tvc184

DWI, not DUI 😀

In this case they did not clear all off-campus speech as permissible. The United States Supreme Court in this case ruled very specifically for her situation. She criticize the school rules (which are open to criticism), did not specifically mention her school and it was a private conversation between her and a couple of friends. The school still retains the ability to regulate off-campus speech if it disrupts the school significantly. In this case the school’s evidence of a serious disruption was that students in an algebra class discussed it for five or 10 minutes for two days. I am going to show just a couple of quotes from the actual Supreme Court decision. The opinions afterwards are mine but the quotes are the opinion of the Court Held: While public schools may have a special interest in regulating some off-campus student speech, the special interests offered by the school are not sufficient to overcome B. L.’s interest in free expression in this case This section shows that the school may have a special interest in regulating off-campus speech. In the phrase “in this case” it shows that is a case by case basis, not always a free speech at any cost ruling nor is off campus free speech unlimited. (2) The circumstances of B. L.’s speech diminish the school’s interest in regulation. B. L.’s posts appeared outside of school hours from a location outside the school. She did not identify the school in her posts or target any member of the school community with vulgar or abusive language. This is the part where it was a generality and did not target any specific person or group in her profanity. Any such action might have upheld the school’s actions but in this case as I have discussed, it was just a general I don’t like school rules but with the F bomb tossed in. That is free speech. Anything more specific likely would not have been. Of course it would still be free speech even if it was specific but the school would likely retain the right to punish her by removing her from a special team. (4) The school’s interest in preventing disruption is not supported by the record, which shows that discussion of the matter took, at most, 5 to 10 minutes of an Algebra class “for just a couple of days” and that some members of the cheerleading team were “upset” about the con- tent of B. L.’s Snapchats. App. 82–83. This alone does not satisfy Tinker’s demanding standards. Pp. 10–11. (5) Likewise, there is little to suggest a substantial interference in, or disruption of, the school’s efforts to maintain cohesion on the school cheerleading squad. This quote from the Supreme Court again goes to the very specific situation being discussed. It again shows that there was no substantial disruption of the ability to maintain authority in the school or the cheerleading squad itself. Merely a person being upset it’s not a violation.That is what the very essence of free speech means, that you can upset other people. The school has an interest in maintaining discipline however such a case is narrow in scope. It really comes down to one or two people or even a few people not liking her post, that is no way constitutes a serious disruption. While this case is clearly the correct decision, free-speech does not allow that you can say anything you want to about your school, a student, a school official, etc., at any time for any reason. As several parts from the Supreme Court decision have stated, the school does have some authority and reasoning for regulating off-campus speech. It however has to be of such a disruptive nature that can be proven for them to take action. Merely saying to heck with school rules but tossing in a little profanity, does not constitute that major disruption. In someways the very ruling itself agrees with Justice Thomas’s dissent. He states that a disruption is wrong and the rest of the court states that it’s wrong but they came to different conclusions on what a major disruption is.

My theme song, Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen. When I was on the swat team up until I was about 45 years old, I would run up to 8 miles a night to stay in shape. I never got into really heavy weights but weighing about 180 pounds, I was bench pressing 250. On one raid at a drug house, I was the ram officer who had to knock the door open. I wore about 35 pounds of body armor and weapons and carried a 72 pound ram two blocks through an alley running to be able to sneak up on the house quickly. Boom, the door came down. After 10 years of doing that I got off the team. That was 20 years ago. Now I am not sure that I can walk two blocks😂😂😂

That is how I got mine.

As recently as, maybe 25 years ago when a majority white city in Beaumont elected a black mayor and I think reelected him 2 or 3 more times? I know it is not a long time ago but 5 years ago a county that’s about 60% white elected a black female sheriff and the re-elected her? Could it be 9 years ago when state Representative James White from Woodville won (I think 5 times so far) as a black man in a district that is almost 80% white? I think that White it’s not going to run again. Many people are speculating that he will run as a lieutenant governor candidate. If that is true we potentially could have Allen West and James White as a governor and lieutenant governor with both being the first black in those positions and also both Republicans. Go figure. We can each have our own beliefs for our own reasons but I wonder how long the complaint will be, but we cannot get ahead because we are ___________ (fill in the blank). The ones that I just named are examples that came off the top of my head and in this immediate area. Outside of our area we could write volumes but as a single example could it be like Mia Love? Love was born in NYC and not only a black female but born to parents who emigrated from Haiti. But where was she elected 11 years ago? Perhaps in the Democratic stronghold of NYC? Nope, in Sarasota Springs, Utah she was elected to the city council and then mayor in a city that is approximately 90% white. Wait, a black female elected mayor not in a city not with barely has a white majority but one where 9 out of 10 are white? Then she went on to serve two terms in the US House of Representatives from the same district. So I wonder, when?

