3.18.2022

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

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts




I'll leave out the details of that particular post (it was just an accident with no alcohol or drugs involved), but it reminded me that I've been ranting against Medical Examiners for a very long time. 

  • Our top of the leader board in the Liberally Lean Tourney includes "CancunCruz's Cozy Warm Blanket", "Ken Paxton's mug shot towel" and, my favorite, "Little Ball of Introspection."   I also noticed the leader's bracket correctly picked #15 St. Peters over #2 Kentucky.

  • Wildfires in Eastland County spread to Ranger. 

  • Incredible. 

  • Donnie Nelson's lawsuit against Mark Cuban and the Mavericks is wild. Here's the ESPN story breaking the news. Here's the actual lawsuit (which is also wildly written).  Who knows if any of it is true, but I'm biased because I've been championing Cuban as a fraud and conman for years. 


    • One of the strangest aspect of the allegations is that Cuban allegedly offered Donnie Nelson $52 million to withdraw his EEOC wrongful termination complaint and keep his mouth shut. Even I find that hard to believe. And, if true, Nelson would be a moron to turn down the money. As proof of the offer, a "draft" of an unexecuted settlement agreement was attached as an Exhibit to Nelson's lawsuit -- which really doesn't prove much at all. 

  • Cruz is on the list. Cornyn is not. 

  • I'm surprised that there isn't more of a push to get Britney Griner out of Russia. But I suppose there's really not much you can do.  Side note: I hope she's never seen Midnight Express.
  • Count the red flags.


  • Good lord. "The Smith County Sheriff’s Office said Smith 'became angry at clinic staff' and retrieved a handgun from his pickup truck and then returned to the lobby and opened fire. Two doctors were struck by gunfire and both died, the sheriff’s office said. Authorities identified them as Dr. Blake G. Sinclair, 59, and Dr. Jack E. Burroughs, 75. Both were from Tyler."
    • Good lord.  

  • Update on the two 17 year olds shot and killed in a vehicle in broad daylight in Watauga: They both "lived on the same north Fort Worth street about two miles away from where the shooting happened and were students at Fossil Ridge High in the Keller school district." This is one of them who had been accepted to Texas Tech.

  • DPS has a budget of $2.3 billion and spends money on gun boats.

  • Mortgage rates hit 4% yesterday for the first time since 2019.
  • It literally never ends. 

  • I absolutely believe these numbers.
     

  • Extremely legal nerdy stuff. I knew that having a defendant plead guilty without the benefit of a plea bargain and letting the judge assess punishment is called and "open plea", but I've never heard of the same thing, with the extra fact that the State agrees to drop some of the charges, being called a "charge bargain." (From Fort Worth Court of Appeals yesterday.)

  • Before the next routine Friday bullet point, you guys realize there exists a full foreign DNA profile extracted from Lauren's body, right? And the numbers which make up that profile have been known since September 19, 2019.  
  • 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: 987 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


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3.17.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




Ten years ago I was actually industrious enough to round up prizes for the Pick 'Em Tourney. (That's not happening this year.)  I remember the day the guy who won the Lebron jersey picked it up. He was disappointed that it wasn't nicely framed behind glass. 

  • Speaking of, last chance to enter the Liberally Lean Tourney. Sign-ups shut down in a couple of hours. You boys are doing good since we've now cracked over one hundred entries. Remember, this is a tricked up scoring system that rewards upsets.

  • I don't doubt these numbers, but I'm not sure exactly where this is happening.  Of the tons of videos we've seen, I don't think I've seen one involving a battle between two sets of soldiers. Maybe I'm just missing them. 


  • A "natural and necessary cleaning."  Make no mistake, it can happen there. And, based upon what we've seen in recent years, it could happen here if a certain percentage of Americans get their way. 


  • Back to our simple life: Our storm risk today is a short window between 5:30 and 6:30 this evening, and then it's only at 36%.     The greater danger is a spark near a grassy field in the high winds.
  • I've said it before, I don't know who Fox4Terry is, who identifies himself as a "deep night photojournalist roaming the dark streets of DFW in search of news", but he's good at his job. But I never see his photos featured on the regular Fox 4 TV newscasts.



  • And another DNA case solved by identifying family members and then doing leg work. Their sheriff's office raised $4,000 and used the Texas based private firm Othram to find the match.


  • This incident in San Diego is being framed as police shooting someone who attacked them with a knife.  That isn't even close to accurately telling the whole story, and it was all caught on video.

