Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

The Ferguson immediate aftermath, and the police response, was ongoing. 

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• Boyd High School got a segment on a metroplex newscast. You can watch it here if you can get pat the commercials and pop-up ads. (Local news channel websites are the absolute worst.)
  
  
  
• A Fort Worth police officer was killed yesterday in a traffic incident and, as a byproduct, it will cause everyone in the criminal justice system to cringe.  A person was arrested for Intoxication Manslaughter but she was already on felony probation for aggravated assault of a romantic partner.
•  "Fort Worth police said she drove the wrong way on an off ramp on southbound I-35W at Sycamore School Road and hit Sgt. Billy Randolph with her vehicle. Investigators believe Evans was drunk when she hit Randolph. Evans attempted to flee the scene, with some officers pursuing her while others got Randolph into a police Tahoe and took him to JPS Hospital, where he died, police said. Evans got about a quarter-mile away before she got out of her car and tried to flee on foot. She was arrested shortly after."  



• Missed this over the weekend: The Montague County DA, who is under indictment for theft, agreed to a "temporary suspension" last Friday in lieu of a having a removal hearing. The judge then appointed the DA-elect to fill the vacancy. I guess that's the way you handle it -- but I would have thought that even a temporary appointment for a DA would require an appointment by the governor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Missed this as an intended bullet point yesterday: The City of Uvalde finally released a ton of video and text messages from the Uvalde massacre after fighting open record requests. One notable item was that Sen. John Cornyn made a phone call indicating he was not pleased with how DPS's $345,250 Man, Steve McCraw, was handling the fallout and local police saying that McCraw had "screwed them all." 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Trump did an interview with Elon Musk on Twitter last night, and it went about as well as you would expect due to a technical meltdown.
  
  
  
• I blame Jewish space lasers for the technical meltdown while MAGA darlings, of course, blamed "the deep state".  Elon blamed "denial of service" attack which is a boldface lie. 
  
  
  
• Remember when Elon Musk cozied up to Ron DeSantis by hosting his announcement for presidency on an X broadcast which was also crippled by a technical meltdown? Flashback (which the Kamala Harris campaign was "ReTruthing" last night): 
  
  
  
• The only news-worthy thing Trump said was that he would disband the Department of Education. That's right out of the playbook of Project 2025.
  
  
  
• Most bizarre moment: Saying Kamala Harris's depiction on the new cover of Time magazine made her look beautiful and like Melania.
• Insurrection News:
• From Friday. Now we are getting somewhere. (Remember that Trump has referred to the January 6th rioters as warriors, "unbelievable patriots," political prisoners and "hostages" and has said he will pardon them.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• From yesterday.  "Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump."
  
  
  
• A moment of silence, please.
  
  
  
• Legal stuff: In a shocking ruling last night, the Fifth Circuit said that police need a search warrant for Google geo-fence data (wow) but, more importantly, there will never be enough probable cause to get that warrant (triple wow.) However, I think that this might be moot in the future since Google said last year it was no longer keeping geo-fence data, but for pending cases, holy cow.
  
  
  
• From the opinion:
  
  
  
  
• Legal nerdy stuff: The Texas Supreme Court has enacted rules that allow any civil litigation documents filed with a district clerk or county clerk in Texas to be searchable and downloadable in a statewide database. The district clerk of Tarrant County is seeking an Attorney General opinion in an apparent attempt to opt out of this requirement. 
  
  
  
• Don't see the joint trial of a sheriff and prosecutor everyday: "WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Jury selection has wrapped up in the felony trial of a former Williamson County Sheriff and county attorney accused of destroying video evidence related to the 2019 in-custody death of Javier Ambler."