The Dallas City Council loves art. Sure, council members like getting dressed up all fancy and going to look at the pretty pictures as much as the next person, but they aren’t so simpleminded as to think art is purely for aesthetic enjoyment. This is Dallas, remember, where our leaders…
Update at 3 p.m.: Rangers communications chief John Blake sends out the following update: San Diego, CA–Texas Rangers television play-by-play announcer Dave Barnett will miss the final two games of the team’s series in San Diego. He will undergo an evaluation over the next few days after experiencing on-air issues…
You might remember Dr. Jacques Roy. Back in February, the feds fingered him as the leader of one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes in history, alleging that he bilked the federal government of nearly $375 million. To recap: Between 2005 and 2011, Roy referred more than 11,000 individual patients…
Parkland Memorial Hospital was almost shut down last year after federal inspectors threatened to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicare and Medicaid funding after finding “deficiencies that represent an immediate and serious threat to patient health and safety.” Because of its size and importance to the community,…
You have always been able to walk from the site of the Convention Center Hotel over to, say, police headquarters, but why would you? That stretch of Lamar Street has never been particularly inviting to non-motorized transport, but some long-delayed street improvements designed to make the stroll less daunting are…
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a magic wand you could wave and — voila — a keg or three of small-batch craft beer from a local microbrewery. The city of Dallas is working on its own version of the trick which, this being the city, happens in slow…
It’s been almost three years since the Wyly Theater and Winspear Opera House had their glitzy launch, but, largely overshadowed by the fanfare and intermittently forgotten if you don’t frequent the corner of Routh and Flora or keep your finger on the pulse of with small- and medium-size arts groups,…
Back in 2004, just after Superintendent Mike Moses leaped from DISD with his golden parachute, Lorenzo Garcia, the district’s chief of instructional services, was a hair’s breadth away from becoming interim superintendent. Maybe not a hair’s breadth, since the board of trustees voted down his nomination 7 to 1, but…
One thing the city of Dallas won’t have to deal with in its attempt to keep the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s assassination classy is a lot of new information that complicates our picture of November 22, 1963. Salon reported yesterday that the National Archives is refusing to release 1,171 classified…
Now that the race for North Texas’ newest congressional seat has officially been whittled down from a dozen to just two, it has transformed from an entertaining, no-holds-barred political cockfight with several amusing sideshows into a ethno-geographical scramble for endorsements. A mess, in other, smaller words. A couple of days…
If you’ve ever thought that some of those fly-by-night cash-for-gold operations that sprout like weeds when the economy sucks are a scam, well, so does the U.S. Secret Service. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’ office sent word yesterday that a two-year joint investigation with the Secret Service wrapped up…
DART is in the midst of a series of community meetings to explain its proposed fare changes. The in-person get-togethers seem to have gone swimmingly, but this afternoon, DART went all 21st century for a one-hour Twitter town hall from 1 to 2 p.m. today. Awfully brave, I thought. Something…
If you are a roof, a delicate glass sculpture or one of the cars stuck in the open because of the assholes who took shelter under one of the overpasses on Central, yesterday was not a good day. Days usually aren’t when you’re pelted with chunks of ice the size…
On Memorial Day, two Mormon missionaries stopped by Rare and Out of Print Books and Art in Mesa, Arizona, to have their picture taken with a first edition of the Book of Mormon that was kept there. But when store owner Helen Schlie looked in the fireproof box where she…
When it meets later this morning, the DISD Board of Trustees will get an update on efforts to boost the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams. As the graph above shows, the short answer is, a helluva lot more than there used to be. Right at a…
I know what you’re thinking: Come December, when DART opens its station at DFW Airport, you’ll just slide your luxury vehicle into one of the 597 brand-new parking spaces at the Orange Line terminus while you hop on Lufthansa for your European ski holiday. After all, there’s plenty of space…
The Dallas Police Department sends word that it has suspended officer Jakarsha Carter following a family violence call early this morning. According to the police report, Carter, 29, and a 25-year-old woman were arguing in a car in the 9800 block of Sophora Circle just after midnight. When the woman…
View Larger Map Remember a few weeks ago when the FBI said that John Wiley Price had sold the vacant land 7001 Grady Niblo Road as part of a massive money laundering scheme? The property was at the center of another, less sensational but probably related debate over at City…
Update at 3:46 p.m.Methodist says nuh uh. Spokeswoman Sandra Minatra sends word via email: Thanks for contacting us for a response to the release of a statement by a small subset of members of the Oak Cliff Gateway committee. It is our understanding that the full recommendations of the committee…
The Houston Chronicle tried yesterday afternoon to prove that Houston is better, or at least sucks less, than Dallas. Tried and failed. Sorry to piss on your parade, Alyson Ward, but that debate has been settled: Houston blows way harder than we do. Ward says that Houston has a better…
Wait. You knew that man and dinosaur walked the earth hand-in-talon, right? Happened about 6,000 years ago? “And on the fifth day God created dinosaurs and on the sixth He made man to rideth upon them.”? Well how exactly do you explain these fossil things that keep turning up? I…
Horse racing may be a dying sport,, but it’s apparently enough of a going concern to be used by Mexico’s most powerful cartel to launder millions in drug profits. According to an indictment unsealed yesterday, Los Zetas, the notoriously ruthless organization that effectively controls large swaths of Mexican territory and…
