Texas’ Planned Parenthood clinics are, as of last week, on the same footing as the organization’s clinics in the rest of the country. That’s not a good thing. A week ago today, the family planning, women’s health and abortion provider announced that it would leave the federal government’s Title X…
Look at it this way. An Italian court has ordered Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to pay the city of Venice &85,000 just because a bridge he designed there is too slippery. The two gigantic pedestrian bridges Calatrava built for us in Dallas, completed in 2017, have never even been…
Dallas school leaders are confident they know how to pull the district’s lowest-performing schools up in next year’s school assessments, they told members of the school board Thursday afternoon. The Dallas ISD board discussed the district’s performance on the Texas Education Agency’s A-F ratings at a board workshop Thursday. Dallas…
Proving the axiom that even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut this week is Texas Attorney General and friend of the Observer Ken Paxton. Thursday afternoon, Paxton — who’s still under felony indictment and still trying to get Texans with pre-existing conditions kicked off their health insurance — found his…
If he cares about his public reception at all, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott can’t be happy with his Thursday, the day he convened the first of a series of roundtable discussions he’s called in the wake of the Aug. 3 massacre in El Paso. Gun rights advocates held a rally…
Dallas’ six weeks-running municipal mystery is over. Police Chief U. Renee Hall will be back on the job Monday, Dallas City Manager TC Broadnax announced Wednesday night. Hall’s been on medical leave since July. According to the department, Hall’s personal doctor suggested she undergo major surgery after Hall’s mother died…
Everything about Dallas’ new XFL team is warmed over. It’s participating in a once-defunct league in a stadium — Globe Life Park — that would be defunct if not for the XFL saving it from implosion. Its coach, ballyhooed as his prospects once were, won his only college football national…
Maybe this would be funny. If it were funny. I mean, the first time the city set up a “Public Improvement District” or PID to fight crime along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas, the PID collected property taxes in the six figures, turned all the money over…
Attorney General William Barr appeared with Senator John Cornyn to promote safe neighborhood program while side-stepping the issue of wide-spread gun control.
A flash drought is creating perfect wildfire conditions in Texas
Dallas didn’t get left at the altar this time. After nine months of licking its Amazon-inflicted wounds, the city landed its own big-tech big fish, thanks to nearly $36 million in economic incentives from the city, county and state. Tuesday, Dallas County Commissioners approved the final piece of the incentive…
Tuesday afternoon, the message went out. The Cowboys were planning a press conference to “announce a contract extension for a current member of the team’s roster.” Sound the alarms, right? One of the team’s ongoing contract headaches was about to be solved, bringing the team a step closer to being…
In the new mayor’s laughably pusillanimous response to the city’s murder problem, we are seeing the first symptoms of the last election. Pulling a page, poorly, from the previous mayor, Eric Johnson this week tried to take on murder with some grandstand speechifying. It was not grand. At a scripted…
Taking a page from former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ preferred form of leadership, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson took his first swing at addressing the spate of high-profile murders that have shaken his city in 2019, announcing Monday that he’s created a civilian task force to look into violent crime in…
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is taking the first step toward memory-holing his ill-fated nomination of former Texas Secretary of State David Whitley. Abbott announced Monday that he’s appointed the chairwoman of the Texas Workforce Commission to the post. Ruth Ruggero Hughs, also a former associate in the Texas Attorney General’s…
Eat less meat: the refrain has run through many recent articles and reports about climate change and the urgent need to take care of the world and manage its natural resources. And the most recent United Nations climate report, or at least a lot of the coverage of it, said…
On one level, the whole thing’s absurd, that there are so many legal questions to argue about as we approach former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial. The facts are not in dispute. Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean almost a year ago, as Jean hung out alone…
We accept the murder of children here. We allow it. We expect it. We are unwilling to make any of the serious sacrifices necessary to save these lives. Calling these deaths random or senseless is a lie. In six weeks, three children have been shot to death in two incidents…
The first shoe in the case of Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, the Tea Party activists and the secret meeting has officially dropped. State Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, is no longer the chairman of the Texas House’s GOP caucus. Burrows, the third man in the meeting between…
The Dallas Police Department said Thursday afternoon that they’ve identified a suspect in the shooting death of 9-year-old Brandoniya Bennett. She was shot and killed Wednesday evening as she sat in her apartment on Munger Avenue in Old East Dallas. According to Dallas Police Maj. Danny Williams, the first link in…
Forty-six years ago, Dallas Police Department Officer Darrell Cain murdered Santos Rodriguez. Dallas is finally getting closer to building a permanent memorial to the slain 12-year-old. Cain killed Rodriguez in the back of a police car on July 24, 1973. He’d picked up the preteen, along with his brother David…
Dallas ISD continued to perform above average in a new round of state A-F district ratings released Thursday. The district scored a B rating for the 2018-2019 school year, the same grade it received the year before. But twice as many schools in the district received failing marks in this…
