9.30.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Just a random female prosecutor biting the manager of an adult themed store -- with the arrest and her rantings on video. She eventually agreed to a 30 day law license suspension. But a judge, not a jury, would find her not guilty of "all charges" after a pretty strange bench trial.

  • This caught everyone off guard last night:

  • Remember that scene in Schindler's List where the Nazi would just shoot Jews for sport from his balcony? An arguably related Texas story here.  It is sickening. Killed "when they stopped at a water tank." This is what happens when you normalize treating certain humans as second class, call their existence an "invasion", and don't think twice about putting them on buses and dumping them in far away places. To give this killing even more of a Nazi-feel, these guys were even driving a vehicle from ICE's privately run West Texas Detention Center vehicle when this happened.


  • The Fifth Circuit continues to lose its collective minds. There's a crazy JP in Texas who forces anyone in his courtroom to stand for a Christian prayer at the start of his day. Sure, you can walk outside if you don't want to take part, but do so at the risk of peril for your own case.  Anyway, a panel from the 5th Circuit held yesterday that such a practice is fine. The dissent starts off perfectly in its retort: 

  • A Trump judge on the Fifth Circuit won't hire clerks from Yale Law School anymore because apparently the school is too woke. Sheesh.

  • As covered into today's Messenger, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made an appearance in Decatur.  Nothing to see here. Just probably the most powerful politician in the state endorsing a particular religion and calling elections a choice between the biblical "darkness and light."

  • We live in strange and scary days. 
  • With Commissioner Roger Goodell in attendance, one of the NFL's star QBs had his hands involuntary contract and tense up after having his brain slammed into the artificial turf. This comes four days after he collapsed on the field in Miami from a concussion that his team and NFL refused to acknowledge. Video.

  • Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, testified yesterday in front of the Januar 6th Commission. Anyone believe her?

  • Those arms. (From last night's BYU-Utah St. game)

  • 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, 87 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM

9.29.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




After a police chase, a man committed suicide, and it was all broadcast live on Fox News. Anchor Shephard Smith, who could see it unfolding, yelled,  "Get off it, get off it, get off it" at producers to no avail.

  • The Sheriff of Florida's Lee County was on Good Morning America this morning and just blurted out that deaths would "definitely" be in the "hundreds" due to Hurricane Ian. Video. (Odd: GMA posted the clip on its own Twitter account and then took it down. I wonder if the Sheriff got a little ahead of himself on this one.)

  • In about a 30 minute span last night, we learned that . . . 
    • Coolio died, 

    • Marjorie Taylor Greene's husband finally decided to divorce her,

    • and Aaron Judge finally hit #61.

  • I've got the weirdest brain connection of Coolio to convicted capital murderer Darlie Routier because of this event which happened in 1996 which has stuck with me. I'm not dogging the decision, I just have never forgotten it.

    • Side note: Darlie Routier has been on death road forever. But it looks like further DNA tests have been ordered, and I bet that case still gets wild before everything is said and done. 
  • Hurricane fake alerts:
  • What was Lara Trump thinking?

  • The sentences are getting longer, but still not enough:

  • The Senate Rules Committee voted 14-1 in favor of of the legislation. Ted Cruz, who would overthrow democracy in a New York minute if given the chance, as the lone vote. He's simply a bad human being. 

  • Tarrant County juvenile judge Alex Kim has been under fire lately, but I had never seen the inside of his courtroom before. What's up with the size of that lettering? Let's dial that back a little, shall we? 

  • A swing and a miss by me on this one. They only deliberated 30 minutes.

    • In my defense, I was not aware of the following change when I predicted the not guilty verdict.  I've always said, unless you've got a bad history of convictions, your chances of being found guilty increase dramatically if you don't testify no matter how much the jury panel tells you they won't hold it against you. Nevertheless, I was still wrong on my shoot-from-the-hip prediction on this case. 

  • President Biden forgot someone was dead yesterday -- the Congresswoman who was killed along with two of her staffers on August 3, 2022.  No way around this one. That's bad.  Video.


  • Update: There's still not a single news story about the Trooper-Fentanyl-Bexar County "incident" other than those which rely solely on DPS's suspicious tweet. This really bugs me. Throw in the Uvalde lies, and DPS's credibility is at an all time low. 


at 8:31 AM

9.28.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Just a funny pic from the 2012 campaign trail this week.

  • I've said this a million times before: America loves news of an impending hurricane. After it hits, our attention is done with it, but we'll obsess about it incessantly before it makes landfall. 

  • A man from Alvord who spent 10 years in prison had the case dismissed yesterday by a Tarrant County judge after Texas' highest criminal court declared him actually innocent and ordered the judge to do so. If you want to delve into the details of this mess (including the withholding of evidence by the DA's office) here is that high court opinion from last month. The concurrence really gets into the facts.

    • They aren't up for an election this time, but remember the names Judge Yeary and Judge Slaughter on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. They would not have found the man innocent. They always make rulings like that. 
  • One of Texas Seven who received a death sentence is closer to a new trial because of the judge making anti-Jewish comments.

