Dead Man Balking

From the Texas Tribune: Case Open

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Twila Busby was Hank Skinner’s soul mate. “We just fell together. We just clicked, man,” he says. The two were hardly apart after they met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They would kiss in public and cuddled up on the couch to watch thrillers. They were “sick in love,” Skinner says through a telephone receiver behind a Plexiglas window on Texas’ death row unit in Livingston.



A jury found that Skinner was so sick in love that, in a jealous rage, he strangled Busby, bashed in her head and face with an axe handle and then stabbed to death her two mentally disabled adult sons on New Years Eve 1993. He was sentenced to death for the three murders. His execution is scheduled for February 24.

The 47-year-old doesn’t deny he was in the small house in the tiny West Texas town of Pampa on the night of the murders or that the blood on his clothes that night belonged to 41-year-old Busby and her sons. But Skinner and his lawyers say there’s no way he could have killed anyone; he was so loaded on vodka and pills that he was nearly comatose. They argue that his appointed trial attorney, a former district attorney who had previously prosecuted him for theft and assault, failed to adequately investigate other potential suspects. They insist Texas is about to execute an innocent man — and the state has evidence that could prove it.

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Read the rest of the story

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UPDATE: The 2nd part of the story: Case Open: The Investigation

Real Mean Bottle - Bob Seger & Kid Rock

Dunno what's up w/ the vid; the song ends at around the 3:00 mark, then there's two minutes of silence. I didn't like the other vids offered, one was a crappy concert recording and at least one other was personalized as a joke. Like I said, it's done with after three minutes.



I have this album and love it. One of the comments on this vid was "This was about Johnny Cash, you should know."

Made me literally LOL because the song's lyrics specifically mention Merle Haggard: "Hag, it musta been a real mean bottle, made you write the songs that way." Also mentions the "stories about prison" and while Cash is famous for his Folsom concert and "Folsom Prison Blues", I believe he never was in prison - "only" jail - and Haggard did do some hard time. (and according to Wiki, such as that is, Haggard was at the Folsom concert..."in the audience".)

Because I Am What?

These things are just too funny sometimes.

You Are Colorful Because You Are Optimistic

You insist on seeing the bright side, even when the world seems gloomy and dreary. You may not be naturally optimistic, but you believe that staying positive is an important part of happiness. You may be bright and constructive, but you're also a realist. You know when things need to be fixed. And because you stay so positive, you are able to fix any problems that come your way. You have a lot of strength.

The Colors Test

Blogthings: Quizzes and Tests and Memes, Oh My!

panjandrum

panjandrum\pan-JAN-druhm\ , noun;
1. An important personage or pretentious official.

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Like our Congress and Administration, I think, except they're the only ones who think they're important...which makes them pretentious. (and a bunch of other things)

Deafening Donkey Duet

There were other options for the title, most involving "ass" and "blow it out".

The first thing I thought was I bet that guy thought "Al Hirt that donkey's ears."

Audie Murphy's Heroic Stand

From Texas on the Potomac

On this date in 1945, during World War II, First Lt. Audie Murphy single-handedly stopped German troops from advancing on his unit, killing 50 of them. In eastern France, near the village of Holtzwihr, Murphy and his men came under siege by six German tanks and 250 infantrymen. Murphy, who grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Hunt County, told his men to fall back into the woods. Murphy climbed atop a burning tank destroyer with a machine gun. Though he was shot in the leg while he stood, he remained atop the tank for an hour, stopping troops on three sides. Thanks to Murphy's efforts, he and his men successfully led a counterattack that drove the Germans from Holtzwihr. For his act, Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor. He became the nation's most decorated soldier before he turned 21. When Murphy returned to the United States, he began an acting career and starred in more than 40 films. Murphy died in 1971, at the age of 46, when the private plane in which he rode crashed near Roanoke, Va. He is buried in Arlington Cemetery in Washington, DC.

Audie Murphy playing himself in the 1955 movie based upon his autobiography "To Hell and Back".



As the information blurb states on the video page, "Rambo is a myth, but Audie was the real thing."

Wikipedia Entry IMDB listing for the movie. Murphy's other movies, mostly Westerns.