MegaFest, Bishop T.D. Jakes’ massive annual gathering of evangelical Christians, is a pretty big deal, a $10 million production that draws 100,000 incredibly well-behaved visitors. The Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau was so stoked when Jakes decided to move the festival to Dallas, it chipped in a half-million dollars. But…
Trina Triche, a regular at City Hall, had been preparing her remarks for nearly a week. She was going to address the City Council on the topic of government corruption and wanted to make sure she was signed up to speak during the open mic forum that closes each meeting…
We were pretty sure that Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Ricks’ recent suggestion in the Washington Post that America exile Texas in pursuit of a more perfect union was a joke. Blaming the state for the JFK assassination (without Texas, “John F. Kennedy might still be alive”) and the wars in Iraq…
The Dallas Police Department still hasn’t given a very satisfying explanation for why it took officers so long to respond to an armed robbery and shooting at a West Dallas grocery on Sunday. Partly it was the 911 caller’s heavy accent, partly that officers were working what they thought was…
Schramms Ammo & Weapons plies its trade out of a Sunnyvale storefront, but the official headquarters listed on state incorporation papers is owner Jeffrey Schramm’s home on Park Chase Circle in Mesquite. It probably goes without saying that Schramm takes his work home with him and keeps a small arsenal…
In another era, Jeff Bliss’ phillipic against lazy and uninspired teaching would have been witnessed by a few classmates and quickly forgotten. But this is the age of cell-phone cameras and YouTube, so we get to see the full sermon the Duncanville High School student directed at Julie Phung, his…
HB 3520 designating a portion of US 75 the George W. Bush Expressway just passed. #txlege #txgop— Dan Branch (@TexansForDan) May 8, 2013 When State Representative Dan Branch introduced his proposal to change the name of a seven-mile stretch of Central to George W. Bush Expressway, we thought it might…
The Morning News played it straight when it reported that dulcet-voiced crooner Barry Manilow (Editor’s note: “dulcet-voiced crooner” are Eric’s own words. Have at him, commenters.) is giving away tickets to his May 17 in exchange for lightly used musical instruments that he will pass along to Dallas ISD. WFAA’s…
On Sunday, The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams donned a novelty sombrero and festive pink dress and came to Dallas in search of an authentic Cinco de Mayo fiesta. What she found instead was a few thousand disappointingly sober people gathered downtown to march for immigration rights. Instead of drunken debauchery,…
You know the building, even if you don’t know its name. It’s a neon silhouette that juts from the downtown skyline like a radioactive thumb. My 3-year-old calls it The Pickle, because that’s kind of what it looks like, but its official name is the Bank of America Tower. Since…
Prosecutors recently dropped charges in one of the high-profile cases that spurred SMU to take a long look at its often baffling handling of sexual assaults. Last night, a week-and-a-half before another student is set to go to trial on charges that he raped a classmate in a dorm room,…
On Sunday night, four men tried to rob Pepe’s Grocery on Bernal Drive in West Dallas. One of them was carrying an assault rifle, but the manager of the closed store drew first, hitting his target with two shots from his .38. The would-be robbers fled, leaving a trail of…
Filing a federal employment discrimination lawsuit is easy. All you need to offer up a not-transparently bullshit claim that you were discriminated against because of race, gender, age, disability, et cetera, is a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to pay your filing fee. The bar is…
You’d think the race for the Tarrant Regional Water Board would be a sleepy affair. Ensuring that Fort Worth and its environs enjoy an adequate water supply is undeniably important work, but not the kind that stirs the passions. As you can see from the mailing above, which was uploaded…
Last Thursday, Alicia Moore’s friends and family members braved the rain for a somber vigil to call for the 16-year-old’s killer to step forward. The murderer’s identity was a mystery. She had last been seen alive on the afternoon of November 2 stepping off the school bus near her family’s…
Plano must have taken a hit when Dallas voters approved citywide beer and wine sales two-and-a-half years ago. No longer were the good people of Far North Dallas forced to drive north of the Bush Turnpike to stock up on beverages. They could simply go down the street to the…
Burton Knight is declaring a qualified victory in his battle with City Hall over his water-friendly lawn. “I was able to negotiate keeping the cactuses and not the boulders,” Knight said. “I think that I’d rather have the biodiversity and the pleasures that cactuses bring than the rocks, even thought…
SMU has come under fire in recent months for its “non-adversarial” process for handling on-campus sexual assaults, but it’s the actions of another local university that have earned censure from the federal government. The U.S. Department of Education just levied an $82,500 fine against the University of Texas of Arlington…
Tucked at the bottom of a hill off Highway 175 in southern Dallas there’s a spring. That it hasn’t been paved over is remarkable. That you can still cup your hand and drink from it without getting dysentery or guzzling a toxic chemical stew is little short of miraculous. This…
Pretty much every serious national news organization has at least a skeletal presence in Dallas. The major networks, as well as CNN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, all have a Dallas bureau. Partly it’s that Dallas is a thriving commercial and cultural hub, partly…
When Cody Wilson, a libertarian-minded University of Texas law student, first announced plans to fabricate a gun using a 3-D printer in hopes of radically democratizing access to firearms, it seemed a bit like tilting at windmills, especially after the printer he was using was seized. But Wilson forged ahead,…
Mark Farmer had his red backpack with him in the early hours of last Friday when police found him at Infinity 13 tattoo studio at Skillman and LBJ. They unzipped that backpack and found a few thousand dollars worth of tattoo needles, parts and ink, plus a bag of weed…
