Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

And two months later he would be found not guilty on all six counts.

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• I have no idea what is going on in Slidell, but there must be something when the varsity girls basketball coach, who went 194-38 record in seven season, quit last night.
• This is a weird standard for fitness: DPS requires its troopers to have a waistline of no greater than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. And their new "get in shape or not be promoted" rule seems to be unnecessary. From the story: "As of April, 213 officers – out of about 4,000 total – had failed the waistline requirement, according to the department. Only two of the 213 also failed the physical fitness test . . . ."  I've know lots of troopers in my life. Obesity never seems to be a problem with that agency. 
  
  
  
• The CDC's mask requirement for airlines was struck down yesterday by a 35 year old judge appointed by Trump who was rushed through the confirmation process by the Senate after the 2020 election. Oh, and she was deemed “not qualified” by the ABA and once clerked for Clarence Thomas. (The ruling is wrong but the Biden Administration will let it go. They realize they should have let it expire on its own terms anyway. At this point, it's a political loser to appeal the decision -- which is a lousy way to make legal decisions but they should have got out in front of this thing.)
  
  
  
• Can we stop taking our shoes off at airports now, too?
• The Supreme Court refused to hear a death penalty case out of Texas yesterday. The three judge dissent tried to say, "Are you kidding me that they let that person be on the jury?" but explained it this way:
  
  
  
• The case was actually the wild one out of Dallas where a dentist was killed in a parking garage. Texas Monthly had a great long article about it here. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Highway 380 in Wise County in nirvana compared to how it is east of Denton. Video.
  
  
  
• Wise County's rep Ronny Jackson is in the news again. The Oath Keepers, the group leading the storming of the Capitol to overthrow the government  -- so much so that they had a stash of weapons in a hotel room ready to be put on a boat to cross the Potomac which gave rise to a indictment on seditious conspiracy charges -- were on alert to protect our Congressman that day.  
  
  
  
• I failed to note Decatur's Bryce Elder second major league start on Sunday night.  It was OK. Nothing wrong with that. 
  
  
  
• Anyone remember that Brittney Griner is still in a Russian jail?
• I just finished this book. It's fantastic. Even if you think you have a good grasp of what happened over the last six months of Trump's presidency, to hear it all laid out again, with some new great details, is really mind-blowing.  (Probably the biggest moment of Trump's coup plan came in a crazy impromptu meeting on December 18, 2020 when somehow crazy Sidney Powell, crazy Michael Flynn and crazy former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne managed to get in the White House and catch Trump's eye. That meeting has been explored at length elsewhere as well.)
  
  
  
• Legal nerdy stuff: There's a "murder" case going on in Wichita Falls which by all accounts should be an Intoxication Manslaughter case. The facts are bad (there's a dead child), but I can't figure out from any of the news articles why it's charged as murder. Some of you folks up in Big Sky Country get me an answer on that.