Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center

 Oh, dear Lord.  I've hauled off and pissed off the Twitterverse. Not in the normal way, like when I'm fully intending on pissing off people.  I did this one on accident. Yesterday was a frustrating day in general.  We had a family emergency that required my wife to go out of town unexpectedly and I was trying to do Zoom hearings while keeping my 6-year-old and my 14-year-old on task with their online classes.  At one point, while Zooming into a court and setting a case for trial, the judge mentioned that I seemed relaxed and comfortable.  It was then that I looked down and realized I hadn't changed into a collared shirt for my Zoom hearings (as I normally do). Instead, I was wearing a Drive-By Truckers  concert t-shirt that read "Hell No, I Ain't Happy." I changed and went outside for my next Zoom setting because I didn't want to disturb the kids' classes.  While sitting on my front porch, a lizard ran up my leg.  It was just one of those days where t

*All apologies to former Senator and Saturday Night Live  alum Al Franken, who wrote a great book with this title.  It just fit so perfectly for the topic of this article that I couldn't resist copying it.  I love Al Franken so if this ever gets back to him, I hope he isn't mad. So, remember back in June when I wrote this post ? The short-ish version of what it covered was this: A year or so ago, Kim Ogg used taxpayer money to hire Mark Goldberg  as an Assistant District Attorney, a politically connected former City Councilman who Ogg had gone to law school with.  He spent a very brief stint in Misdemeanor before being "promoted" to upper management at the office as a "community outreach committee member."  What this actually means is that Ogg hired somebody with taxpayer funds to prosecute, but then reassigned him to plan events designed to get her reelected.  Not that it will matter to voters, but some of us find that to be really illegal. As part of his

 With everything going on in the world lately, I have to admit that early voting kind of snuck up on me this year.  I remember hearing something about Governor Greg Abbott adding a week of early voting a few months ago, but then I saw that some of the Right Wing "power brokers" had tried to sue him to stop that from happening.  Apparently, the plan didn't change, and citizens of Texas can begin voting Early Voting on Tuesday, October 13th.   It ends on Friday, October 30th and Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. Regardless of whether you are a Right-leaning voter or a Left-leaning voter, you should anticipate turn out to be tremendous this year.  You should definitely be making plans to vote early and give yourself some padding if your original scheduled plan to vote falls through.  My guess would be that given the new numbers of registered voters (over 200,000 new voters since the 2016 election, I believe), that even traditionally "slow" days during Early Vo

 The world is a little darker tonight due to the passing of legendary defense attorney, former prosecutor, and friend Mike Hinton. I've looked through all of my photos hoping to find one of me and the first man who gave me a job in the legal profession, and sadly I couldn't find one.  For those of you who knew Mike, it is understandable that I don't have a picture with him because he never sat still long enough for me to take one. The phrase "to know him was to love him" is often said on the occasion of a person's passing, but I can't think of anyone more worthy of the phrase than Mike Hinton.  Everyone who met him simply loved him.  He didn't really give you much of an option to do otherwise.  He was a short, roly-poly man with an exuberance for simply existing.  He was perpetually happy and happy to see you.  Hugs, cheek kisses, over-the-top greetings followed by sincere conversations punctuated with his staccato exclamations and his deep laughs were