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A Tarrant County jury awarded Mark and Rhonda Lesher of Clarksville, Texas, the sum on Friday after the couple filed a lawsuit against people writing anonymous, hurtful comments about them online. (KHOU.) One of the defendants, Shannon Coyel, had accused the Leshers of sexually assaulting her in 2008. The Leshers were indicted, went to trial, and were acquitted. Anonymous commenters called the Leshers sexual deviants, molesters and

HCCLA President Earl Musick's letter to the Houston Chronicle on the subject of METRO VIPRgate: Objection to searches Regarding "Undercover officers ride buses in anti-terror effort" (Page B2, Thursday), the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association (HCCLA), which represents more than 600 area criminal-defense lawyers, is alarmed that Metro Police Chief Victor Rodriguez invited Transportation Security Administration teams to conduct operations at Houston's bus stops. The TSA is

Last month I blogged about the Harris County Republican Party and the Harris County Public Defender's Office, talking about what I called "the greed angle": that former HCRP chair Gary Polland, who is still influential in the party, is trying to use the party (by, among other things, deceiving the party's constituents) to protect his court-appointed income stream: Sometimes good policy happens to be good for the

Friday's operation occurred from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eight felony arrests were made in one shift, compared to five last month. (METRO blog.) Here's a PDF of an Excel file METRO produced in response to a request for a list of arrests made in the course of "Operation Bus Safe" 13 April 2012. (NB it's METRO, and not I, that abbreviated "Bus Safe" to BS in

Today I was on Geoff Berg's Partisan Gridlock radio show on Pacifica radio station KPFT, along with METRO Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. It was an hour-long show, but only the first half seems to have been recorded to MP3. Also, it didn't broadcast over the airwaves in some of the KPFT service area once I started talking: technical difficulties involving lightning. Here's what we have of it:

We have heard talk of “justice.” Is there anybody who knows what justice is? No one on earth can measure out justice. Can you look at any man and say what he deserves—whether he deserves hanging by the neck until dead or life in prison or thirty days in prison or a medal? The human mind is blind to all who seek to look in at it

METRO press release 13 April: (Source.) METRO blog post 16 April: (Source.) METRO twitter account 18 April: (Source.) I'm guessing someone talked to a lawyer and realized that random bag checks aren't such a hot idea, Constitutionally speaking. So we agree on that. Now, METRO, let's get together and send TSA packing.

John Brennan stripped naked at a TSA screening area Tuesday night in protest. He got arrested for his trouble. MLK and Henry David Thoreau would be proud. Brennan is charged with "disorderly conduct and indecent exposure." I've looked at the statutes (2011 ORS §163.465, Public Indecency, and 2011 ORS §§166.023, 025, Disorderly Conduct), and I don't see how the government makes its case on these facts. Interfering

• I wrote more than two years ago about Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Last week he was disbarred. I wrote: Aside from the ethical question, there are practical considerations. These Maricopa County Assistant County Attorneys, casting their lot with Andrew Thomas, are lying down with dogs. If Arpaio and Thomas’s fantastical castle in the sky comes crashing to the ground, those lawyers are going to be