Law and Order?

...and the gaffes are over Governor Perry?

In a bid to rebuild confidence in a possible campaign for President, Rick Perry has once again stepped in it.  This time his campaign tweeted out a photo of his nemesis Rosemary Lehmberg as being the most drunk Democrat in Texas.

While his campaign has since deleted the tweet my question is has the staffer in question been fired?  If the tweet was as offensive and unauthorized as you claim Governor, why not fire the staff member for the total lack of judgement?  You are Mr. Law and Order, right?

Perry who is in legal trouble - not because of Democrat Lehmberg - but because of a Republican appointed special prosecutor should understand that this is the type of thing that is umimpressive to the voters that will win or lose an election for you.

While his current situation supposedly surrounds the question of whether or not Lehmberg should have resigned after his suggestion and whether she could run her office and the Public Integrity Unit after her own arrest for DWI, I do not remember Perry calling for the resignation of Kaufman County District Attorney Rick Harrison or Swisher County District Attorney Terry McEachern.

Harrison was arrested in Seagoville after driving the wrong way down a street and hitting another car. That was his second conviction for DUI.

In November 2002, Swisher County District Attorney Terry McEachern was arrested in New Mexico after failing a field sobriety test and refusing a breath test. He was found guilty of aggravated DWI in June the next year.


The problem in both of those cases was they were Republican office holders.  So much for law and order.

Crime And Punishment

A teacher was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter and a concurrent sentence of ten years for failing to render aid after a hit and run accident last year.  Many comments are flooding the Dallas Morning News article saying "she should have been put to death" and "I have no pity for this thug."

What amazes me is not the sentence.  I might argue it is probably deserved when you consider she left the scene of an accident without checking on the child she hit.  What amazes me at the outrage at this teacher, yet no one seemed this up in arms when Josh Brent, the former defensive lineman for the Cowboys had a DUI that killed his team mate.

Despite having a DUI in college that meant he was driving without a license, Mr. Brent somehow managed to serve all of 180 days in county jail despite killing someone, yet this woman will serve years.

I'm not sure anymore whether justice is still blind, but you have to wonder based on sentences handed down of late.

I have no pity for this thug

I have no pity for this thu

Player Behavior Confusion

Today Cowboys defensive back Orlando Scandrick was suspended for four games for violation of the league's drug policy.  The drug in question appears to be MDMA.

It wasn't too long ago that Ray Rice beat his fiancee unconscious.

In San Francisco, Aldon Smith has been nailed on not one, but two DUIs.  He also has a little issue with weapons charges and oh yeah, he made a bomb threat at an airport.

While none of these guys deserve a pass it appears increasingly clear that while the NFL will "discipline" all of them, the league is endorsing this behavior with the way their owners

operate.

In Dallas, photos were recently released showing Jerry Jones in a situation right out of Bill Clinton's playbook with two local stripper.  Jerry Jones has repeatedly demonstrated that money can not buy class and right now he looks like a rube from Arkansas who came into money.

Jones, who has his own drinking problem, is all too ready to bring back Josh Brent -  a player who killed a team mate because he couldn't handle his alcohol issues.  How can Mr. Jones expect Josh Brent to handle gap assignments when he can not seem to handle basic life assignments?

Of course when we come to alcohol and the NFL, it is hard to look past Jim Irsay.  Irsay was busted for DUI.  He was found with multiple prescription pain killers and $30,000 in cash in his car despite his alleged girlfriend dying of an overdose just two weeks prior.  I am not a police officer, but in my world this amounts to what you might call a clue.

Where is Commissioner Goodell on all this?  I have yet to hear public comments saying this behavior is inappropriate.  Worse, his own Vice President of Officiating, Dean Blandino, was seen recently on the Cowboys Party Bus headed to Bootsy Bellows nightclub.  Needless to say, other NFL and team executives were less than impressed and called the decision a "total lack of judgement."

The point is the NFL will throw the book at players for a sneeze in the wrong direction or say a player dunking a ball over a goal post, but they don't seem to have the heart to deal with their owners and executives who can't seem to keep it together.

The NFL seems confused by why they have a player behavior problem.  I'm not confused at all.

Opening Day Losses (Reprise)

Texas Rangers fans once again showed their class.

Opening Day was Monday and instead of treating it with the dignity and respect it deserved as a wannabe national holiday, instead local baseball "fans" decided to use it as a reason to get trashed at 10:00 AM in the morning and defile a statue set up to commemorate a fan who had died in the park a few years ago.

The spectacle of a trashed statue to a dead firefighter and his boy should not be surprising.  Look at the number of fans who pass by and do nothing and it is the same in that stadium at Globe Life Park where regardless of where you sit you hear the most inane comments from fans right in front of children.

I get that fans get excited, but I think it is the alcohol which is the problem.  That AND a lax security staff, a staff that allowed former Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton's wife, Katie, to be the subject of multiple obscenities and commentary - from fans who likely had too much to drink.

A few years ago I attended a baseball coaching clinic put on by Cal Ripken, Jr.  The session started with a note that ten million kids play some sort of organized youth baseball.  After some polite applause, the crowd was reminded that the number while significant was down more than twenty-five percent from ten years earlier.

While I am not ready to say alcohol at sports stadiums is to blame for losses in youth sports, who wants to take their kids to a game where rowdy, alcoholics demean both the players and the venue?  This was another Opening Day loss for Major League Baseball.  I hope it fixes this problem soon.

