Wow. Amazing discovery! I, Jim Schutze, have discovered how to resolve the whole battle over scrap metal yards and rendering plants in Oak Cliff near Cadillac heights. I have the answer! For the last several weeks I have been battling with the Texas Historical Commission and U.S Army Corps of…
Just came back from an interesting chat with Wade Emmert, the 40-year-old lawyer who is the Republican candidate for Dallas County Judge in the November election. I asked him how a Republican can win in what everybody is now calling a Democratic county.”I don’t think it’s such a Democratic county,”…
Sometimes I am accused of thinking everything at City Hall is a big conspiracy. But that’s not true. I am willing to concede that some things are just big idiocies. Take, for example, whatever in God’s name is going on in the Cadillac Heights/Cedar Crest area of Oak Cliff right…
Sometimes I feel that life is unfair. I have way too much fun. On occasion I think I should share some of it with others. In that spirit, I offer the following: In tomorrow’s paper version of Unfair Park I will have a column dealing with efforts by Dallas city…
Dwaine Caraway has come seriously unglued in recent months, behaving less like a Dallas city council member and more and more like Huey Long. My God. I can’t believe some of this stuff. More on this in my column in the paper next week. But I can’t wait that long…
Ireland, South Africa and Sierra Leone have all committed to “truth and reconciliation” as a process for healing wounds of history. Even Canada. So why not us? Dallas’ grand obsession with a star-crossed and now collapsing public works project has finally brought the city to what may be a truth-and-reconciliation…
Couple weeks ago I wrote a column about the sudden anomalous enthusiasm of The Dallas Morning News editorial page for getting rid of scrap yards and a dead animal transfer station on Pontiac Street at Cedar Crest, next to the Cadillac Heights neighborhood. The News said they wanted to do…
Editing memo to Steve Blow: Thank you for getting around to writing the column I directed you to write on the Trinity River. It was a good effort, in the main. I hate to quibble with you, but I do need to point out a few errors and omissions. If…
I’m on tour Sunday. Well, I’m not on tour. My wife is on tour — part of the first annual “A Peep at the Coops: The Urban Coop Tour.” I just work there. Actually, a guy named Victor works for my wife a lot in the garden, and then I…
So tomorrow, on some page of The Dallas Morning News (I assume Page One), Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert will concede that the Trinity River Project has hit the wall. Wall, wall, wall. A story posted on The News’s Web site this afternoon by Michael Lindenberger quotes Leppert: “Given the current…
I know it’s only my two-bits worth, but I loved the Erykah Badu video in which she stripped naked on the X-marks-the-spot, where Kennedy got shot in Dealey Plaza 37 years ago. I’m thinking seriously about going down there and taking off my own clothes. But I want everybody else…
The story in today’s Dallas Morning News about possible historic designation for the Trinity River levees falls squarely in the Unintentionally Hilarious category. It says the idea of building the Trinity River toll road project between the flood control levees may be in trouble because the U.S. Army Corps of…
Fine. Call me paranoid. I can take it. But there’s a difference between being paranoid and being able to see through crap. Let’s start with the crap: On March 26, The Dallas Morning News ran an unsigned editorial/op-ed column in its Sunday “Points” section suggesting the city resolve the problem…
Interesting item on the Dallas City Council’s agenda this morning: “Judicial Nominating Commission.” (It’s Action Item No. 5, for those playing along at home.) City Attorney Tom Perkins is offering the council three alternative ways to fix the body that vets candidates for municipal judgeships. So … uh … why…
I am embarrassed, and I want to offer the Friends of Unfair Park an apology. Last Thursday I proferred an ironclad prediction that The Dallas Morning News would run one of its aw-shucks-yer-pretty-head Trinity River columns or editorials by Sunday, two days ago, telling readers not to pay attention to…
Yesterday on The Dallas Morning News transportation and editorial blogs, Rodger Jones, an editorial writer, casually passed on a bit of information — as if it were a sort of minor tid-bit — gleaned from a recent meeting of the editorial board with Texas Department of Transportation Regional Engineer Bill…
In the weeks ahead I’m going to be tied up with some stories that will demand a lot of my time, so, I’m sorry, I’m just not going to have time to do my regularly predictable clockwork swat-down reaction pieces to Dallas Morning News stories on the Trinity River project…
Sure. Turnout for the Democratic runoff election for county judge on April 13 will be tiny. Few people will vote, but the outcome will be huge. The real issue is the character of the community. You know who the real candidates are, right? Let me paint it for you as…
I guess Hobby Lobby Bobby — the PR guy for Hobby Lobby — is never going to call me back about the big bible museum planned for Dallas. So I’ll just have to go on breaking the story a little bit at a time as I learn things from my…
The headline of Michael Lindenberger’s big front-page to-do in the paper version of Sunday’s Dallas Morning News was “Grand Plans Delay Levee Fix.” It was, in many ways, a remarkable story for The News to publish, exposing as a serious public lie the repeated assurances of Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert…
I just want to make a small point about the way Dallas City Hall does business. Not a huge point. City Hall tries to make things go away. It reacts to irritating stimuli the way I react to noises from the brakes in my car. Ignore them, and they will…
The body of Major General Hugh Robinson will be released from a three-week limbo at a Dallas funeral home and buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, according to Scott D. Weber, a lawyer representing Robinson’s biological children. The remains of the late civic and military leader were…