    • A deputy shows up to serve civil eviction papers on a woman who is distraught and who just happens to be Asian.  There's a language barrier. 
    • He hands her the eviction papers, and she looks at them.
    • The deputy sees that the woman is holding a knife down by her side. He pulls his gun, and threatens to shoot her if she doesn't drop it. "Put the knife down or I will shoot you." 

    • She throws the eviction papers away, and then slams the door on him.  His job is over. The papers have been served. There is nothing more he needs to do. Now just walk away. He doesn't. 

    • Instead, an army of cops is called, including an attack dog, and then for a reason that cannot be explained, they then bust into the apartment 45 minutes after she had slammed the door. More than one of them is screaming. It is an absolute cluster. 

    • Watch this guy's breakdown of the video. It's amazing and should be a police training video of how not to handle a situation. This is all so disturbing. 

  • Heck of fire at a Walmart distribution center near Indianapolis yesterday.

  • I wish there were more details in this story. (But "ill will" has nothing to do with hiding evidence.)

  • The Texas legislature really stepped into criminal bail bond tinkering in the last session, and there will be an interesting development come April 1st. A "bond form" showing the name, date of birth, offense charged, bond amount, conditions or bond, and the name of the judge setting the bond will become "publicly accessible on the . . . Internet website" maintained by a state agency. And this will be for every person arrested in the State. (See Texas Government Code sec. 17.0351)
    • And more bond tinkering is coming. So the government wants to set the fee in a contract between two private parties? I've got big problems with this. 

  • I will never not watch this video on St. Patrick's Day. And I'll laugh every single year. (It's now 16 years old.) 

  • You'll never get me to care about the NBA, but The Ticket's Bob Sturm was actually at the Mavs game in Brooklyn last night and was rolling video from the stands for the game winning shot. 



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3.16.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




This happened outside of a Beaumont courthouse. I looked for a follow-up and it's pretty interesting: The shooter was actually a criminal defendant in a case being tried in that courthouse, and he was trying to kill his daughter who was a witness against him.  It's a capital offense in Texas to kill a person in retaliation for being a witness, but he didn't kill the daughter -- he missed and killed someone else. Nevertheless, he still got the death penalty for the shooting in a later trial under the doctrine of "transferred intent." (A concept you heard a lot about in law school but practically never see it used in real life.) 

Wild fact #1: The defendant actually shot at and hit his daughter "multiple times" and "then ran over her with his truck before fleeing the scene but she survived." Wild fact #2:  Cops fired 50 shots that day, but the defendant was only wounded. 

  • Hurry up and enter the Liberally Lean Tourney. We are up to 88 entries. Get down on it. 
  • Lots of updates for bullet points over the last two days:
    • The 25 year old who fell to his death off of a rooftop bar in Dallas was Chris Hill -- a Paradise High School graduate and employee of the City of Bridgeport. 
    • The man who led police on wild police chase that started at Decatur's Quik Trip and ended up at the Oklahoma border has now been identified: "When Decatur police officers approached the vehicle, the driver, Tristan Almanzar, 26, fled, according to DPS. Troopers later joined the chase. Almanzar lived in Midlothian." He killed himself at the end of the chase. 
    •  It wasn't a murder-suicide after all. It looks like a hit.

    • (Not) Gone Girl. The Russian reporter who protested on live TV is alive and well, and she actually appeared in court yesterday in connection with a different protest she engaged in. She was fined around $300.  I wouldn't feel too comfortable if I were her.

  • This was in Andrews County last night. The golf coach was killed, but they still haven't released the number of students who have died.  But it sounds like there is at least one. Edit: Wow. Six students killed.

  • And we have yet another case solved by familial/genetic genealogy DNA testing. 

     
  • This is going on right now. Let's keep our emotions in check. It's just WWIII hanging in the balance if we haul off and do something stupid. 

     
  • Profiting off of war is almost as old as war itself. 
  • That guy is right. Fox News really does have a lot of bad graphics. 

  • It's been 20 years and we still haven't given these guys a trial? We need to just admit that we can't prove anything but that we just feel safer keeping them locked up. 
  • I'll admit to a little confusion about the NCAA Tournament games in Fort Worth. There are eight teams in town, but they aren't all from the same quadrant. For example, Baylor (from the East) and Kansas (from the Midwest), and who are both #1 seeds, are there. So if they both win, they won't meet on Saturday. The only way they'll ever face each other is in the championship game a month from now. Maybe that always happens and I've never noticed. 
  • Sportsy. If you've ever wondered about all the small schools in the Tournament, look at how many were automatic qualifiers and where they are seeded.

  • Messenger: Above the Fold

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