they are the government is not only dumb, it's really just a grift to to sucker his base into donating money.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with law. 
    • And you've got to love when their lawsuit explains in its own words another reason why he will immediately and obviously lose: Trump complains he had to agree to their terms of service to use it in the first place 

    • No lawyer has turned into a bigger cartoon that Alan Dershowitz. Nothing could be more untrue than this:

  • The local CBS affiliate had a tremendous video package last night on how the shooting in downtown Dallas five years ago that left five officers dead actually happened. The shooter basically confined himself to the grounds of El Centro College right across the street from that neon green skyscraper. 




  • I noticed attorney Bruce Isaacks was appointed to represent the guy who fled Rhome police officers last month giving rise to the "manhunt."

  • I suppose (and would even assume) that Texas Congressman Chip Roy is an anti-vaxxer, but what does this even mean? 

     
  • By the way, you're on your own now if you don't want the vaccine. 

  • In looking at this kind of related headline, I was reminded that I had to deliver a prescription for Mrs. LL after a minor surgery last month. I was surprised about how laxed the whole system seemed. The prescription for a pain killer was just some handwriting on a piece of paper torn off of a pad with no tracking number or bar code.  It seemed like it would be incredibly simple to forge (unless there's some internal check I don't know about it.) 

  • This column by Star-Telegram shock jock Mac Engel has mysteriously disappeared. I don't know why. 

  • Someone check the Ritz Carlton in Cancun. 

  • Legal nerd stuff: A 1975 police training video on "probable cause." It's dated but wildly entertaining -- and with the shocking turn at the end. 

  • The population of the Wise County Jail looks to be right back to pre-Covid levels. As of this morning, they have 184 inmates with those being in jail for over 100 days sitting at 24%. That number and percentage is the exact  benchmark while had held true for the two years prior to COVID. 



at 8:35 AM

7.07.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts





He got a statue one year later.    

  • Decatur School Board chaos continues:
    • What the heck is this? "Following five hours meeting behind closed doors, the Decatur School Board late Tuesday night took action regarding Superintendent Joseph Coburn, but the board did not disclose what action they had taken." (Emphasis added.)  So did they lead him to the gallows or not? 
    • A bombshell was announced during the Board meeting. There are recordings! See paragraph #5 from a letter of Trustee Jennifer Wren. Oh, my! Let's hear them. 

    • On Monday I asked whether the recent baseball coach's resignation from Decatur ISD was related to how the school board handled the forced resignation of the football head coach. Yesterday I got my answer: 

    • What a train wreck. 
  • The county judge in Jack County, who, if asked, says he would refuse to marry same sex couples, took his case against a potential rebuke from the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct to the Fifth Circuit federal court in New Orleans yesterday. That "potential" rebuke is a problem for him legally since the district court threw his lawsuit out saying he hasn't yet been harmed or injured and, thus, doesn't have  -- wait for it -- standing.

  • I'm hearing there were some pretty serious facial injuries suffered on the north end of Lake Bridgeport when two people jumped simultaneously from a dock onto something similar to this: 

  • Hurricane Elsa is a big bag of nothing which is only getting attention because it's the first one of the season and because the long weekend left skeleton crews in newsrooms with nothing else to report. 


  • It's been less than a week since the NCAA abruptly said that college athletes are free to make money, and it has already gotten crazy.  I wasn't kidding when I said we'll see the equivalent of SuperPACs donating to players. Stuff like this is just the tip of the iceberg:

  • So they want the government to ban books (Forget the Alamo), have cameras aimed at teachers, and force the populace to behave in a way they define as proper when the National Anthem is played?  Feels very North Korean-like, doesn't it?  Or worse. All hail the power of the state.

  • Haiti has been an absolute mess since the earthquake 11 years ago, and it just got worse last night. (See below. Not mentioned: He had refused to leave office when his term ended in February, arguing a delay in his swearing in after a contested election entitled him to rule for an additional year.) And it's hard to wrap your head around that the country shares a body of land with a vacation destination.  


  • Here's my annual rant that the NFL Player's Association is the worst union in America. The number one player in the draft, Trevor Lawrence, has signed a deal for his "slotted position" for  $36 million guaranteed. Eleven years ago, before the owners boat raced the players with a new collective bargaining agreement, number one pick Sam Bradford got a contract for $78 million with $50 guaranteed.
  • Legal nerd stuff: A federal appellate court, when it has to decide a question of state law, has the right to "certify" a question to the supreme court of the applicable state asking them to tell them  what the law of that state is if it has not been previously decided.  That being said, the Fifth Circuit sent a haymaker to the Louisiana Supreme Court yesterday. (Trust me, any lawyer you know has no idea what the heck this means.) 

  • So I'm watching Deadwood and see a young girl appear and think, "Hey! That could be what's-her-face's daughter!"  It turned out to be what's-her-face. 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:30 AM
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