Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

Ten years ago Wise County Attorney Thomas Aaberg ran the Boston Marathon (above).  He would be so disappointed with his time that he went back and ran it again next year. He was faster in 2013, and it's a good thing: After he finished and left the area the bombing took place. 

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• The vehicle and body of the missing pharmacist from Lewisville, Robert Moulds, was found yesterday off of 380 between Bridgeport and Decatur.  On the Facebook page dedicated to finding him, one his family members posted the screenshot below a couple of days ago with the note, "Can we get walkers to check for phone in these areas?" If I understand it correctly, it was a map of the GPS tracking of his phone based upon Allstate app that he had. It pretty much pegged the location of where the man was found: 
  
  
  
• I don't understand this. The only thing the lawsuit asked for was to establish parentage -- she never asked for money (which she couldn't because she wasn't entitled to any regardless.) So now she drops the lawsuit but still says wants to establish parentage. Huh? I don't get it.   This was all a publicity stunt. She currently works for Wise County's much-aligned Congressman Ronny Jackson.  
  
  
  
• I'm sure you've seen it, but here's the video of the pitcher for Weatherford College tackling the batter who just went yard on him. The pitcher's name is Owen Woodward, and he graduated from Breckenridge High School.
  
  
  
  
  
• I honestly don't understand how a drop of 200,000 in subscriptions in one quarter was enough to tank the Netflix stock yesterday. First, the decision to pull out of Russia cost 700,000 subscribers alone but, more importantly, the company still has 221 million subscribers. 
  
  
  
• I know I've dogged DPS Director Steve McCraw a lot lately, but I thought of him again yesterday when I saw the tweet below from Gov. Abbott. Then I thought more about him even when I learned he said in an interview in January, when Abbott wasn't around, that he didn't have much faith in the Mexican governors:  “If you believe the government of Mexico is helping, then you're sadly mistaken, The Mexican cartels not only have operational control of the border, they really have operational control of Mexico through corruption, intimidation and bribery.”
  
  
  
• According to the dismissal motion, prosecutors said they thought they would find the body "well before" the trial was to begin.  Little premature on getting that indictment in the first place there, fellas? (But they can still refile the case.)
  
  
  
• This case seems really wonky.  
  
  
  
• There was an American citizen living in Mexico named Herrera who would traffic drugs from Mexico to the U.S. through Texas.  
• But, as I understand it, he was just a middle man who would collect a fee for getting the drugs from a supplier in Mexico to an end distributor in the U.S.
• But Herrera came up with a plan: He would steal the drugs so he could resell them himself and get in on the action. 
• But the suppliers wouldn't be happy with the dope never getting to the end distributor, right? Well he came up with a scheme. He would steal the drugs and then replace them with cheap, low quality stuff. He would then, and this is the genius part, tip off border agents when the low quality stuff was coming through the border. The replacement drugs were then seized and people were arrested.  So Herrera could then tell his suppliers, "Sorry, the drugs you sent me got caught." Herrera could then sell the real drugs he stole. 
• So how does a Texas attorney end up in federal prison over all of this? Well, Herrera needed proof for his suppliers that their drugs (in reality, his low quality drugs) were seized. So he had the attorney search the public accessible PACER federal database for the documents which were filed related to the seizures.  The attorney would then send the public documents to Herrera who would then send those documents to the suppliers as "proof" their drugs were stolen. The attorney paid 10 cents per page to PACER and sold the same documents for $1,000 each time.  He did that "at least eight times."  But that's the lawyer's full involvement. 
• The attorney seemed less than excited about entering a guilty plea yesterday. “So are you pleading guilty to this or are you not pleading guilty to this?” The judge asked. “What are you doing?”
• So the case is wonky. Was the attorney just accessing a public database? Or was he part of a criminal drug conspiracy? The Feds said the latter. 
• Here's the story link. Here is the U.S. Attorney's press release. 
• This was kind of a weird route. She graduated from SMU law school with honors in 2017, took the Oklahoma bar, and hired by Oklahoma's largest law firm. Now four years later she got around to taking the Texas bar and became the top scorer. That's impressive. 
  
  
  
• Out of Clifton, Texas. Those photos really got people worked up.
  
  
   
  
  
  
• Don't we have a whole civil lawsuit system already in place that actually would allow for much more than just child support?
  
  
  
• This was a funny and bold move by SMU.   
• The great scandal of paying recruits that caused SMU to get the death penalty occurred in the 1980s. One part of the story is that prized recruit Eric Dickerson showed up on campus in a new gold Trans Am.  Here's Dickerson making fun of the incident back in 2013: 
  
  
  
• Anyway, SMU made a promotional social media post this week to tease something (I don't know what), but as part of it they snuck in a picture of a gold Trans Am. With players legally being paid left and right these days with NIL deals, it's now OK to joke about it I suppose. 
  
  
  
• The Masked Singer is the dumbest show on Earth. Accordingly, it had coup-conspirator Rudy Giuliani on it last night. Video.