Photo Montage by Frank Villa, a native of Presidio, Texas
“YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN MADNESS, EH? “I DON’T, AT ALL. I KNOW BETTER THAN TO FOOL WITH IT. “SO WHAT YOU DO… “SO WHAT YOU DO IS GO ON BY IT. WHAT YOU DO IS GET DONE WHAT YOU OUGHT TO BE DOING. AND WHAT YOU DO RARELY – AND I MEAN RARELY – IS TO FLIRT WITH IT.” – JAMES DICKEY, DELIVERANCE
Somewhere in Occupied Coahuila – The words came from the tobacco country of the Carolinas. burning off the Facebook page.
People from as far away as other continents are beginning to observe all this, because it’s important. When there is great friction on the Texas – Mexican border, there historically war follows close behind.
But Shaun Kane, who hails from Massachusetts, said he learned early in his career as a student of martial arts that once an opponent is down – and out – “…you finish him.”
He didn’t bother to elaborate.
The tattoos, the deep tan, the subject at hand – all speak of a warrior’s code. Common sense prevails.
This man Abel Reyna, the elected Criminal District Attorney, has come adrift from his moorings, his oath to the Constitution, to uphold and protect its tenets, from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
A trusted servant, he neglected to touch the bases of the grand experiment set in motion by Franklin and Jefferson, Madison and Adams, Hamilton and Washington.
He ignored the guarantees of a republican form of government as his actions spoke in loud tones of the imperial, the cruel dictates of the tyrant.
As a spectator, I happened to be seated in the very back row of the cavernous basement auxiliary courtroom in the Courthouse Annex. A multipurpose room that serves as a court or a jury assembly room, as needed, its floor area covers nearly half a city block.
Next to me sat a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man from the Office of the Attorney General, an Assistant To Ken Paxton, who was compelled as all were to stand, then be seated when the bailiff called, “All rise,” and 54th Criminal District Judge Matt Johnson and his entourage of Court Reporter, nearly a half dozen staff members of the prosecution, two defense attorneys, and the defendant trooped in and out of a jury room during the laborious process of the deselection of literally hundreds of veniremen in the trial of Bandido Jake Carrizal of Dallas.
“Please be seated,” Judge Johnson would intone.
This was during that unhappy period of the fall when the great media distraction presented on any given Sunday or Monday night consisted of professional football players refusing to stand for our National Anthem, and rather, “taking a knee.”
This consistent action on the part of hundreds had the effect of turnomh the mere formality observed in courtrooms of a normal size into the majestic observance of power that it really and truly is, something lurking in the consciousness of any auld sod, the cavernous hall, the halberds, armored soldiers, the endless rigamarole of the introduction of nobility.
Wag that I am, I turned to my companion of the morning and said, “What if we all just took a knee?”
In a moment I shall never forget, we both turned into simpering school boys in attendance at an assembly suffered at length, smiling behind our hands, looking at the ceiling, trying to maintain our composure – at least until recess, when we could escape into the gorgeous weather of a crisp Texas prairie autumn day.
He said, “Let’s not go there, Mr. Parks. Just – don’t.”
The very idea! To be caught dead with the likes of the Legendary acting out his antics in an arena wherein they play for blood – for life and liberty.
And so, it came as no surprise when the Office of the Attorney General announced recently that their staff is busy with weighty matters of consequence and has no time to prosecute the nearly two hundred indictments obtained by Abel Reyna, a man whom a visiting Judge from Harris County told, if he could, he surely would have him placed in handcuffs and taken to jail.
There is abundant evidence of his commission of aggravated perjury from the witness stand; the Assistant Attorney General of whom I speak was surreptitiously recorded recounting the various acts of tampering with evidence he could document personally, and the entire defense bar is calling for relief.
And, yet, the officials to whom this dread task – removing a disgraced and clearly culpable official from the practice of law in the face of mountains of evidence of his ill will for We The People – continue to dither and stall.
They seem to think they can afford to wait until January 1, when a new District Attorney will take over.
When will this “typical city” emerge from its hideous day dream and take action? There stands the opponent, now defeated, dismissed from the courtroom by a substitute judge who refused to take any real action in the matter at hand, humiliated, angered, a pilloried man in a desperate situation.
Do you really propose to turn over the peace and dignity of The People of the State of Texas to this unsound set of circumstances?
Meanwhile, your courts are teeming with minor offenders charged with the horrendous crimes of driving while license suspended, or with insurance lapsed, intoxicated, possession of a small amount of dope – to a man or a woman they are people serving time for the crime on not having enough money to remedy the situation.
His lenience toward campaign contributors is the subject of a federal probe initiated by his former First Assistant District Attorney, who approached the Texas Rangers first, but soon learned that they can do nothing unless the investigation is approved by Reyna. He chose the FBI, and the file has languished there for years.
Women have lost their lives because the peace officers charged with the arrest of of their assailants ignored the warrants issued and perished trying to defend themselves from men who clearly had violent intentions toward them.
The entire top rank of leadership of the City of Waco has experienced a turnover, all of them reportedly “sworn to secrecy” about the matters that have ensued since two private armies clashed in armed conflict on a Sunday noon at a beer garden in this city.
One is compelled to think of the police and the Department of Public Safety officers who allowed Reyna to take over the investigation of a horrible criminal incident without the slightest protest.
No one with any credible authority has made mention of this. Nor has a badged, commissioned, hip slung, holster-slapping daddy-o one made an arrest or filed a meaningful report about how three pickup loads of men curbed a motorcyclist at the 322 mile marker on I-35 at Lorena and beat his head bloody with hammers and pieces of pipe. Not one arrest has been made.
There has not been much mention of the police investigation of young ladies who suffered aggravated sexual assault by privileged members of an elite class of Baylor students, members of the football program, the farm team system of the NFL. The accredited police department at Baylor let it slide, as did the upper management of that institution, the largest religious university in the nation. Where were the investigators?
The Texas Rangers are reportedly standing by to make the cases the evidence supports, but, according to credible and reliable sources, they have not obtained the green light from Reyna to do so.
It is clear that sources of power outside the local environs of McLennan County are waiting to see what the local leadership is prepared to do before stepping into the quagmire.
Grow a spine, Waco. Think of your children.