NFL And Booze

Am I wrong or is the NFL fueled by alcohol?  Budweiser, Miller/Coors, and even Sam Adams seem to be as omnipresent with the NFL as Ford, Dodge, and Viagra.  (By the way, does anyone else find it odd that a rough and tumble sport that intimates they are the be all, end all when it comes to manhood has to advertise a prescription pill to...support your manhood?)

I am not sure what is more common that the issue of alcohol in the NFL, but I am open to hearing it.  Whether it be the athlete or the executive, it seems that the NFL can not operate without someone acting like, or actually being, a drunk.

While Major League Baseball has struggled with steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, the NFL mostly scoffs at the idea of handling it.  Instead, inebriation, either through repeated head trauma or through alcohol is the cross the NFL must carry.

In the last year alone there were at least seventeen incidents involving players being arrested for DUI, public intoxication, or other assorted alcohol related offenses.  Seventeen!  And this does not even include the January 22, 2013 arrest of Dallas Cowboys' defensive linesman Jay Ratliff who was popped only a few months after team mate Josh Brent killed his team mate Jerry Brown.  An important note in the Brent case, this was not his first DUI offense either.  Instead, he was arrested during his college playing days and clearly did not learn his lesson then.

Don't think I only blame the players because the executives have gotten in on the action too.  As you watch the Super Bowl and think about the various alcohol ads, don't forget that your Denver Broncos have an executive who had a 0.246 Blood Alcohol Concentration, or three times the legal limit anywhere.

Maybe it is my career choice, but I have seen gallons of blood over the years spilled on our highways because of the gallons of alcohol that consumers didn't control.  These personal choices have real and serious consequences and it would be nice if the NFL would stop talking about alcohol abuse and start doing something about it.

Bad Behavior

 Back to school parties can be bad, especially when high school age kids mix alcohol, drugs, and who knows what else.  The Albany Times Union reported that several teens got the great idea that they would break into an ex-NFL players home and use it as a personal party pad for the weekend.  The problem, other than breaking in and using it for a personal party pad, was that they decided to post pictures and other evidence on Facebook and Twitter because when committing a crime, there is nothing better than self-disclosure.

Personally, I am happy they did it because now we can skip the mea culpas about "not my fault" and I didn’t mean to when they really mean, they didn’t mean to get caught BS.  This type of behavior is exactly what Brian Holloway called it: "a migrating mass of absurd ideas and entitlement."  That's right, this behavior happened, not because it is okay, but because the kids feel entitled and parents are more likely to lash out at the person trying to correct their child's behavior than they are at their kid who they apparently have skipped parenting for the past sixteen to eighteen years.

Instead of parents showing up with their child to help clean up the property, Holloway has reported multiple parents have threatened to press charges against him, sue him, or firebomb he and his family after he reported what their children had already reported via Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Is this a joke?

Your kid breaks into someone else's house.  They are obviously underage, yet still probably engaged in drugs, alcohol, and potentially date rape when you read some tweets about roofies and being unable to wake up young women.  Your kid tweets about all of the above and you are mad that someone says, you shouldn't out my kid?  Really?!?

Hey, better idea...raise your kids to have a clue.  Help them learn a little respect for not only their over inflated egos, but for other people's property.  Instead, you are worried your kid won't make it into college now.  Maybe college and being around more drugs and alcohol isn't quite the right place for your temperamental child whose value system is pretty poor anyway.

While the students' behavior was bad, in general, it is the defensiveness of these moronic parents that is worse.  How can we grow as a society when parents defend the actions of these wannabe parasites who think the world will just show up and deliver to them?  For those parents who think this is okay, you should be glad Mr. Holloway is trying to help get them on the straight and narrow.  Some folks wouldn't go the route of education and helping them like Holloway is with his Help Me Save 300 Initiative.  Some folks would use force - deadly force - to stop this.  Whose side is the law on when it comes to defending yourself and your property.  What happens if it isn't Holloway's home, but that of George Zimmerman?

Since some of these parents are so eager to go to court to save their precious Johnny's reputation, I hope Mr. Holloway follows suit and not only presses criminal charges, but engages in his own civil suit against these parents who think this type of behavior is acceptable.  I would love to be on THAT jury.  It isn't often that the defendant puts the evidence against himself or herself out there for all to see, but in this case, how much easier could the case be?

In the meantime, instead of expressing gratitude and appreciation, your anger is funny.  Now that you are ready to play mamma and papa bear to your little wayward cub, you want everyone to be nice to your little bear cub.  I am guessing you are the same mamma and papa bear who were busy yelling at teachers to let Johnny retake his chem test because he was caught cheating, but you thought that was okay....a youthful mistake because instead of teaching valuing ethics and integrity, you taught how important 401(k) and BMWs were.  I am guessing you were the same parent yelling at coaches and referees when Johnny couldn't catch the ball as if it were their fault, Johnny thought he could just do those moves like they do on the Wii football game.

You clearly went into CYA mode when you decided that it was a good idea to delete that evidence against little Johnny, despite the fact it had already been posted and screenshots had been nabbed.  Much more important to deny, deny, deny than take Mr. Holloway up on his offer to help clean up his place.  Smooth move Ex Lax!  I realize your poor little one shouldn't be exposed to the idea of cleaning up urine soaked carpets, but maybe they shouldn't have been exposed to urine soaked carpets to begin with.

You should be glad Holloway is trying to parent your child since you gave up on the task so long ago, but my real question is, who is going to parent you?