With quite some time being an understatement.

Beaumont has had a black mayor going back a quarter of a century ago when Beaumont was a majority white. Mouton will be at least the third female mayor. She will be neither the first black mayor nor the first female mayor. We have had a black president and now a woman vice president who is also black. Texas has a black population of about 12% or near the average for the rest of the country. If you count the Republican Party, I’m sure it is a much smaller percentage. A little over a year ago the Texas Republicans elected Allen West as a president of the Texas Republican party. Not only is he black, he is not even a native Texan and only moved to the state about five years ago. Was that two strikes against him? He resigned a couple of weeks ago and many people feel that he did so in order to run for governor next year. If so Mr. West must think that the state with only 12% blacks, will support him as a black non-native Texan as governor. When will some people quit seeing race and sex as a negative?

I can’t believe it!!! What has this done to my….. Wait, I don’t live in Beaumont.

Yes. Over 2 million Texans now carry with the Texas LTC and everybody including a juveniles can carry legally inside of a car as long as it’s concealed. None of that including the Texas LTC, require any training. There is now a four hour class for the Texas LTC however it covers laws such as, you cannot shoot somebody for shoplifting and it is better if you get in an argument, just simply walk away. They can currently be taken online so in a fact, there is no real training of any consequence and there is absolutely no firearms training even under the LTC. I believe there is a misconception that the LTC currently requires a firearms training and it does not. Mayor in Texas carry under that law with no training and people ask how the new law is going to affect people with no training required. The answer is the old law requires no training either.

Yes. Over 2 million Texans now carry with the Texas LTC and everybody including a juveniles can carry legally inside of a car as long as it’s concealed. None of that including the Texas LTC, require any training. There is now a four hour class for the Texas LTC however it covers laws such as, you cannot shoot somebody for shoplifting and it is better if you get in an argument, just simply walk away. They can currently be taken online so in a fact, there is no real training of any consequence and there is absolutely no firearms training even under the LTC. I believe there is a misconception that the LTC currently requires a firearms training and it does not. Mayor in Texas carry under that law with no training and people ask how the new law is going to affect people with no training required. The answer is the old law requires no training either.

Under the new Texas law, you do not have to be a citizen of the US or Texas.. Any person within the state of Texas whether they be the resident of another state or even a legal alien, will benefit from this law. The Texas LTC will still be offered and will give certain privileges that Constitutional carry does not and part of that is carrying in other states which recognize the Texas LTC. Another benefit is being able to carry concealed in certain areas on campus of colleges. Another is not committing a federal felony for picking up a child at a school which is a federal crime unless a person has a state license. It is also the benefit of being able to buy any firearm from a federally licensed dealer, as an example Academy sporting goods, without the need for a background check. Basically if you’re talking about just reciprocity, nothing changes. Texas LTC will still be offered and has those listed benefits and will still be recognized by approximately 20 other states. We actually had reciprocity with other states however several of them have gone to Constitutional carry also. Counting the constitutional carry states and the LTC reciprocity, I think they were about 38 states where you can carry if you have a Texas LTC.

Yes. There are also several laws that the LTC gives more rights. As an example, federal law prohibits be carrying on school campuses or within 1000 feet of the school unless you are licensed by the state to have a handgun. So a person with a Texas LTC can have his handgun in his car while he picks up his kids at school. A person who does not have an LTC is committing a federal felony. Will the person ever be caught? Maybe not but if the police make some kind of call or there’s some kind of incident and they discover your weapon, it could be turned over to the ATF and prosecuted and the person may end up in federal prison. Again, that may not be likely but if you want to know the letter of the law, if you carry a handgun within 1000 feet of a school campus and you do not have a Texas LTC, you’re committing a federal felony. Similarly Texas law allows people to have concealed handgun on college campuses including some buildings with restrictions set by the college if the person has an LTC.. A person without an LTC has no such privilege to carry on campus and again, would be committing a Texas felony. There might be others that I cannot think of off the top of my head but the LTC gives you slightly more locations you can carry legally both under state law and federal law.

