Last week I wrote about Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates, who is white, appearing on her own Facebook page dressed in a Halloween costume as a caricatured Mexican man in a sombrero with a black mustache. Later Sharon Grigsby at The Dallas Morning News wrote a thoughtful column taking…
Monday night was bad enough. In front of an inexplicably enthusiastic crowd at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the 2018 Dallas Cowboys capitulated, losing 28-14 to the Tennessee Titans. The Cowboys’ season is over because they gave up four touchdowns to an offense that had only scored as many as three…
Significant local and statewide races remained in the balance Tuesday night as polls closed at 7 p.m. in Dallas County and much of the rest of Texas. Results of the approximately 5 million early votes cast around the state are trickling in. In Dallas County at least, the so-called blue…
Can’t touch the net, or even dream of dunking. If named head coach, promises the team would have started the season 0-8. Admits to being only a 50 percent free throw shooter. Nine months ago, didn’t know the name Mark Cuban. Despite that flimsiest of basketball résumés, Cynthia “Cynt” Marshall…
At 7 p.m. Tuesday when polls close throughout the state of Texas — with one notable exception, but we’ll get to that — only one thing will be left to do if you’re the slightest bit politically inclined. No more doors to knock on, texts to send or votes to…
Heather Hacker, Texas’ assistant solicitor general, made it clear from the start Monday that one of the most controversial provisions of Senate Bill 8, Texas’ latest and greatest piece of sweeping anti-abortion legislation, isn’t about protecting women’s health, as Texas Republicans have so often argued when they’ve defended anti-choice laws in…
Of all the races on Texas’ midterm ballot Tuesday, the one that’s built up the greatest disparity between the attention paid to it by the media, the Observer included, and its potential effect on the lives of everyone who lives in the state is the battle between incumbent Lieutenant Governor Dan…
Jon Daniels wasn’t waiting just to wait, as it turns out. Saturday, after USA Today’s Bob Nightengale broke the story, the Rangers general manager confirmed that he’d hired Los Angeles Dodgers third base coach Chris Woodward, less than a week after the Dodgers’ season ended in a five-game World Series…
Next time somebody wants to charge you 25 percent extra for a house because it’s near a man-made private lake in Texas, ask him to tell you who’s on the hook when the dam blows out. That’s the lesson homeowners are about to learn in Arlington. Prestonwood Lake, about 3.5…
While Texas Rangers fans still don’t know who’ll get the ball when the club opens its new stadium the season after next, they now know one pitcher it won’t be. Highland Park High School-ex Clayton Kershaw re-signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday afternoon, committing himself to at least…
Irving Police Chief Jeff Spivey paid a visit to the Islamic Center of Irving recently to talk about the legality of reporting child sexual abuse after allegations of child molestation rocked the North Texas Muslim community last week. Spivey said he went to the Irving Mosque to discuss the duty…
Dallas City Council Member Jennifer Staubach Gates, whose name has been mentioned recently as an establishment candidate for mayor in 2019, announced the end of her political career in novel fashion the day after Halloween by posting photos of herself dressed as a Mexican man in a sombrero with a…
Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall fired police Maj. LaToya Porter on Thursday afternoon following a yearlong investigation into misconduct by Porter related to the department’s sergeant’s exam. Porter helped the department create the exam and operated a test-preparation company that charged fees to train officers hoping to take the…
Those people knocking on Dallas County doors with a badge and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ID aren’t late trick-or-treaters vying for extra candy. They’re health examiners from the CDC gathering data for a national health survey known for developing understanding of national health conditions. The National Health and…
Halloween and rain don’t make for ideal voting conditions. Just more than 26,000 people showed up to cast early votes in Dallas County on Wednesday, the second-lowest total so far in 2018. The depressed turnout was just a blip on a radar full of good news about civic participation so…
The Florida man alleged to have sent pipe bombs to President Donald Trump’s political opponents and critics around the country threatened U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke earlier this year, his campaign confirmed to the Observer on Wednesday afternoon. “We received Facebook messages from [Cesar] Sayoc threatening Beto in April,” O’Rourke…
District Attorney Faith Johnson’s silence on her decision to try six teens charged for armed robbery as adults is drawing criticism from organizers working to end mass incarceration. The six teens, all between the ages of 13 and 16, allegedly stole a black Chevy Malibu at gunpoint in the early…
A lot of the time, probably too much, we talk about the Dallas City Council strictly in terms of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, death, famine, war and conquest. There’s more to it than those four guys. A recent debate about a run-down apartment complex in far West Dallas…
After hearing three days of witnesses and arguments, a Dallas County jury took less than four hours to sentence a Dallas man to death for shooting a dentist in the head as part of a plot allegedly conceived by the dentist’s boyfriend’s jilted former girlfriend. Brenda Delgado allegedly paid Kristopher…
Another day, another promise from President Donald Trump to his base ahead of next week’s midterm elections. Tuesday, rather than issuing more wisdom about the caravan of Central American migrants that’s still hundreds of miles from the U.S. border, Trump declared that he’s considering ending birthright citizenship with an executive…
Well, I never. I never thought it would come to this, but I guess I might have to let the Dallas Citizens Council make me a member. After that, I might even have to join the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce. But let me promise you something right here. I…
An Airbnb horror story came to life in Dallas earlier this month, when a Richardson woman says she was harassed by a man whom she hosted in her apartment through the app. Alavia Khawaja, 24, says she hosted Airbnb guest Leonard Jackson on Oct. 11. She had been renting space…
