8.12.2022

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

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts




I didn't link to the story at the time, and now I desperately want to see it again. 

  • A packed house showed up for Beto yesterday at the Decatur Civic Center. You can watch it all here. 
    • What? We aren't all MAGA members who take part in boat parades? This restores my faith.


    • "Not so fast," my Faith says. 

    • Emily Boyd of Decatur had the honor of doing the introduction.

  • The Washington Post reported last night that the seized documents from Mar-a-largo were "classified documents relating to nuclear weapons." Holy cow.  If this is true, the heavy-handiness of a search warrant on the home of an ex-president now makes perfect sense.  
    • So why would he take them? Let me throw this out there as the odds on favorite: To sell them to people who want them and have an unlimited ability to pay.  

    • Breaking: And there it is. Trump is now conceding there were nuclear documents but that they were planted by the FBI. This might as well be a confession: 

    • And our Congressman -- who seems to be trying to replace Louis Gohmert as the dumbest member of Congress -- falls right in line with his savior.  I feel like I'm living in Bizarro World. America is so screwed. We are all so screwed. 

  • It is now almost anti-climatic, but we will probably learn today at least what was on the face of the warrant since the Justice Department yesterday filed a Motion to unseal it. But as I told you a couple of days ago, there's a difference between the actual warrant and the the affidavit which gave rise to the warrant. So regardless of the judge's decision, the affidavit will not be released. And if the affidavit references nuclear secrets, that makes sense.


  • And after 24 hours of Fox News and Trump disciples declaring war on the FBI, someone actually tried to declare war on the FBI. He's now dead for his efforts. 

    • The former Trump Insurrectionist of January 6th is exactly who you would think he was.

       

    • This about sums it all up.

  • I think IRS agents need to be on high alert today since Fox News is now trying to get them killed. Video. The recklessness of that network continues to get ramped up. (By the way, the social media storm of the immediate hiring of “army of 87,000 IRS agents” isn't true.)  In other Brian Kilmeade news, last night he showed a doctored photo of the judge who order the Trump search. 

  • This case with Plano ties has been nutty from the start. 

    • And check out this video of the volatile nature of their relationship caught by an elevator camera in February.

  • What a wild scene at DFW airport. It's unclear if this happen last month or this week. Video.

  • On normal days, I would have led with this story: Suicide in a Denton courtroom after a defendant drinks something out of a bottle as soon as the verdict was read.

  • And now for something completely different because the news is exhausting.

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 3 years, 38 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold 



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8.11.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts





You remember this happening in Wisconsin?

  • Beto, who will be in Decatur today at noon, dropped a mother of all expletives (language warning) at someone who mocked him last night, and the crowd in Mineral Wells went crazy. "It may be funny to you . . . . " 

  • Trump took The Fifth. 
    • I don't blame Trump for taking the 5th Amendment at his deposition yesterday. It's his right. Heck, he needs to assert it. 


    • But I do fault him for being dumb enough to ever say things like this. From 2016: 

    • Hey, in future criminal trials can I use Trump's statement that he issued yesterday as he entered his deposition to explain why he was taking the 5th? "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the great Donald Trump once said [insert highlighted part]."

  • As to the search of Trump's home, the Republican Party officially continued to turn on law enforcement yesterday as they signed on to Trump's defense of: "The cops planted evidence!"  
    • It was first floated by a Trump lawyer on the evening of the raid.

    • Trump then ran with it on his own social network. 

    • Rand Paul and the Fox crowd yesterday morning. 

    • This really was amazing: 

    • I am and it is. 

    • Some suggest that, with Trump owning the Supreme Court, we might end up with a new Mar-a-Lago rule of law out of all of this. Heck, we already have suggestions . . . 

  • The New York Times has filed a civil suit to try and get the search warrant affidavit. I have no idea if this has any merit or basis. 

  • I learned for the first time yesterday that Heisman trophy winner Robert Griffin III's high school coach at Copperas Cove, Jack Welch, was a Bridgeport graduate. 


