It didn’t take long for the District 2 City Council race to turn into a mud-slinging match, even if the mud has come from only one side. The first volley came last month from Herschel Weisfeld, who seized on Adam Medrano’s refusal to discuss his sexual orientation to question his…
The city of Dallas has been criticized at times for the agonizingly slow implementation of its 2011 Dallas Bike Plan. Two years after its adoption, only about 10 percent of the planned 1,127 miles of bike lanes and trails have been been put in place. That would seem to indicate…
The LGBT Resource Center at Texas A&M University, like its cousins at the University of Texas and the University of Houston, is an innocuous arm of school bureaucracy that offers an array of resources to gay and transgendered students. There is a guest speaker program, a lending library, networking opportunities,…
Kyle Coplen can pinpoint the exact moment the idea came to him. He was visiting a 93-year-old World War II veteran on January 23 whose home had just been vandalized. Mementos were broken. The walls had been covered with spray paint. The man was distraught, and so was Coplen, who…
It was less than two weeks ago that Dallas Police Chief David Brown appeared at a press conference to say that, despite the department’s initial hopes, they had no idea who raped three women in Lake Highlands over the course of a month. Now, they do. Officers arrested 30-year-old Cesar…
There’s been a bit of a fuss lately over the Memphis City Council’s decision to change the name of three city parks, scrubbing them clean of any reference to the Confederacy in hopes of making them more inviting to residents who may not exactly have felt welcome in early-1860s Tennessee…
It’s been two-and-a-half months since Collin County Sheriff Terry Box made headlines (and, some might say, a bit of an ass of himself) by proclaiming that he and his deputies would have no part in enforcing federal gun laws that might “violate our precious constitutional rights.” It’s not a terribly…
Jaime Moreno-Gutierrez and Roberto Moreno-Gutierrez just wanted to reduce their carbon footprint. Or maybe they just wanted to save on gas costs. Either way, they sold their gas-guzzling 2004 GMC Envoy and set off from their home in Killeen on March 31, 2011, and headed for Plano, where a dealership…
Late yesterday evening, about 8 p.m., four Dallas police cars descended on a the 2800 block of South Avenue, lights and sirens blazing. They’d been told there was a major disturbance on the South Dallas street, and that one of those involved was hurling legitimate-seeming death threats. Officers arrived to…
Texas has never played around when it comes to its standardized tests, and the STAAR exam, the new assessment whose rigor is currently the center of debate in the state legislature, is no different. As one of the primary ways the state evaluates educational outcomes, and thus ensures accountability, the…
The murder this weekend of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, two months after assistant DA Mark Hasse was gunned down in broad daylight, has Texas prosecutors on high alert. The Associated Press reports today that district attorneys throughout the state are taking extra precautions as they…
It’s been a decade since the city of Dallas announced the development of a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness, a quest that, as a short stroll downtown will tell you, has fallen short of its goal. There are still plenty of people without homes. That’s not to say the…
Sometime last month, Domingo Garcia launched his bid to become the next president of LULAC, the nationwide Latino civil rights advocacy organization. He started a campaign page on Facebook on March 8 and sent an open letter to the group’s members at about the same time. “Today LULAC is at…
As he walked along the sidewalk of his Far East Dallas apartment complex at 5:15 on Easter morning, a 24-year-old man heard someone call out from behind, asking him to hold up. He turned and saw three Hispanic men, clad in identical white T-shirts, hop out of a black Toyota…
Before news broke of the brazen murder of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife at their home, reporters were doing what they do every agonizingly news-less Easter weekend: scrounging for something to report on, preferably, given the season, religiously oriented. That’s must be what led CBS 11’s…
Tony Romo is a flawed quarterback. Talent-wise, he’s on the cusp of being one of the NFL’s elites, but he has the unfortunate tendency to meltdown in key, late-game situations. But you have to give the man one thing: he (or, more accurately, his agent) is a helluva negotiator. ESPN’s…
It wasn’t long after Gary Isett parked a Kip’s Big Boy statue on his front lawn at the corner of Abrams and Trammel that people started taking notice. First, passersby, then the Lakewood Advocate, then the Morning News. D’s Tim Rogers reminisced about that time in high school he took…
The life of a tax office mail clerk seems that it’d be dull. Box after cardboard box of IRS forms, IRS instruction manuals and IRS paraphernalia, with only an occasional piece of computer equipment to spice things up. So, yesterday’s special delivery must have come as a surprise to the…
Every single day in Dallas brings a dismaying number of reports of men beating their wives and girlfriends, which is what’s fueling Mayor Mike Rawlings’ crusade against domestic violence. But the message he delivered at his recent City Hall rally apparently hasn’t yet sunk in for everybody. In the early…
There remains a pressing need for meaningful, statewide regulation of payday lending in Texas, since the industry has shown a willingness and ability to skirt restrictions passed by Dallas, Austin, and other cities. Those reforms look like they are still at least a couple of years off. Despite high hopes…
It’s been eight years since the Dallas City Council passed its homeless feeding ordinance, which barred charity groups from serving food except at certain designated sites. And it’s been just more than six years since two of those groups, Big Heart Ministries and Rip Parker Memorial Homeless Ministry, sued the…
At an ungodly hour this morning (2:38 a.m.), a member of the new but active “Stop Walmart Spanish Village” Facebook group posted the lease, signed back in November, giving the Arkansas-based retail giant rights to the northwest corner of Coit and Arapaho roads for at least 20 and as many…
