Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

I've received lots of tips over the years. 

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• Uvalde revelations from yesterday continued to stun:
• The classroom door was unlocked. In fact, it couldn't even have been locked from the inside. 
  
  
  
• Did anyone check the door? Not according to DPS Director Steve McCraw yesterday: "We've gone back and checked -- did anybody touch the door? . . . How about trying the door and see if it was unlocked? Okay? You know, what we used to call a 'clue.' Why not? And of course, no one had."
  
  
  
• There were officers from eight different agencies in the hallway waiting for an hour. 
• Three minutes. 
  
  
  
• McCraw also testified to this yesterday:
  
  
  
• And McCraw threw Chief Pete Arredondo even further under the bus: “The on-scene commander chose to put the lives of officers before the lives of children. The officers had weapons, the children had none.” Holy cow. That's as harsh as I've ever heard one police officer speak of another. 
  
  
  
• McCraw released the transcript of Arredondo's phone calls to dispatch.
  
  
  
  
  
• Firing back, the mayor of Uvalde called McCraw a liar last night at a city council meeting. I was halfway expecting him to call him the $300,000 Man.
  
  
  
• He's got a good point. How many troopers and Texas Rangers were on the scene?
• Here's more from the mayor as he scorched DPS last night. 
• We got a pretty good diagram from DPS of the layout of the school and the shooter's movements (in red.)
  
  
  
• Recall that it was just 28 days ago Gov. Greg Abbott told us officers displayed "amazing courage by running toward gunfire." 
• The January 6th Hearing yesterday was shocking. 
• We heard from three honorable men who stood up to Trump's plan to overturn the election in Arizona and Georgia.  These are what normal Republicans look like. Good and decent men.  And the harassment and threats that they were subjected to by mobs inspired by Trump's lies was sickening. 
  
  
  
• If you do anything, please watch the testimony of Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of the House in Arizona.  (I've got it cued up for you.) He was almost in tears as he described how the President of the United States directly tried to get him to lie.   This info was all new. And There's a reason Fox News is ignoring it. 
  
  
   
• It is becoming increasingly clear that in a normal country, at the very least, Trump, Rudy Giuliana, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman would be in jail.  Ninety-five percent of the people I have personally represented in my career who had been indicted by a Wise County Grand Jury have done far less than them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The fake electors scheme is jaw-dropping.  
• And we got a new tidbit yesterday when we learned a legislative aide of Rep. Rob Johnson (R-Wisconsin) texted VP Pence's legislative director on the morning of January 6th in order to arrange for Johnson to personally hand Pence a fake elector document. "Do not give that to him," was the response. 
  
  
  
• After the hearing, watch Rep. Johnson flat out lie about not knowing anything about it.  Video. “We got handed an envelope that was supposed to go to the Vice President. I don't know." But he says he didn't know who delivered it, didn't know what was in it, but still his staff tried to arrange where he could hand it to Pence. It's gold. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• I got more of a feeling of Trump having a private army of 1930s brownshirts and stormtroopers after listening to what this woman was subjected to. A plain little Georgia election worker -- a private citizen --  trying to do her job during a pandemic.  Destroyed due to Trump propaganda. 
  
  
  
  
• Seems appropriate.
  
  
  
• The Supreme Court tore down the wall between church and state yesterday when it approved taxpayer funded vouchers going into the pockets of private church schools. Justice Sotomayer's last paragraph of her dissent: 
  
  
  
• There's an 80 story high rise probably going into downtown Dallas. It will be the city's tallest building ever. 
  
  
  
• That's was a weird way to introduce your press release:
  
  
  
• The Messenger has a good story today about the Wise County Sheriff's Office investigation into the murder of a Chico man.  They may or may not have arrested the right guy, but they relied heavily on a "presumptive blood test" which I can tell you is more often wrong than right. And there is a weird trend of the Sheriff's office running off to Montague County to have a district judge up there sign arrest warrants or search warrants instead of going to a Wise County judge. They did that in in the botched Lauren Whitener murder case, too. Why?
• Messenger: Above the Fold