Heading out to the gun show, and then a ceremony at the university later on. Busy day coming.
The mayor of Patton Village, Texas, is no longer the mayor of Patton Village.
She was removed from office by the judge shortly after her conviction. Ms. Munoz still faces charges of tampering with government records: she was convicted of a felony in 1979, but lied about that conviction when she ran for mayor.
(Previously. Previously.)
Obit watch: the late great George Jones. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
Yeah, we know, we’re late. We didn’t realize until Wednesday that it was that time of year again, and it took us a while to work up the gumption to do this. Part of the problem, of course, is that this is the column where TMQ mocks the mock drafts. As we’ve said in the past, TMQ thinks this is more amusing than it actually is, and there’s really no reason to go item by item through his attempts at humor.
But we have an obligation to our reader. So we might as well get into it…
There just hasn’t been much newsworthy in the past day or so. I’m having trouble working up energy to write about TMQ’s mock draft column (further proof that Easterbrook is more funny to himself than he is to real people). I’m also having trouble with the latest Travis County DA development:
“Hey, Rosemary? Betty. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. Listen, Rosemary, I need a favor.”
“Well, Rosemary, I’ve got this client…”
“Look, Rosemary, when you were in jail and needed a hand, I stood up for you. Now you’re not willing to help me out with a little deal here?”
This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid was going to happen. And, you know, I’m not sure it makes a difference. The petition to remove Lehmberg is based on the law, and the law says you can get thrown out for being intoxicated. Lehmberg’s confessed to DWI. As far as I know, the law doesn’t say you can get thrown out for being intoxicated unless you get a bunch of your friends to testify about what a great person you are.
Anyway, instead of content, have a couple of photos.
This is the Austin skyline, facing south from the 27th floor observation deck of the Main Building at the University of Texas. (Yes, that observation deck.) Taken at 1/60 and f/22, with the Nikon 55-200 VR zoom at 55mm. Just to the right of the Capitol, you can see the Frost Bank Tower, or as some of us like to call it, “the nose hair clippers”.
This is the upper portion of the Capitol, taken at 1/30 and f/22 with the same zoom at 200mm, and cropped some in iPhoto.
This endorsement may be of limited utility to most of you, since Silvercar currently only operates in DFW and Austin. But I am hopeful that they will expand to other cities.
What are they? Silvercar is a car rental firm, but they’re different from your normal car rental company.
First of all, they only rent one type of car: silver Audi A4s. That’s not so bad, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.
Second of all, their prices are reasonable: right now, they’re charging $75/day on weekdays and $50/day on weekends. That’s actually about what you’d pay for anything from Enterprise at the airport. (I just checked the Enterprise site: cheapest is $66.99 for a full-size car, going up to $127.56 for a “luxury” car.) That is with unlimited milage.
Thirdly, the experience is nowhere near as annoying as your average car rental agency is:
And the Audi A4s they rent are fun cars. Yes, they have Bluetooth. They also have WiFi. Seriously. You can use your rental car as a WiFi hotspot while driving. Most of this stuff is your basic Audi features, as far as I know, including the navigation and audio. But it is still really nice to have these features in a rental car, especially at this price.
I should note that I didn’t actually rent the car: Mike the Musicologist came up for a visit and handled the interaction with Silvercar. But I was along for the pickup and dropoff, and from what I saw it was the most friction-free car rental experience ever.
We drove the Audi down to New Braunfels Sunday night to have barbecue at the Cooper’s there (which I liked very much). Then we drove back through the city and stopped at the Buc-ees (yes, the one that won the “America’s Best Restroom” contest – and, yes, it is a darn nice men’s room). Monday, MtM and I drove down to Boerne and had lunch at a wonderful German restaurant called Little Gretel. I want to go back. Actually, what I want to do is take a long weekend, book a motel room in Boerne, and stay for a day or two, eating at Little Gretel, feeding the ducks in the creek across the street, and exploring the surrounding area.
We drove back to Austin by way of Fredericksburg (stopping briefly at the shop for the Nimitz Museum/Museum of the Pacific War) and the Audi never missed a beat. It felt like it was on rails even when I pushed it close to 100 MPH, and we got around 26 MPG for the entire Monday trip.
