Theremin expert Jon Bernhardt has been at MIT’s WMBR since 8am, under lockdown but DJing defiantly wmbr.mit.edu
— Alex Ross (@alexrossmusic) April 19, 2013
…the radio stations will be all theremin, all the time. Except when I want to provide the people with important updates on the progress of our flying monkeys.
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And updating: in addition to the 45 days in jail, she was fined $4,000 and her license has been suspended for 180 days.
I know what you’re wondering: who will run the show while she’s doing hard time? Answer: “operational aspects of the office will be handled by senior staff“.
But DA Lehmberg isn’t the only local DA who has run aground on the shoals of the law. And at least she didn’t hurt anybody.
I did not write a lot about the Michael Morton case and the court of inquiry into Anderson’s conduct because…well, I was a little distracted at the time, the case is complex, and it was being well covered by other people. Texas Monthly did a two-part series on the case itself, and covered the court of inquiry as well.
The short version of the story: Morton came home from work one day in 1986 and found his wife had been murdered. Morton was charged with and convicted of her murder, and served 25 years in prison. In 2011, DNA testing established another man committed the crime: Morton was released from prison, exonerated, and the other man was convicted of the murder in late March of this year. During the proceedings leading to Morton’s release, there were accusations that Anderson and the Williamson County DA’s office had intentionally withheld evidence from Morton and his defense during the original murder trial: these accusations resulted in the court of inquiry and the charges against Anderson.
The weather here yesterday was spectacularly crappy.
Today is beautiful. The sun is shining, the temperature is moderate – a perfect spring day.
For various reasons, including how nice a day it is (as well as some others that I don’t want to touch on just now) I thought it’d be fun to go down to the state capitol and take some photos.
So I loaded up the Honda with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction the big Nikon with the camera bag and lenses, as well as my tripod. Headed downtown to the capitol, got rockstar parking, and went inside to see a man about a racehorse before I started shooting. (Officious guard: “Sir, where are you going?” Me: “CHL holder.” OG: “Oh.”)
(For those who don’t know, the Texas capitol has a separate line for CHL holders that bypasses the metal detector.)
Anyway, get back outside, set stuff down, take out the camera…
…and the GD battery is dead. And, unlike my SD1000, I don’t have a spare Nikon battery.
Oh, well. I’m going to be down in that general area with the camera tomorrow as well, so I’ll plan on taking my photos tomorrow.
(And I stopped by Precision Camera on the way home so I could fix the “no spare Nikon battery” problem.)
(I’ve been meaning to mention this, but Precision Camera’s new store is really swell. Parking is a vast improvement over the old store, there’s much more space to move around and for them to display stuff, and the men’s room would get three stars if I was rating it for the SDC.)
I wasn’t planning to do these as a regular thing this season. But I figure with everything else going on, folks could use a distraction while we wait.
Surprisingly, the Astros do not have the worst record in baseball. The Marlins are at 3-13, for a .188 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 132 losses this season if trends continue: not quite Cleveland Spiders level, but good enough for third on the all-time list.
Houston is at 4-11, for a .267 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 119 losses, which would be a record for the Astros, and would get them on the list right around where the 2003 Detroit Tigers are.
Not Boston: Travis County DA Rosesmary Lehmberg has pled guilty to DWI and been sentenced to 45 days in jail.
The Statesman reports she had a 0.23 BAC when she was stopped. The significance of this:
Heard on the CBS coverage: “How do you lock down an entire city?” (Nobody had a really good answer to that question.)
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(CBS, or the local CBS affiliate – I’m not sure which – just ran a commercial featuring an exploding air conditioner. Bad timing, guys.)
I may come back to this later. I want to do some research and possibly talk to Lawrence. In other news:
Jimmy Haslam recently bought the Cleveland Browns. Haslam made a pile of money off of the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops and “travel centers”. Yesterday, the FBI raided the Pilot Flying J headquarters:
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The Browns just can’t catch a break, can they? It will be interesting to see how this plays out as we get closer to the NFL season.
(Heard on CBS: “I was going into this thinking there was some connection to somewhere.” No s–t, Sherlock.)
Edited to add: Since folks are distracted by Boston at the moment, let me note here: the confirmed death toll in West stands at 12.
According to the association, one of those firefighters was from Dallas: all of the others were volunteer firefighters with the West Fire Department.