In yet another piece of bad publicity for SMU’s fraternities, the university’s police department reports there was a “hazing incident” at Sigma Alpha Epsilon over the weekend. Two reports were filed from the Sigma Alpha house on February 17, one around 9:30 a.m. for the hazing, and another at 10…
Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration released a list of all the city and state entities who have applied for a license to fly unmanned aerial drones. That list was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), an organization that champions…
When we last left the beleaguered members of the City Plan Commission, they were opting to once again delay a vote on energy company Trinity East’s application to drill for natural gas in the floodplain along the Trinity River. This morning, the CPC was subjected to a four-hour workshop on…
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It now heads to the House for what will likely be an ugly battle over its renewal; President Obama used part of his State of the Union address last night to urge the House representatives to…
This morning at the Dallas Museum of Art, Mayor Mike Rawlings, along with about 1,000 other men in suits sharing the stage, announced a new campaign dubbed “Men Against Abuse.” The next stop on this tour of well-meaning gestures will be a celebrity-packed rally on March 23, which the mayor…
From SMU’s crime logs, we bring you a brief, somewhat disturbing, deeply weird police report: at 8:18 last night, campus police reported that a student was “was assaulted and held against his will” at the university’s Sigma Phi Epsilon house. The case is being classified as “Aggravated Assault/Aggravated Kidnapping/Personal Hazing…
Texas parents beware: your children are being “imperiled” by “abortion peddlers” who want to teach them “sex education.” No. No, they’re not. Although at some point someone might want to teach them to put a condom on a banana, and conservative lawmakers, predictably, want to make damn sure that person’s…
Over the past few months, we’ve brought you sporadic updates on Cody Wilson, a UT Austin law student who heads up a group called Defense Distributed. They want to make a printable gun, an ambition that’s brought much hand-wringing and even got their rented 3-D printer repo-ed back in October…
Back in December, freshman state representative Jason Villalba, who hails from North Dallas, got a lot of attention for his plan to file a bill allowing Texas school teachers to carry guns. The bill, which he’s calling the Protection of Texas Children Act, would allow certain school district employees to…
On an August night in 1998, Douglas Feldman pulled his Harley up next to an 18-wheeler that had just cut him off on a highway in Plano. Feldman shot and killed the driver, Robert Everett, then paused on his way home to murder an Exxon tanker driver named Nicholas Velasquez…
When last we heard from Southlake resident, event planner and patriotic pants designer Glenn Beck, he had just announced his plans for a $2 billion libertarian community, which he’s dubbed Independence, USA. Will Independence be located in Texas? Can a theme park designed by Beck and David Barton possibly be…
The iPhone cases with crooked “Chanel” logos you see over at your local cellphone accessory store or mall kiosk could be evidence of an international criminal conspiracy, according to the feds. A Carrollton resident, Shiraz Sherali Odhwani, 54, has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison and ordered to…
Last week, in an interview with the New Republic, President Obama said something about his love for skeet shooting, the subtle art of throwing a clay disk up in the air and shooting the hell out of it. “Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” the…
Sometimes — more often than he’d like, and even though he knows it’s not healthy, that it won’t change anything — Sean Bass thinks of all the different routes he could’ve taken to the store. It was a warm Friday night in late September. Sean had just mowed the lawn…
In a brief hearing this morning, United States District Judge Sam Lindsay found former self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown mentally competent to stand trial. The judge will issue an order to that effect later today or early tomorrow. At the same time, Brown was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to…
Around 4 p.m. yesterday, a Dallas County grand jury declined to indict 19-year-old Ryan Romo, who was accused of raping a younger fellow student in the back of his Chevy Tahoe following a concert in late October. At a sparsely attended press conference this afternoon, the Romo family’s civil attorney,…
A Dallas County grand jury has declined to indict a prominent Highland Park High School student who was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl after a concert last fall. Ryan Romo, 18, was arrested in October, accused of raping a younger female acquaintance in the back of his Chevy Tahoe…
A friend of mine works in Austin, doing something or other for state government. Her office is right next to the Capitol building. When she arrived at work this morning, she couldn’t help but notice that the whole place was covered in bikers. The Harley kind. “Hundreds of dudes wearing…
In May of 2011, in the midst of various other anti-abortion measures, Texas lawmakers approved SB 257, authored by Representative Larry Phillips, a Republican from Sherman, and Senator John Carona, a Republican from Dallas. The bill allowed for the sale of state-issued specialty “Choose Life” license plates: For a mere…
For the third time in four months, former self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown has been indicted on federal charges, this time for concealing evidence. Brown has already been charged with a laundry list of crimes. He was arrested in September, after a raid on his Dallas apartment, then charged in…
On Friday, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst handed out his picks for the State Senate committees; from those assignments, we learned that “Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security” is, for some mystifying reason, lumped together into one body. And in a move that’s drawn a ton of attention and more than…
Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark court case that originated in Texas with Norma McCorvey and ultimately led to the Supreme Court sweeping away a number of state and federal abortion restrictions. Because of Roe, terminating a pregnancy in the first trimester is between a…