The one small issue I’d bring up with Silvercar, if they asked me, is that they only provide an iPod connector for the Audi MMI system. It’d be nice to have at least the Audi USB connectors as well. (I was unable to find a USB port in the car: the MMI system does have two SD card slots, though, as well as a SIM card slot.)
So, anyway, if you need a good rental car in Austin (or DFW), give Silvercar a try. And thanks to Mike for organizing this adventure.
Texas, like some other states, has a sunset law. In short, and with certain exceptions, every state agency is subject to being abolished 12 years after it is created, or after the Legislature votes to continue the agency’s existence. In order for an agency to keep going, the Legislature has to pass a law authorizing the agency to continue.
Earlier this afternoon, the Texas House voted 65-81 against a bill that would continue the operations of the Texas Lottery Commission. From what I can tell, this would effectively end the state lottery (and “all charitable bingo, including games at churches and veterans’ halls”).
This is…unexpected. Reading the Statesman‘s coverage, it looks like a lot of the legislators voting against the bill have philosophical problems with the idea of a state lottery. Of course, if they do away with the lottery, that blows a $2 billion hole in the state budget, so there’s a chance that the ledge might reconsider. But for right now, this looks like this year’s “pass the popcorn” Texas Legislature moment.
Edited to add: Well, isn’t this special? The House took a lunch break not long after the vote. Then they came back and voted again: this time, the bill continuing the lottery commission was approved 91-53.
Firings: Mike Dunlap, Charlotte Bobcats head coach. One season, 21-61.
Obits: Richie Havens. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
E. L. Konigsburg, noted author (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
This is one of those little tidbits that I find fascinating: “From the Mixed-Up Files…” won the Newbery Medal in 1968. That was Ms. Konigsburg’s second book. Her first book, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth
There will probably be more to say about this tomorrow, but Allan Arbus has also passed away.
In other news, while I was out and about having fun, Lawrence was working. Specifically, he’s been posting video of the Travis County DA being arrested for DWI, and of the DA in jail.
And what do I have to offer to compare with that? Pictures, maybe?
Here we see the elusive Mike the Musicologist. While Jim attempts to throw a net over him, let me tell you about Mutual of Omaha…
And one for my great and good friend Weer’d Beard: ducks!
Busy having fun today. More later.
In the meantime, have this NYT article about the disaster area the Jets have become:
And this breakfast interview with one of my heros, Ricky Jay.
There’s a common variant on that saying: “You can’t cheat a honest person.” I often respond to that by bringing up the bank examiner scam, which works because it targets people’s honesty (and desire to help “law enforcement” catch “bad guys”). But it is nice to see Jay make the same point…
The Statesman and other papers are reporting that 14 people are confirmed dead in West.
The Waco paper is maintaing a list.
Volunteer Fireman’s Monument, Texas State Capitol
Detailed article on the Dumas-Sunray disaster from Industrial Fire World.
This is…interesting. (And the photo of the wired-up baby is a little creepy.) I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently around a baby (and a toddler), and I’m not 100% sure I agree with their police work there, Lou. What does “perceive objects in an adult-like way” mean, exactly? Because the baby I’ve been hanging with doesn’t seem to understand adult-like concepts like “you can’t go through a solid object”.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with that. She is, after all, a baby. At least we haven’t had to have the conversation about how riding the dog like it’s a small horse is FROWNED UPON IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT.)
Al Neuharth, creator of USA Today. USA Today obit.
Headline:
This is not a repeat from two weeks ago.
Today is my birthday. I’m going to be out of pocket most of the day: going to the gun shop, then over to the capitol to take pictures, then on a tour of the UT Tower, and then to dinner. In my absence, consider this an open thread to talk about things you want to talk about: Boston, West, Michael Morton and Ken Anderson, the Astros, the vertical integration of the broiler industry, etc.
(As always, if this is your first time posting, I have to approve your comment. Once you’ve been approved, additional comments should go through without requiring moderation. Comment approval is one blog function I can do fairly easily from my phone, so you should not have to wait too long. Unless I’m driving.)
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.
Order now! Only $19.95!
More:
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: