Afternoon Links: There is Crying in Baseball, a Cereal Revolt, and Coke at BYU

Dukes is accused of “giving a taxpayer-funded raise to a legislative aide to cover gas money for driving Dukes’ daughter to and from school.”

She allegedly falsified travel reimbursement vouchers for days she didn’t come to work. Which, given that she has shown up late to court hearings in this case so many times the judge threatened to hold her in contempt, makes some sort of sense. Oh, yeah, and she “was absent for roll call 65 percent of the time during the 2017 legislative regular session.” When she did show up? She was “noticeably impaired while trying to perform legislative duties at the Capitol and showed up late to a House Appropriations Committee hearing on March 29, stating, “I know I’m talking a lot. I’m full of morphine and will be headed out of here soon.” Not surprisingly, she was also late on her personal and campaign finance disclosures, and was fined thusly.

It gets worse. When served with a warrant to produce a cell phone, she gave the investigators at the Texas Rangers a phone “that did not match the identification number on the phone they had requested.”

Dukes runs a consulting firm, and the Austin school district paid her over $500,000 for consulting work, which she promptly subcontracted to somebody else. (Should state legislators really be doing business with the government they oversee? Who thought this through?)

But here’s the real gem: “According to the filing, Dukes paid an online psychic $51,348 from December 2014 to January 2016, totaling nearly $1,000 per week.” A grand a week better buy you a Miss Cleo level psychic. Texas, as they love to brag, does things big. And boy, does Texas deliver here.

Trix are for kids, not middling do-gooder activist parents. This is a heartwarming story about how a big corporation and its customers told the middle man (read: parents) to go fly a kite. Trix changed its formula to use radishes and turmeric instead of artificial colors. Trix, presumably, thought it was Doing The Right Thing and getting out ahead of competitors by riding the wave of activist parents’ petitions to remove artificial colors from their food. But the naturally colored Trix looked disgusting. As the WSJ reports:

Brightly (and artificially) colored Trix are back. Thank goodness.

Coke coming to BYU. Whether or not Mormons can have caffeine is … complicated. Many Mormons do not drink caffeine. At the flagship university, Coca Cola has not been sold in the dining halls since the 1950s. That’s changing, per a charming Q&A released by BYU’s dining halls. Young BYU Cougars will be happy to know that, while their caffeine policy from the last century is being vacated, it won’t take decades to catch up: They’re going to get a few of the “freestyle” machines that allow users to mix vanilla and cherry and other flavors into their drinks. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here. BYU will not be selling highly-caffeinated energy drinks. Boo!

Time for a vote! Our colleagues at Red Alert Politics, a millennial-focused webzine are tallying votes for their annual 30 Under 30 awards. Be sure to drop by and take a look at the folks they’ve nominated, and do vote for those whom you find impressive. Also, Bill Kristol has a World Series prediction contest (with special TWS prizes!), so if you’re into baseball, cast your ballot!

There are times when crying in baseball is appropriate. If you’re a baseball fan, no doubt you saw the heartbreaking footage of grown men crying yesterday after a foul ball line drive struck a 2-year-old girl in the face. WABC reports her father saying: “She’s doing alright, just keep her in your thoughts.” The ball left Todd Frazier’s bat going a reported 105 mph. It was downright scary.

This immediately prompted a discussion about whether baseball stadiums need more netting. MLB recommends that teams hang netting all the way out to the end of each dugout, but does not require it. As one of the announcers observed, some of the best seats are, in fact, the most dangerous. During the World Baseball Classic, I followed Team Israel when they were playing at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, and later at the Tokyo Dome. Their netting situation in Japan and Korea is far more roubst than in MLB stadiums, and I suspect American fans are not probably prepared to accept such a drastic change so quickly. Especially since kids love to go lean on the dugout to see their favorite players and catch balls thrown to them at the end of the side of an inning. After all, part of the fun is the risk, and getting a foul ball.

As an adolescent, I got pegged with a foul ball in the head. Embarrassingly, it was my fault. The ball came right to me, and I missed it with my glove. I was fine. I even took the public train home mid-game, so I could play in my Little League game. At Cleveland Municipal Stadium in the early 1990s, my best friend witnessed a grown man hit squarely in the face with a foul ball, breaking his glasses. He was taken out on a stretcher. Baseball can be dangerous, but you can’t ever take the risk out of baseball. What steps are taken to diminish the risk of fan injury (if any) will be interesting to see. Prediction: year after year, we’ll see more netting.

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