  • Wise County's congressional rep Ronny Jackson just said on a podcast that he once ate a plate of male dog reproductive organs. (Yep.)

  • We finally have a result in the Sheriff Joe mayor's race. He lost again. 

  • If you want to see a quick 360 video from the coach's tower at Cowboys camp to show what the field and surroundings look like, here ya go.  It's pretty cool. 

  • Construction is over! Smooth sailing through Waco! . . . 

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8.10.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts





To much fanfare, Allen High School's new 18,000 seat, $60 million stadium had its grand opening. It would be shut down two years later due to cracking and $10 million in repairs. 

  • A couple of weeks back a motorcyclist was shot and killed in Azle. That story is getting wild. The deceased man was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and the shooter had a LGBTQ bumper sticker. Was there a confrontation earlier? Does it matter?  It certainly makes for an interesting criminal case. 
     


  • This price of gas has fallen for 56 straight days. That explains the inflation numbers just released. 

  • When was the last time he was under oath?

  • Search warrant talk (Federal and Texas):
    • Everyone keeps saying that Trump has "a copy of the warrant" which will "explain the reason for the search" of his Florida home.  He may have a copy, but it wouldn't explain it. There's a huge difference between the warrant (which just authorizes the search) and the search warrant affidavit (which explains in detail the cops' reasons for wanting to search).  The warrant, which is pretty bare-bones, has to be left at the scene. The affidavit does not.  And it's not a public record.
    • Under Texas law, the search warrant affidavit is a public record even if no criminal case is pending. That's one of the greatest laws on the books.  (Tarrant County actually posts the documents online automatically if they were issued by a county judge or county JP.) 
    • There is a huge flaw in the Texas public record law for search warrants at least when it comes to Wise County. You have to figure out which judge issued the warrant (simply by guessing) before you know where to ask for a copy of the affidavit. 
    • Federal law requires that a Return be left which lists what items were taken.  I don't know much about that in federal cases. In Texas, the cops in state cases are really bad about doing so. And they are bad and sloppy about doing so because there is no penalty for failing to leave the Return. 
    • This is from the former leader of the Dallas DA's Appellate Section. I did not know either of these facts which are pretty amazing and stunning. City judges are doing that many?


  • A guy in Frisco who chartered a private jet along with the Little Ball of Insurrection™ has been sentenced to seven days in jail for his part in the riot. Are we trying to encourage Treason? We might as well send out engraved invitations for another attempted to coup to occur.


  • Oh, my.

  • Air travel has been really jacked up over the last three days, and DFW is right at the top.

  • I'm not sure Anne Heche is going to make it after crashing into a house in L.A. after allegedly driving drunk. Man, she was driving fast. (Video.)


  • This will only be interesting only to certain Wise County employees involved in criminal record-tracking, but it will be very interesting to them:
    • I saw this problem coming 20 years ago: Newly filed felony cases are now being assigned the exact cause numbers which had previously been assigned decades ago to misdemeanors, and those misdemeanors are still young enough to also be in the county's Tyler Technologies computer database. 
    • An example is below where a new felony was assigned a a cause number which already belonged to a 1990 misdemeanor. Now an online record search for CR23941 returns both cases. This is going to develop into a problem, right? E-filing, which relies on cause numbers, comes to mind.

  • Pretty amazing: Earlier in the year, all hell broke loose when a Texas district attorney unbelievably charged Lizelle Herrera with murder after an alleged “self-induced abortion.” He later apologized and admitted the 26-year-old it should have never have happened since abortion was legal in Texas. Then comes Dobbs and now DAs might be suspended for not enforcing suddenly triggered abortion laws. 
  • Radio news: I completely missed the WBAP has replaced Brian Estridge on the morning show. He had been paired with Hal Jay since 2009. Estridge claims he knew he would leave "since October" but, if he did, it is very odd that he failed to say goodbye on the air. 
  • Nerdy political stuff: Here's the petition related to the tweet below.

  • Messenger: Above the Fold

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