Didn’t the Supreme Court decide this already about another Colorado cake baker and just today siding with the Catholic Church unanimously over the city of Philadelphia and the Catholic Church refusal to put foster children with same-sex couples?

Yes it seems tragic but he is by far and away the highest solved crime. That is as it should be with like home burglaries, I think the national saving rate is about 10%. So you figure if someone breaks into your home and there is about a 90% chance depression will never be caught. what catches criminals is if they are criminals. People don’t commit one crime and then give it up. A person will break into 10 homes and get away with it with then he will eventually be caught. There are very few serious criminals that commit crime for a long time and don’t get caught. In fact when you see criminals convicted locally, the news will almost always report at this is that person second or third or fourth felony. The fact is if the police catch people but the overcrowded system simply lets them go.

That is not possible because there are too many laws that simply depend on marriage. You might call it a civil union, you might think it’s OK same sex or whatever. It is impossible in the law to escape unions.

It seems like the biggest push for separation of church and state is the left. Now a unanimous Supreme Court appears to have ruled that the government cannot tell the church what to do. Now those same leftists are angry that the Supreme Court sided with separation of church and state. I read the decision from the Supreme Court and it comes down to saying that the city cannot tell the church how it must believe. The Catholic Church had denied services to other religions such as Jewish and Muslim and in the case of foster children, denied same-sex couples because it was against our religion. Since I read and teach supreme court decisions, I found something about this case that is repeated sometimes over and over again. This case went to appeal in front of the federal circuit court and a unanimous circuit court sided with Philadelphia over the Catholic Church. Then the Supreme Court heard the case and it was unanimous in the other direction. I have read so many cases that were unanimous in the lower court and were overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. It is almost like many of the lower court decisions do not read the prior supreme court decisions on the same topic. There is a legal concept called stare decisis. In that concept, appeals court decisions should be based on precedents set in prior decisions. Some people do not believe in stare decisis and believe that each case should stand on its own matter what the prior caselaw. I sometimes feel like the lower courts do not look at the supreme court decisions wish they should. There are simply a lot of cases where the lower court will rule one way and the Supreme Court, not in a split decision which might be understandable, but in an overwhelming unanimous decision will slap the lower court and basically say, what in the heck were you thinking?

I am OK with it. I understand the concern but I think it is much ado about nothing. If you go back to when the CHL passed 26 years ago, it was the claimed that now the gun fights would start. I did not think that was true but I thought there would be some Incidents. I saw no evidence of any people legally carrying, going out and committing crimes. I was a police officer for the last 26 years under that law and can think of maybe one incident where we arrested a CHL holder for committing a crime. Compared to the general population, I think that is a pretty good results for a CHL holder not being a criminal. They changed the law to more or less define traveling as merely being in your car. So for the last 12 to 14 years or so, anyone could carry a handgun in their car anytime they wanted as long as it was concealed. Under your seat, in the glove box, in the consul or even on your seat under a towel, it was legal. Has the homicide rate going up in that timeframe because of this? I don’t think so. There is always the potential that a road rage incident happened because the person had a lawful handgun on him however a person who is willing to shoot you because you did not put on your blinker, would not care about the laws on handguns anyway. That is a part of the argument I never understand is it people seem to think that before the CHL came out, there were no shooting crimes. If fact violent crime has been down somewhat in the last few years but I think it runs in cycles. Since Covid came out about a year and a half ago there seems to be an uptick in violence and also protest like the George Floyd riots. Even though violence has increased somewhat in that timeframe, I don’t think it’s because of carry laws. A person willing to go out and commit a murder on the street is not going to care about a misdemeanor handgun law. We have always been able to carry rifles and shotguns openly in Texas. When the LTC law came out and a few people really got crazy on some Internet forums saying that this was a game changer and so on. Yet again, I have seen nothing to indicate it is a change in the crime level because people could now carry a handgun openly. It is just a personal belief but I think this law will change absolutely nothing. Only thing it will change is a price as you won’t have to pay the $8 a year tax for the LTC.

It could always be open carried under the LTC as long it was on you in a holster. What has almost go unnoticed, they also passed a law in this legislative session that if it is open carried in a car (regardless of constitutional carry or LTC), as long as it is in a holster it does not have to be on your person. As an example you could have a paddle holster or concealed carry holster and not actually have to wear it in the car. You could leave it in the holster on the seat because for some people it is uncomfortable to wear it while in the car. With this new clarification you can leave it in the holster on the seat so you could easily put it on as you are getting out to go shopping, etc.

Nationally I believe the homicide clearance rate in between 60 - 70%. In the southeast Texas area I think it is a little higher like maybe 85% but I can’t find that anywhere. I think 70% would be a good number to go by so if Beaumont has 15 homicides this year, it is likely that about four will go unsolved. That comes out to around 40 per decade and you can go back as far as you want.

This afternoon Governor Abbott signed into law that on September 1 this year, people in Texas can openly or concealed carry a handgun without any license. Let the shootouts begin on that day...... as so many of the comments I have seen. Of course they said the same thing in 1995 when the CHL law was passed, about 12 years ago when you could be in carry a handgun in a vehicle without a license and four years ago when open carry was allowed with an LTC.

In the last four years or so, my Police Department had two cold cases solved by DNA. For some reason those cases don’t always make big local news. I think it is not the fact that it is a DNA case as much as people tend to remember certain homicides that were more big news at the time.

Because there is always the belief, yeah all those other socialist programs failed but ours will succeed. We will do it differently. Socialism is driven by idealism. We will all have a group hug, we will all pitch in our fair share, we will all do the same thing and everything will work out great. It is the panacea to all human problems, we will just all work together. But all these idealists forget one thing. That thing is a human factor. We are all motivated but we are each individually motivated by our personal desires. No one is going to get up and work for his fellow man. We work for ourselves. That doesn’t mean we don’t help our fellow man. I would say that the capitalist American system probably donates more than the rest of the world combined and I’m talking even at the local level. Yes I know that there are doctors they volunteer their services around the world and there are missionaries who take no money and travel to poor countries to help but about 99.99% of the people work or do whatever they do to satisfy themselves. Socialism or equality depends everyone doing what today is being done by the 0.01%. That is the person that will get up and donate his time and effort for the collective. That is the basis of socialism. That is because of human nature however there are even people reading this forum who will think, yeah but that is not our version. Yes, it is your version. The people at the top will live like kings and the 99.5% of the people at the bottom will live like the people in Cuba, NK, etc., however they have convinced themselves otherwise. Under a free enterprise capitalist system there will still be those people at the top but the people in the middle and some of the people near the bottom still live comfortable lives. Many get to do vacations, family gatherings, have decent homes, decent vehicles and I’m talking even in the lower economic circles. Most of the ones in the lower economic sections can still get out if they wish. But again, there will be people reading this comment that will say either to themselves or in this form, all of that may be true but ours will be different. Again, no it won’t. It comes down to one word, freedom. The leftist who are pushing socialism do not believe that.

In truth you could probably interview most people that are from socialist, communist and dictatorship countries and you would get about the same results.

Yep. For all we know they had both planned on robbing each other. I’m sure that has happened. What should happen and I don’t think it always does, you need to go where the evidence leads. You don’t decide what the end is and then go try to find the evidence to prove it.

Assuming that it was that the three in the car from mid county that were going to do the robbery and not the other way around, yes they would need to bring the marijuana. You have to put the carrot in front of the horse to make him run. When they pull up to pick up the black kid, yeah there better be something inside that car that looks like marijuana and darn sure smells like marijuana before he is getting you to go to another location or just sit in a parking lot to make a deal. They are all suspicious of each other and on edge. If you were going to lure someone into a trap, you had better bait. I don’t think that is probably what happened however you cannot negate that possibility. Heck, the three could’ve had the idea to make a drug deal and then halfway there changed their mind and hatched a plan to instead of selling drugs, to go ahead and just do a robbery and be done with it. One of the things I learned in almost 4 decades of law-enforcement, if you think you know what happened before you start the investigation, you’re probably going to screw it up and miss evidence one way or the other.