4.05.2024

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

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Video. (Not that you would want to.)

  • "Let me hold this press conference to tell everyone my client committed a crime."

  • We've got a real life Oceans 11 on our hands. 


  • My strong belief in the Butterfly Effect was on display in the last 48 hours as two cars were in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. One in Fort Lauderdale where a part of a crane came crashing down on it, and the other a boulder smashing a car (video) during an earthquake. 


  • It seems that most dangerous place to be in a commercial airliner is when you are near the airport. The amount of near collisions on takeoffs and landings are always in the news. This one involved almost clipping the tower. 


  • Job numbers just released. The good news continues. The U.S. unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest streak since the late 1960s.  
  • Last Friday there was a standoff between a robbery suspect and Colleyville police. The guy ended up shooting himself and later dying at the hospital. It turns out that it was the son of former NFL player and Baylor great Randle Ervin.

  • Judge Cannon in Trump's classified documents case in Florida denied (pdf) his motion to dismiss where he claimed the Presidential Records Act provided him protection.  But the oddest part of the ruling is that she didn't foreclose Trump using that defense at trial and maybe even instructing the jury of the defense.  That makes it awkward for both sides. It's like going into a murder case and neither side knows whether the jury will be able to consider self-defense. That makes it tough.



  • If I'm running the Biden campaign, I jump all over Trump's calling the January 6th Insurrectionists "hostages" and promising to pardon them.  I can't get over that. And I think the average guy out there will find that repulsive.  And other than those which have already been convicted, the only remaining people still incarcerated number fifteen -- all accused of doing horrible things on that day. 

    • Speaking of January 6th, they just keep coming. A man from Cedar Hill was arrested this week.  (I'm still waiting on Wise County to be represented.)


  • Someone isn't reading the room very well in Florida. It wouldn't be the first time for the guy.

  • Just a Texas Supreme Court judge failing to understand the concept of a detached and neutral magistrate. Video. What a nut.  This is the same guy who said that he had been arrested 37 times for protesting at abortion clinics.

  • 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: 4 years and 284 days.

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4.04.2024

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




Photographer Joe Duty didn't choose that photo because of the fire; he chose it because of the dog's presumed acknowledgement that something very bad had happened. Good stuff. 

  • The local media hasn't picked up on this yet, but two Denton ISD employees were just indicted for sending an email from their school account encouraging fellow employees to vote in the Republican primary and, specifically, to be aware that pro-voucher candidates will kill public schools.


  • Not exactly what you should say if you are trying to keep a law from being declared unconstitutional. 


  • Far right-wing Newsmax posted an unfriendly article about Trump and then promptly deletes it after the MAGA extremists screamed about it. 

  • Everything about Uvalde continues to be a cluster. This is the investigator who issued the report clearing the officers of any wrongdoing. 

  • Story.

  • Two women missing. "Butler, 27, and Kelley, 39, were traveling only 16 miles to pick up Butler’s 6-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, who were living with her ex-mother-in-law in Eva, Oklahoma. . . . .Kelley — a mother of four herself — was suspected of traveling with Butler to help her with a custody issue, sources familiar with the matter told NewsNation on Wednesday."

  • There's always a grift somewhere around Trump.

  • Cruelty is the point of their attempted humor. 



  • Legal nerdy stuff: With an expunction not being legally available in Texas, a woman tried to set aside a 1996 prostitution conviction because the plea was involuntary: "Appellee testified that she was presently employed as a 'paralegal/office manager' for her writ counsel, Vickers Cunningham, and has been a legal assistant in writ counsel’s office since April 19, 2019. Further, appellee testified that she had obtained her bachelor’s degree and wished to attend the 'University of North Texas Law School,' but she could not sit for the bar examination because her 1996 misdemeanor convictions were for crimes involving moral turpitude." No dice, the appellate court ruled this week. The criminal justice system is not, and has never been, about justice.
  • Messenger - Above the Fold

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4.03.2024

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Random thoughts from the jury selection process a decade ago.

  • We knew the cops killed the 15 year old girl who had been taken hostage back when it happened in 2022, but now the video has been released. Incredible. They tell her to get out of the car and the gun her down.



  • Lawyers are flocking after the wreck involving the Kansas City Chiefs player in Dallas and the two sports cars.  But a totaled car and stitches don't exactly equal a multi-million dollar payday.


  • Near Amarillo, an egg producer had to kill two million of its chickens because of the bird flu.  Amazingly, it has 51,868,556 chickens left. I did the math!



  • Hot engineering opinion:  Rebuilding that Baltimore bridge will take a while, but the opening of the port to shipping should not be a monumental problem.  When all the resources of the federal government are thrown at simply clearing the debris, that should be done pronto. 

  • Dueling headlines.



     
  • Trump rally highlights yesterday from Michigan. 
    • While trying to exploit a crime, he lied about it.


    • He's nuts. Video.

    • By the way, I'll never understand law enforcement supporting Trump after January 6th. At least some were wearing brownshirts, though.

    • Trump, in response a question said he will make a statement on abortion "next week."  Video.  He used to say that about his health care plan that we are still waiting on. 
        

  • Legal nerdy stuff: Last year, the Decatur Police Department became the first Wise County agency to submit all its dashcam and bodycam videos in case packages to the DA's office via the cloud instead of bundled on a gillion DVDs or flash drives.  The DA's office can then release it to defense lawyers in the discovery process with just a link. It's fantastic. (And it's password protected and self-logs when and where it was downloaded.)

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