New Braunfels is a small town stuck between Austin and San Antonio. It is famous for the rivers running through it, providing great fun for tubers in the hot Texas sun.

And a butt crazy judicial system.

State District Judge Jack Robison interrupted jury deliberation to “sway jurors to return a not guilty verdict in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teen girl for sex.”

He said he was powerful sorry to interrupt them but, “when God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,” according to the Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels.

I suspect the jury figured that if God wanted them to know something, he would have told them, not the judge.

Here’s something you might want to bookmark in case you ever need to know where last year went or you want to play Trump Trivia at a cocktail party.

Day By Day With the Trump Presidency

No kidding.  They do all 365 days. Remember when had a real president and on some days, literally nothing crazy happened?

I do not know about your neck of the woods, but we’re in for a dreary weekend in mine.  I can handle cold.  I can handle wet. But if you put them both together, I stay in my housecoat and fuzzy slippers all day drinking hot tea with whiskey in it.

So grab a blanket and read through the dreary.  Here’s Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the House Committee.  Skip over the parts at the beginning where lawyers are rattling papers at each other.  Lawyers throw paper at each other much the same way that cavemen threw rocks at each other.

As Rachel Maddow said last night, “It reads like a spy novel.”

Thanks to Scott for the reminder!

Okay, here’s how you know that the Republican congressional candidate in Pennsylvania is gonna lose to the Democrat.

“The White House says that, despite the president’s tweet, he is not going to Pennsylvania Thursday to campaign for a congressional candidate there,” the AP reports.

“Now press secretary Sarah Sanders says the purpose of the visit is actually to promote Trump’s agenda, especially the Republican tax overhaul.”

This is also how you know that somebody leaked Trump the answers to the cognitive test at his physical.

This is the seat where pro-life congressman Tim Murphy urged his mistress to have an abortion.  He stepped down and now there’s a special election.  The Republicans are going all-out to win the seat and the Democrat in the race is only getting marginal support from outside groups like Daily Kos and End Citizens United.

I wonder when Trump is going to get tired of being corrected.

Outside doctors have reviewed Trump’s test results from his physical last week, and some have concluded that he has heart disease and is at risk for heart attack or stroke.  From the horse’s mouth, Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute on Trumps LDL cholesterol of 143:

“That’s a really high LDL,” Dr. Topol said. “We’re talking about a 70-plus-year-old man who is obese and doesn’t exercise. Just looking at the lab value, you would raise a big red flag. I would never use the words ‘excellent health.’ How you could take these indices and say excellent health? That is completely contraindicated.”

Dr. David Maron, the director of preventive cardiology at Stanford University’s medical school, was asked if Trump was indeed in “excellent  health”.  His answer?  “God, no.”

Trump is well known for eating like a 14 year old and drinking a dozen Diet Cokes a day.  He boasts about not drinking alcohol, but that hasn’t lowered his risk for heart attack in the slightest; in fact, he’s grossly overweight eating crap on a daily basis.  Talking about his obesity, Topol said,

“Here the issue is, does he have abdominal obesity? I don’t care what his height is. All you have to do is look at his abdomen. Abdominal obesity, that’s the machinery for inflammation for the heart.”

Sanja Gupta of CNN went further saying that the calcium in his blood indicates heart disease.  The Twittersphere erupted on that news.  Other doctors, though, dismiss Gupta’s claim as being overstated.  Apparently the cholesterol level is more indicative of the potential heart problem.

The scary part of this whole thing?  No, not his health; we all know he’s a heart attack looking for a place to happen.  It’s that a Navy doctor practicing at Walter Reed Medical Center and the White House physician has misrepresented the health report of the President of the United States, then gone on national television and talked about his “excellent health”, which anyone with functioning eyes in their head knows is false.  He ought to lose his medical license and be drummed out of the Navy.

Okay, word has leaked, oozed, or crawled out that the FBI is now investigating whether Russia funneled cash money to the NRA to help Trump.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

That’s almost too good to be true, y’all.  The NRA palling around with commies, and breaking the law.

… the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

And some folks say it’s actually closer to $70 million.

Personally, I think by the time this is over, we’re gonna have to build a new jail for all these guys.  Hell, I’ll do a fundraiser for it!