     
    • I've got a crazy connection to this case. That guy was almost executed in 2019 but a Motion for Stay of Execution was granted. And in that Motion, this blog was cited in a footnote for something I wrote about the judge in 2006. 

  • I don't understand any of this, but the guy behind it, Ben Lamm, has Decatur roots. 

  • I think this tweet yesterday by DPS is misleading propaganda if not an outright lie. Stay with me here:

     
    • We know that the head of DPS is in full support of being used as political prop for Gov. Abbott and his cronies -- DPS Director Steve McCraw will show up on stage at all of Abbott's political stunts. Currently, Abbott is running attack ads against Beto across the state over the dangers of fentanyl and Beto wanting "open borders." (Sheesh.)  
    • So, considering all of that, look at the wording of tweet. It says a "substance" made the trooper ill and a "substance" in the car tested positive for fentanyl. But it doesn't say the those substances were the same -- that is, that the trooper was made sick because of the fentanyl. (Those claims of sickness by simple exposure by other agencies have been proven to be a lie.) 
    • Note that this post could be literally true if the trooper was made sick by the "substance" of carbon monoxide fumes and then a different sealed "substance", testing positive for fentanyl, was later found in a "container" in the trunk. 
    • The post suspiciously doesn't say when this happened or who the trooper was.  There is no bodycam released. And there are no references to any arrest or a defendant's name. 
    • And do a Google search for "fentanyl" and "trooper". There are no news stories about a trooper getting sick in Bexar County happening at all. But there are handful of media (Fox News in particular) who are treating the above tweet as if it happened yesterday. The tweet is their only source.
    • DPS is deceiving you. 

  •  As a call back to my bullet point yesterday about Terry Bradshaw buying property in Montague County, a faithful reader called my attention to the purchase being printed in, of all things, the Montague County Shopper.

  • This may be behind a paywall, but it this case is really interesting. A stepfather who was also a deputy believed, according to him, that his 17 year old stepdaughter was having an affair with a married man and getting drugs from someone. As a result of that belief, he went through her phone to find out what she was up to. But while doing so, he found a nude selfie of the stepdaughter. He then emailed it to himself. Was he doing so to persevere evidence? Was he just being seedy? In an interesting twist, it was her school's internal software program that picked up on the email because the phone was set to use the stepdaughter's school email account by default. The stepdaughter signed an affidavit of non-prosecution, but a special prosecutor was brought in (some DA out of West Texas), and this thing is going to trial. From what limited information I have: I'm guessing a not guilty verdict.  Side note: Reporter Trish Choate always writes great stories.

  • Random out-of-state DA news. His daughter was arrested in connection with his stabbing. 

  • "San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus did not specify whether Savannah Graziano was shot by the responding deputies or her father."

    • But I think I can guess.

  • In May, the paper switched from printing a paper seven days a week to using a daily digital edition six days a week and printing one weekend edition.

  • What's Hurricane Ian doing right now?
  • Edit: I forgot. Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:30 AM

9.27.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




I never heard much about this through the grapevine. 

  • Former Decatur great impressed his Atlanta Braves last night -- as they should be. Complete games are basically unheard of these days.  But what's up with the beard?

  • I spent five minutes trying to figure out how there would only be one to two inches of rain in around Tampa until I finally figured it out. 

  • I'm guessing this was just a freakish death. But if something weird was going on, it would require a different police recruit, who is just starting a new job, to talk. 

  • I met this guy when I was D.A. back in the 1990s. While he had a full time job as the Bexar County Medical Examiner, he had a "side gig" where he would privately contract himself out as a defense expert witness. Someone hired him on a case we were prosecuting. I thought that was weird.

  • You know one conspiracy theory I subscribe to? That the DEA is making up the Rainbow Fentanyl claim. 

  • Another thing I don't believe: That this will be built in Frisco by a bunch of YouTube video guys. Absolutely no way. 


  • The attempt to avoid the subpoena is the headline, but I think it's more interesting to learn when someone has been officially "served." 


  • A faithful reader, who I trust, wrote in response to my Terry Bradshaw ranch-for-sell in Oklahoma told me that Bradshaw just bought 150 acres in Montague County "in the Ringgold area." 
  • Cowboy thoughts:
    • Quarterback controversy, baby!

    • The thing I remember most from the game.

    • Remember that I had a way-too-long bullet point the other day about how an OU player did not score when he cut across the end zone, did not put a foot down in the end zone, and held the ball outside the pylon? Well the Giants' Saquon Barkley (animated, above) also cut across the end zone in his run, did not put a foot down, but he took the ball inside the pylon. But it was a little close because he started to move the ball towards his left and towards the pylon mid-flight to celebrate.  No one mentioned this.


  • Former Baylor coach Kim Mulkey's refusal to talk about her former player, Brittney Griner, is down right weird. Video.  (Baylor's current coach, Nicki Collen, talked about her for almost five minutes yesterday.)
  • Ron Washington made it to the White House yesterday.

at 8:25 AM
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