Senator Ted Cruz no doubt hoped the release of his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News would settle the question of whether he is a “natural born” American citizen and thus eligible to run for president. Instead, the revelation that Cruz is a dual Canadian-American citizen — which, given…
When he was a kid, before his mom died during an already difficult upbringing and left him to spend his teenage years shuttling from one foster family to the next, Trrance King lived near a fire station. (That’s how he spells his name, according to court records.) The men there…
You may remember Cedric Moses as the entrepreneur who tried to convince the Dallas City Council to implement a mandatory dog-poop-DNA-testing regime citywide and then, when that didn’t work, trotted out actor David Keith of An Officer and a Gentleman semi-fame to do the same. Moses failed to convince the…
The party at 9807 Laneyvale Ave. in Pleasant Grove on Saturday evening started pleasantly enough. It was, after all, a celebration of the holy sacrament of baptism that had been performed earlier in the day. Then, Noel Lorenzo Hernandez crashed the party. Hernandez, a 21-year-old Irving resident, hadn’t technically been…
Arlington is celebrating this morning. After decades as the largest U.S. municipality without mass transit, the city now has a bus service. So park your Ford Excursion and prepare to retire your warmed-over gibes about Arlington as the ultimate suburban wasteland. All done? OK, now bring them back out of…
There’s something about the thought of air conditioning prisons that rankles Texas officials. Partly, it’s the cost: Cooling the 90 (out of 111) state-run prisons that lack any sort of climate control would run well into the millions. Partly, it’s a tough-on-crime thing: These are convicted criminals; nothing wrong with…
On Sunday afternoon, Terrell Cowherd’s father undertook the somber duty of going through his son’s things and offering an impromptu elegy to the reporters who showed up. “He always said Dad and Mom, thank you for everything,” he said. “Thank you for all you’ve given me, thank you for all…
When a choked-up Anthony Tovar announced to a gathering of parents and supporters in April that he would resign as principal of Sunset High School — for real this time — he wouldn’t delve too deeply into why. He’d already done so in an earlier conversation with the Observer back…
Tom Corea, the disbarred Dallas attorney charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients, is currently in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, where he’s spent every day since a judge learned in November that he’d covered his former Design District office with penis graffiti. He’ll be there at…
Dan Patrick, a Republican state senator from Houston and Tea Party darling, has officially been in the lieutenant governor’s race for almost two months now. Patrick, like the other challengers vying for the seat, has positioned himself to the right of incumbent David Dewhurst, attacking him for being too moderate…
Irving’s leaders take exception to Jim Schutze’s allegory of Valley Ranch — and, by extension, the city as a whole — as the washed-up hag in the corner of a seedy bar, her sobs wreathed in cigarette smoke. They haven’t addressed it directly, but the narrative they’re spinning is starkly…
It’s not hard to find pit bull puppies for sale on Craigslist. The tricky part is finding a seller, like 38-year-old Bryant Everett, willing to make the trip from his home in Fort Worth with three of the pups in a crate in the back in hopes of getting $150…
Azmi Elqutob never had a chance to hand over the money. The 66-year-old was behind the register at his Smokie’s Food Store, his family’s Fort Worth bodega, when Frederick Jones rushed in with a 9 mm pistol and a bandana over his face and fired twice. Jones grabbed a fistful…
This week, the Plano City Council voted to build a new, $1 million outdoor skatepark. McKinney opened one earlier this year. Arlington has plans to build a dozen. And in Dallas there’s a tiny, cheaply built, prefab affair tucked away in a small neighborhood park seven miles east of downtown…
There’s no argument that Richard Lee Barrett has a drinking problem. When Grand Prairie police picked him up for drunken driving in July 2007, he already had one DWI offense on his record. A second conviction brought with it a year-long probation, which he proceeded to violate after three days…
In 2006, Plano police received a tip that a bookmaker there was illegally taking bets on pro and college sporting events. They began looking into the matter and had an undercover cop call the man up and put in one wager, then another. In relatively short order, Plano PD had…
The professional buzz kills at the Centers for Disease Control have no shortage of sobering alcohol statistics to aid their campaign against excessive drinking: 14,000 people die each year in drunk-driving crashes; 36,000 are killed by alcohol-related liver disease, hypertension, and other chronic illnesses; and another 5,500 are killed in…
Wendy Davis still hasn’t declared whether or not she plans to run for Governor. If she does, she’ll face a formidable challenge in Attorney General Greg Abbott, Rick Perry’s all-but-anointed successor. If she doesn’t, she faces a challenge that’s almost as formidable, winning re-election in a Republican-leaning district where she…
Here’s how The Dallas Morning News’ Gromer Jeffers Jr. introduced the new candidate for North Texas’ state House District 102 in a blog post this afternoon: Retired Army Capt. Samuel Brown announced Wednesday that he’s seeking the GOP nomination to replace Stefani Carter in the Texas House. And here’s how…
We’ll never be able to pin down exactly what went down on Havenwood Lane on the night of May 4, when Fort Worth police mistakenly gunned down 72-year-old Jerry Waller at his home. Police say he was outside the garage; his family maintains that he was just a couple of…
It didn’t take a detective to follow the trail of dried blood to garage #15D, or to figure out that the stench coming from inside was from a rotting corpse. An employee of La Valencia apartments, a complex sandwiched between Stemmons and Walton Walker freeways just northwest of Love Field,…
Rhademes Solano’s plight first came to public attention in February, when he showed up at a public meeting in southern Dallas. Along with community activist Carlos Quintanilla, he protested the city’s plan to seize 23 acres he owns near the intersection of Intersection 45 and Great Trinity Forest Boulevard to…
