Wallace Hall’s Long View of the Latest College Admissions Scandal

Last month after federal sleuths in Massachusetts rolled up 16 well-heeled parents in an alleged college admissions and exam scam that included the University of Texas, four members of the UT-Austin student government proposed that some kind of formal apology be tendered to former UT system regent Wallace Hall of…

Attacks on Griggs, Attacks on Kingston, All Have Same Scary Shadow

Sometimes you learn more about people in politics from their shadows than their faces. Serial efforts over a period of years to take down two progressive Dallas City Council members have cast the same kind of shadow consistently. In the effort, mostly failed I think, to dirty up council members…

Greg Abbott Notwithstanding, Creuzot Wants to Reduce, Not Increase Crime

In 1998 when John Creuzot, now the new Dallas County district attorney, was a Dallas County felony district court judge, he established an experimental program called the Dallas Initiative for Expedited Recovery and Treatment or DIVERT. It sent first-time drug offenders into intensively monitored recovery programs rather than to jail…

Seven Million Bucks and Three More Years To Open New Bridge. Maybe.

The Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas is the city’s ne’er-do-well relative who shows up every year or so for yet another handout. Is it a mercy for us to give her more money, or have we just become codependent? Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,…

Is City Hall Improving Housing for the Poor or Just Getting Rid of It?

A lawsuit, really a collection of lawsuits, has been creeping along through the local courts for years like the plot of Charles Dickens’ mid-19th-century novel, Bleak House, pitting Dallas against some members of the Topletz family, who are landlords in southern Dallas. But there is a new wrinkle in the…

The Dallas Morning News Contorts Itself Hating a New DA. Ouch!

After my own lengthy and exacting legal analysis of positions taken by The Dallas Morning News editorial page on official actions and decisions by newly elected Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, I have come to the following learned conclusion, which I think should be published in a legal journal,…

Let’s Have Some Fun Gaming D Magazine’s Mayoral ‘Poll’

You don’t know this, because you don’t read D, the city magazine of Dallas, but they’ve been running a mayoral poll on their online Frontburner page. You click to vote for your favorite candidate. This week they admitted the poll probably is being gamed. Shawn Shinneman wrote: “It’s possible —…

Laura Miller Is a Savage, and in This Town That Is High Praise

The City Council campaign in District 13 north of the Park Cities is shaping up to be strangely like a very important chapter in my own past, although it’s also totally different. Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller (2002-2007) is running to unseat the incumbent, Jennifer Staubach Gates, who has represented…

Ralph Isenberg Once Again Puts His Own Wife Up for Public Ridicule

To win a Dallas City Council vote on a construction project, Methodist Dallas Medical Center in North Oak Cliff (“Methodist”) hitched its wagon and its long good name in the community to Dallas landlord and investor Ralph Isenberg. That’s a hitch. The last time we had much to do with…