July 30, 2018

Sullivan County sheriff admits to sending text messages

Sullivan County Sheriff Wayne Anderson (R) admitted Saturday to sending text messages that had been shared this week on social media.

On Thursday, county mayoral candidate Gerald Sensabaugh shared screenshots of text messages that were believed to have been sent to a county Sheriff's Office employee. The text messages included profane and derogatory messages about Sensabaugh, independent sheriff's candidate Jeff Cassidy, as well as current and former Sheriff's Office employees.

Anderson issued the statement to local media outlets, except the Bristol Herald Courier, which first reported on the text messages in Saturday's newspaper.

In the statement, Anderson said the conversation was on his own time and he apologized for any material that could have been seen as offensive. He said the last nine months he has been under a "great amount of stress, and I was venting to a person I have known for years and trusted."

Read more: https://www.heraldcourier.com/townnews/work/sullivan-county-sheriff-admits-to-sending-text-messages/article_c3a25848-92bd-11e8-bfcd-2f24d3ac65ef.html

As for the consequences of his actions:

Officer "isn't happy" about texts sheriff sent her

Megan Smith, a Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office corrections officer, said Sunday she isn’t happy with the statement Sheriff Wayne Anderson sent to local media outlets about the profane and derogatory text messages he sent to her, and she plans to sue him.

Screenshots of the text messages between Smith and Anderson were shared on Facebook and Twitter on Thursday by Sullivan County mayoral candidate Gerald Sensabaugh. Smith said she sent the screenshots to him.

Anderson, who is running for re-election against independent Jeff Cassidy on Aug. 2, admitted Saturday to sending the messages to Smith in a statement to local media outlets, except the Bristol Herald Courier. A Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman confirmed the text messages were sent from his county-issued cell phone.

-snip-

“He never apologized to any of the officers that he was threatening their jobs,” said Smith. “He never apologized for, really, anything that he said. … Some of those text messages I’m pretty positive he was sitting in his office when he sent [them] so I don’t know about that whole ‘on my own time’ comment. I don’t believe it was on his own time, and it was a county phone.”

https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/officer-isn-t-happy-about-texts-sheriff-sent-her/article_996aa61a-0d8d-51a4-a163-0020b95c90eb.html


Interestingly, the sheriff has also filed multimillion dollar lawsuits against the county--TWICE!
Sullivan Sheriff Wayne Anderson suing county for $6.5 million
https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/local/sullivan-sheriff-wayne-anderson-suing-county-for-million/article_24de6c38-5963-11e5-9e91-4bced7820511.html

July 30, 2018

Lawsuit filed in fatal duck boat sinking seeks $100 million

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The owners and operators of a tourist boat that sank this month in Missouri, killing 17 people, put profits over people's safety when they decided to put the Ride the Ducks boat on a lake despite design problems and warnings of severe weather, a lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City seeks $100 million in damages on behalf of two of nine members of an Indiana family who died when the tourist boat sank July 19 at Table Rock Lake near Branson. Others killed were from Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri.

"This tragedy was the predictable and predicted result of decades of unacceptable, greed-driven, and willful ignorance of safety by the Duck Boat industry in the face of specific and repeated warnings that their Duck Boats are death traps for passengers and pose grave danger to the public on water and on land," the lawsuit alleges.

Ripley Entertainment Inc., Ride the Ducks International, Ride the Ducks of Branson, the Herschend Family Entertainment Corp., and Amphibious Vehicle Manufacturing are named in the lawsuit, which was filed by a team led by a Philadelphia-based legal firm that has litigated previous lawsuits involving duck boats. The legal team planned a news conference Monday morning.

Read more: https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/national/wire/lawsuit-filed-in-fatal-duck-boat-sinking-seeks-million/article_6a0b20e7-71e9-5102-b559-17bc185131d3.html

July 30, 2018

KKK flyers distributed in Stanardsville

STANARDSVILLE — Several flyers from the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have been found in Stanardsville, including two at the office of the Greene County Record.

