Random Friday Morning Thoughts

The bridge by the spillway by Lake Bridgeport is the tallest one in the county.

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• "AT&T said the compromised data includes the telephone numbers of 'nearly all' of its cellular customers and the customers of wireless providers that use its network between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022." Prepare for more spam calls. 
  
  
  
• A baggage scanner being down yesterday caused a massive backlog at Love Field. Nothing showed it better than this photo from a helicopter showing people lined up outside in the heat. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The humanitarian floating pier in Gaza, which cost us $240 million and never worked, will be gone.  I could have told them it's next to impossible to attach something that floats to the shore and it expect it to be stationary. (I'm an expert because I had a floating lake dock once and it was a disaster.)
  
   
  
  
  
• Let me tell you something, there are a lot of sight-seeing helicopter crashes in Hawaii. Story.
  
  
  
• The President did fine in his press conference yesterday despite a flub or two.  I still think he won't drop out of the race. And I still think all this mess and hubbub about it won't matter.
  
  
  
• But Drudge, who has been anti-Trump for years, is really going hard against President Biden these days.
  
  
  
• There are 17 Democrats in Congress who are now calling for Biden to drop out.  There are 260 Democrats in Congress. 
• Shelley Duval has died. That got me thinking that this is probably one of the most iconic screenshots from a movie there is. 
  
  
  
• This case is so weird. Once again, the only claim left is Jerry's counter-claim so the only reason the case is still pending is because he hasn't dismissed it. He really wants a trial?
  
  
  
• Southlake ISD went to one of two federal judges in Texas who are always predictably right wing. And, in a footnote, he even cited as legal authority the right-wing Texas lawyer Jonathan Mitchell.
  
  
  
• Gov. Abbott is still on the other side of the planet, and is now in Tokyo. What's the etiquette for being photographed with someone in a wheelchair? Are you supposed to stoop down? 

• Extremely legal nerdy criminal practitioner stuff based on a new case yesterday out of Corpus Christi: 
• Say an Information alleges an assault by a theoretical impossible way (i.e. x caused bodily injury to y by x spraying himself in the face with mace). And say the trial court sees the error after the jury is empaneled and sworn but before any evidence has been presented. He then tells the defense lawyer to make a motion (nice judge) and then dismisses the case calling it a directed verdict. 
• Now the questions are: (1) can the State appeal the dismissal since it occurred during trial, and (2) did the trial court properly dismiss the case before the State even put on any evidence? 
• The answer is yes and no, respectively. Now the State can fix the Information and retry the guy. 
• The smart thing to do would have been to move for a directed verdict after the State put on the evidence. The State, if they had figured out their error, couldn't have amended the Information after trial started, and the State couldn't have appealed a directed verdict entered after the evidence is presented. 
• 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: 5 years and 7 days.