Wednesday I decided to go out and check on my two favorite issues in the upcoming mayor’s race. Yup, still there: 1) The trashy mess where the city finally tore out the $6 million never-used fake whitewater feature it built in the Trinity River, and 2) the $115 million never-used…
Late Wednesday afternoon brought another twist for May’s municipal election, as Dallas City Council member Mark Clayton announced he will not seek a third term. Clayton has represented portions of East and northeast Dallas since 2015, when he cruised to an easy victory by winning almost 60 percent of the…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rolled out the state’s next big plan to save Texans from U.S.’ ongoing opioid epidemic Tuesday afternoon: A website and some seriously weird stock photography. “The misuse and abuse of prescription opioids cost lives and devastate Texas families in every region of our state,” Paxton…
Tuesday brought the first true surprise of the nascent race for Dallas mayor, with state Rep. Eric Johnson announcing that he was making the field an even 10, further muddying an electoral picture that’s still a long way from shaking itself out. Johnson is a serious candidate — even if…
Citizens Matter. Yeah, right. We all know what that means. Citizens Matter is what the group opposed to reforming the Dallas Citizens Police Review Board is calling itself. So the name is contrapuntal to Black Lives Matter. Citizens Matter means White Lives Matter. And, look, far be it from me…
Turns out, former Texas state Rep. Jason Villalba wasn’t the last person to squeeze himself onto Dallas’ large field of mayoral candidates. Tuesday morning, West Dallas state Rep. Eric Johnson surprisingly threw his own hat into the mayoral ring, bringing the number of candidates running for the city’s most visible…
The siren song of early-morning Whataburger appears to have been a bit too much for former Cowboys running back Darren McFadden, according to the McKinney Police Department. Employees at the Whataburger on West University Drive in McKinney called police shortly after midnight early Monday to report a man sleeping in…
Former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Monica Alonzo is looking to retake her spot on the Dallas City Council, two years after being unceremoniously dumped out of her District 6 seat in a June 2017 runoff by Omar Narvaez. While she has apparently yet to speak to the English-language press about…
What started as a legal battle between Gearbox Software (Borderlands, Aliens: Colonial Marines) CEO Randy Pitchford and his company’s former legal counsel, Wade Callender, has boiled over into the public sphere thanks to a number of shocking details in a recent lawsuit.
At times this year, your faithful Observer sports correspondent was deeply wrong about the Cowboys. Like most of the media, local and otherwise, I declared Dallas’ heroes dead and buried after their Nov. 5 loss to the Titans dropped them to 3-5. Before the season started, I even chided the Cowboys…
Frequently, when we write about Dallas’ lack of affordable apartments, stagnating median wage or unattainable mortgages, we’re talking about those costs in reference to Dallas’ quickest growing demographic — millennials. They’re the generational cohort, roughly ages 23 to 38, that can’t afford their student loans, can’t buy a house and…
I liked the previous session of the Texas Legislature a lot better. The Republicans concentrated on what I consider to be their innate concerns – dehumanizing women, disenfranchising minorities and putting Big Brother in the bathroom. I didn’t like what they did, but I did like that they wanted to…
A half-dozen or so candidates remain in Dallas’ mayoral race, hoping to navigate the rocky path to a one-on-one showdown and a runoff. Friday morning, former Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto announced he is no longer one of them. Casto, a North Oak Cliff resident, said he believes his remaining…
Apologies in advance, but we’re going to have to take another long look at Beto O’Rourke’s Medium blog. Late Wednesday afternoon, O’Rourke took to the blogging platform with another journal entry right out of a graduate creative writing workshop — Doesn’t the University of Iowa have one of those? —…
It’s hard to blame DFW Airport’s Transportation Security Administration agents for being unprepared at this point. For federal workers, a government shutdown is always looming, an event out of their control that can be forced on them at any time. Those employed by the TSA and other federal agencies around…
I don’t know how many people know this, but my wife, Mariana Greene, was a pioneer of urban chicken-keeping during her days as a garden columnist for The Dallas Morning News, years before backyard chickens became chic. She helped make them chic. To this day she takes her chickens extremely…
The weather gods have heard us, disparaging our mild winter, our complaining that it’s been marred by rain and have decided that they shall smite us for our blaspheming. This weekend, they are summoning the worst of their winter tricks — the mighty blue norther — to awaken us from…
City Hall is having a big debate with itself about getting rid of the city’s long-standing youth curfew. We should do an experiment. Try this: Rigorously enforce the curfew outside late-night teenage house parties in the affluent white Lakewood and Preston Hollow neighborhoods. Then re-poll everybody on how many people…
Looks like it’s going to be eight. Former state Representative Jason Villalba added his name to Dallas’ long list of mayoral candidates Tuesday morning, becoming the eighth, and likely final, candidate to join the race. Villalba is trying his hand at municipal politics after being ousted from his seat in…
The good news, such as it is: The Tarrant County Republican Party decided that a politically conservative trauma surgeon who also serves on the Southlake City Council is a perfectly fine choice to be party vice chairman, even if he is a … gasp … Muslim. The bad news for…
Greg Abbott gets away with a lot. He’s a firebrand, far-right conservative in a state that’s tilted significantly more liberal over the last five years. He didn’t get much done during his first term — the state’s property tax and school finance system are still in shambles — and, unlike…
It’s easy to get politically depressed. Sometimes it’s not easy to get out of bed. But we need to draw a deep breath and look at the long arc. Sunlight glows out there on the far horizon. Last week at the very moment President Donald Trump was doing his Dumbo…