The Loyal White Knights of Pelham, North Carolina, rallied in Charlottesville on July 8, 2017, a month before the white supremacist Unite the Right rally. Both events ostensibly were about the city’s planned removal of a Confederate statue.

Greene Sheriff Steve Smith said his office was aware of the flyers, which were distributed inside plastic bags along U.S. 33. He said a resident found one in the street outside of her house.

Smith said he doesn’t think it was a targeted distribution.

Read more: https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/region/kkk-flyers-distributed-in-stanardsville/article_299fc0e8-905e-11e8-a641-c7fc45f9841b.html

July 30, 2018

"We didn't let girls do it in the old days," a judge said. "Inappropriate," a higher court ruled.

Buried in a footnote, the brief rebuke nonetheless marked a notable step in abridging gender discrimination in the legal workplace: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit scolded a veteran judge for making sexist comments in his Houston courtroom, calling his remarks "demeaning, inappropriate, and beneath the dignity" of his profession.

U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes had been presiding over a criminal case against Simone Swenson, an adoption agency owner charged with fraud.

Under federal rules, prosecutors are permitted to wait until just before trial to turn over pieces of evidence, known as discovery. But when a female federal prosecutor delivered stacks of new documents during four pretrial conferences in early 2017 – weeks after the final discovery date set by Hughes – the septuagenarian judge was not impressed.

"You're supposed to know what you're doing," Hughes said to an assistant U.S. attorney on Feb. 6, 2017. "What else is out there that you misplaced or didn't think was relevant so you didn't check it at all?"

Read more: https://pilotonline.com/news/nation-world/national/article_a652dc7e-8c57-5298-a91d-a943a9a6ce42.html

July 30, 2018

Mike Collier Has a Problem: Dan Patrick Ain't Taking His Bait

If his campaign is to gain momentum in the roughly three months before Election Day, Collier needs to smoke Patrick out of the hole he’s hiding in — and fast.


Mike Collier has been publicly trying to get a rise out of the usually bombastic Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick ever since he launched his campaign to unseat him in June 2017. More than a year later, he’s largely failed to do so.

It’s not for a lack of trying. At the Texas Democratic Convention in Fort Worth in June, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor lit up the arena with a speech that took several whacks at Patrick.

“Now when it comes to creatin’ jobs, who are you gonna trust?” he asked. Patrick, a “once-bankrupted radio shock jock from the East Coast whose hair is fake, his name is fake and his pickup truck is fake.” Or himself, a “30-year business leader who went to public schools here, marched in the Longhorn band; my hair is real, my name is real and my Ford F-150 is real.”

A former Republican, corporate accountant and 2014 Democratic state comptroller candidate, Collier’s campaign centers on trolling Patrick about his myriad policy failures and toxic politics. “I think he’s really an awful, awful leader,” Collier told the Observer. “He doesn’t share our values, he doesn’t try to solve problems, his modus operandi is to pit one Texan against another and stir up anger and try to turn votes out of that. It’s just repulsive.”

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/mike-collier-has-a-problem-dan-patrick-aint-taking-his-bait/

July 30, 2018

Fire In Burnet County Burns 500 Acres Around Inks Lake State Park

A wildfire has burned about 500 acres in Burnet County. As of Monday morning, the Park Road Fire is about 35 percent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. The service reports about 150 homes have been evacuated, along with Inks Lake State Park and a fish hatchery.

Texas Parks and Wildlife says the fire started on private property off County Road 116 near Inks Lake State Park. Officials say the park will be closed until further notice. People who were evacuated from the park or from nearby homes can go to the Burnet County Community Center or Black Rock Park in Buchanan Dam.

The Texas A&M Forest Service says the fire's forward progress has been stopped by Inks Lake.

http://www.kut.org/post/fire-burnet-county-burns-500-acres-around-inks-lake-state-park
(short article)

July 30, 2018

With Less Federal Supervision, Texas Drops More People From Voter Rolls

Texas election officials have been removing more people from the state’s voter rolls ever since the Supreme Court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice.

