Scattershooting things beside the upcoming city elections

After we note another pair of disasters at the Harris County Jail this week.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office announced that a jailer died after an altercation with an inmate early Thursday morning. And during an afternoon press conference Sheriff Ron Hickman called to take questions on how exactly this happened, he could answer virtually none of them.

Here's what Hickman did manage to say: At 4 a.m. Thursday, three Harris County jailers were transferring an inmate from recreation to his general population cell when the inmate became non-compliant and physically combative, leading one jailer to deploy his pepper spray.

But as for why detention officer Tronoski Jones collapsed moments later in the hallway and died, Hickman said he doesn't know—Hickman wouldn't speculate, at least not until they have more information from the medical examiner.

Hickman also said he doesn't know whether the inmate actually did anything to contribute to or cause Jones's death, or if the inmate even delivered any kind of blow at all—Jones did not have any outward injuries. As for why or how the struggle between the inmate and jailers escalated, Hickman said he did not know at this time. When asked if there was video of the incident, Hickman again said he didn't know.

Among other unanswered questions: Was it unusual for an inmate to be at recreation at 4 in the morning?  “I've been here for 90 days,” Hickman answered. “What do I know?”

Good on him.  At least he isn't blaming former sheriff Adrian Garcia, like I would.

At 9 p.m. Tuesday, spokesman Thomas Gilliland said two detention officers were yelling at each other when one of them, Carlton Bernard Freeney, pulled a knife. Gilliland says Freeney slashed the other jailer, whose identity has not been released, right above his left elbow.

Medical staff checked out the injured jailer, who didn't need to be hospitalized. Freeney, on the other hand, was detained and took a quick trip to, well, jail. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Gilliland said officers can carry knives up to 2 inches long). 

Other than to type "jailers get in fight with pocket knives", I got nothing.  Moving on...

-- Did you feel the summer heat was more than its usual oppressive last month?  Yeah, you weren't alone in feeling that way.  July was only the hottest month in the history of the world.  We seem to be back in our tropical mode here again in Houston, after the six-week drought that burned up a lot of the grass my lawn had grown for the first time in places.  And barely any hurricanes to speak of in the actual tropics.  Weird.

-- Hillary Clinton's email problems are weighing her down.  Congress critters are getting nervous.  It's just a Chinese water torture of some new revelation every single day.  She's now polling behind some of the Republican front-runners in three swing states.  Drip, drip, drip.  Are you ready for another fourteen-and-a-half months of watching her ship slowly list and then slip beneath the waves?  How could she blow such a sure thing?  All the Clinton supporters I know have stopped attacking Bernie Sanders and curled themselves up in a ball on the floor, moaning.

I can't take as much joy in this development as I would like, considering the fact that these people are going to be insufferable if she can't close the deal again.  Far too many of them are the type of Democrat who would vote for Bush before they would vote for Bernie Sanders.

-- Ashley Madison hacked.  Josh Duggar again.  That guy needs saltpeter (even if that is just an urban legend).  Then there's the hundreds of government workers, many with high-security clearances, who also got busted.

Hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.

Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections — logged by the website over five years — and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.

Some of them used pre-paid credit cards to try to hide the transactions from their spouses, but still logged on at work.  No need to be worried about people being black-mailed, though.

"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.

Not quite hard enough, by all appearances.

-- I'm already tired of blogging about other people's inappropriate sexual proclivities (irrespective of the fact they got hacked, which is the real crime), but then there's Jared Fogle.  The news to which I am not linking, either.  Hold the gyro-sandwich-size jokes along with the mayo, please.  If they will hurry up and arrest Duggar, there's a bunk right next to Fogle available.  Maybe they can go to counseling together.

The only thing I'll say is that you have a lot to look forward to on Sunday in the Funnies, because the cartoonists are swarming like flies.