The group says the court’s decision to specifically strike down one provision of the law led to the rise in voter purges.

The preclearance provision, also known as Section 5, required several states – including Texas – to get an OK from the federal government before enacting voting laws, changing election procedures or taking people off voter rolls. States purge their voter rolls periodically to remove people who have died or committed a felony.

Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program and leader of the center's Voting Rights and Elections project, says she sees a link between the court's decision and recent voter purges.

Read more: http://www.kut.org/post/less-federal-supervision-texas-drops-more-people-voter-rolls

July 30, 2018

Fracked Oil Wells Declining Faster than Drillers Might Realize, Report Says

West Texas oil drillers might be over-estimating how long their wells are going to last. That’s the takeaway from a new report that says the problem could lead to higher costs for the industry in the years ahead.

In the grand scheme of oil history, the fracking revolution is still pretty young. So, companies don’t know a lot about how fracked wells are going to perform over the course of decades, like they do with older wells.

Now, research firm Wood Mackenzie says it’s found that production from some West Texas wells is declining faster than drillers might realize.

“The Permian is a tough basin, and as it matures, there are more and more challenges that are emerging,” says the firm’s Robert Clarke, a co-author on the new report. “And that’s to be expected.”

Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2018/07/30/297619/fracked-oil-wells-declining-faster-than-drillers-might-realize-report-says/

July 30, 2018

Who Wants to Tell Ted Cruz He's Never Going to Be President?

Despite how he may seem online at times, I have no doubt in my mind that Ted Cruz is a smart man. Unlike those people, in an effort to hold on to their sanity in the face of a world making increasingly less sense by the day, who claim Donald Trump is secretly a genius even though he frequently comes off as not so bright, I believe that Cruz contains that rare mix of cleverness and tactical shrewdness needed to become a power player in Washington. He knows the meat his constituents want to be fed, and he’s not afraid to look dumb in front of everyone else to please them.

It’s a strategy that’s made him a household name in American politics, and one that could have taken him to the highest office in the land; there was never any guarantee that Cruz would one day be President, but it didn’t seem so impossible either. But alas, it is not going to be, which means I think it’s time someone sat down with Ted for a heart to heart talk about how he can stop embarrassing himself online in hopes of future Presidential glory.

Cruz’s latest in a long string of embarrassments is his suggestion that recently fired by Disney director James Gunn needs to be prosecuted as a sex criminal for the tweets that got him fired. And while most would agree that the tweets in question are in bad taste, here’s a list of things that Ted Cruz thinks are worth investigating:

*Gunn being upset about poor hotel shower water pressure.
*Gunn making fun of Louie Anderson
*Gunn suggesting that he had sexual relations with a protocol droid

Read more: https://www.houstonpress.com/news/ted-cruz-needs-to-learn-hell-never-be-president-10699155

July 30, 2018

Democrat Dayna Steele Makes History in Congressional Bid

Dayna Steele has been a pioneer in a lot of things. She’s been a rock-and-roll DJ, businesswoman, book author, nonprofit organizer, motivational speaker, and mother. Now, she wants to be a Democratic lawmaker from one of the reddest districts in Texas.

Steele is making history not only as the first woman to run for U.S. Congress in the 36th Congressional District of Texas, but also for having raised $500,000 so far—more than any previous Democratic candidate.

“And this is mostly small, individual donations,” Steele says. “We don’t take PAC or special-interest money.”

Steele’s campaign manager, Mitch Zaiman, one of 22 paid staffers, points to strong grassroots support. “And we plan to keep building on that,” he says.

Steele is running against first-term incumbent Republican Brian Babin, whose campaign did not respond to a request for an interview. In 2016, Republican Donald Trump captured more than 70 percent of the vote in District 36, which stretches from Seabrook to Jasper.

Read more: http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2018/07/democrat-dayna-steele-makes-history-in-congressional-bid/