Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez called for an end to “hate and vitriol” and opportunity “as big as the Texas sky” Sunday afternoon during her official campaign kickoff event at Tyler Station in Oak Cliff. “We should be lending a hand up, not tearing them down. We must be…
The small government conservatives would have a decent point to make, if they only meant it. We can’t always count on distant, national, career government officials to wipe our chins for us. But the first time something does go seriously wrong — as things are wont to do in the…
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Thursday announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time for Texas’ nascent medical cannabis industry. After years of detente during the Obama administration, Sessions rescinded the Cole memo, a Department of Justice directive that federal law enforcement not crack down on marijuana-related activity otherwise protected…
Hope Hicks can now add “being objectified by the president of the United States” to the narrow list of accomplishments she’s racked up as she’s gone from SMU English major to White House communications director. According to Michael Wolff’s new presidential tell-all Fire and Fury, Hicks, a former model and Gossip…
Following a 2017 filled with legal trouble, Joshua Baish, the owner of the now-defunct Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton, kicked off 2018 with an early morning arrest. Baish, according to a Denton County arrest warrant affidavit, punched one of his former employees outside Andy’s Bar before hopping in his…
Dallas County fired Health and Human Services Director Zach Thompson after sexual harassment allegations made by another Dallas County employee, according to a press release from a law firm representing the woman. “Our client has alleged a pattern and practice of sexual abuse, harassment, intimidation and retaliation by Mr. Thompson,”…
Many things aren’t clear about Dallas’ growing hoard of bike-share bikes — how many of them there are, whether their owners will ever make money off of them or if they’re just separating Silicon Valley venture capitalists from their cash — but some things are. The bikes, as evidenced by…
Over the last couple of weeks, a small furor has developed around the issue of combating panhandling in Dallas. The week before Christmas, several Dallas Police Department commanders ordered their troops to stop issuing citations for “solicitation by coercion” — aggressive panhandling — or panhandling near gas pumps or ATMs…
Zach Thompson, director of Dallas County Human Health and Human Services, is out of the job he held since 2003. Initial media reports Thursday afternoon indicated that Thompson planned to retire Jan. 31, but DCHHS spokeswoman Renae Crutchfield told the Observer that Thompson has been off the job since Dec. 29…
State Rep. Jonathan Stickland is a conservative Christian Republican from Bedford known to elicit criticism from his fellow conservatives for the “blustering tea party politics” he fires off on the House floor in Austin. Texas Monthly named him one of Texas’ worst legislators in 2015. D Magazine followed by calling…
Dallas County suffered its sixth death of the 2017-18 flu season Tuesday, marking another low point in one of the worst flu seasons in decades, researchers say. While there are signs that Texas’ infection rate may have peaked around the holidays, the state and Dallas County aren’t out of the…
Looks like former San Antonio mayor and HUD Secretary Julian Castro is really running for president in 2020. Great. Maybe now HUD will show me those documents it’s been promising for a year and a half. It’s simple. If he’s going to run for president under the Democratic flag, then Castro needs…
Without some action from Dallas, children attending school within the city won’t have crossing guards starting at the end of January. On Wednesday, the City Council learned about this unintended consequence of voters’ November decision to eliminate Dallas County Schools. Texas law requires all cities with populations of more than…
Late Friday night — 11:29 p.m., according to the email time stamp — the city of Dallas handed out its last news dump of the year. Along with the usual weekly detritus was a memo from the Dallas city manager’s office about panhandling. The memo appears to be directed at two…
In the course of the Dallas dog bite hysterics of the last month, people have said a lot of totally crazy things about pets and people, but it’s important for you and me to remember one big thing about any dog we own. If that dog has ever bitten before…
For now, as bike sharing in Dallas rolls toward the end of its unregulated Wild West phase, the game for the five companies in business in the city has been pretty simple. They’ve put as many of their bikes on the streets as they can, mostly thanks to a stream…
The pain felt as if someone took an ice pick, stuck it in a fireplace, and rammed it between Scott Garrett’s neck and shoulders. He called it the worst pain he’d ever endured, and each time he tried to raise his head, it felt like someone was stabbing him again…
Along with a hangover, New Year’s Day brings the chance to look forward and backward. At the Observer, that means paying tribute, for good or ill, to those newsmakers who left the DFW stage in 2017 and announcing those who stepped up to it 2017, or will step up in 2018…
A single porch light shined on a white mobile home one mid-July night in a rural neighborhood north of Dallas, illuminating drops of blood that trailed down the porch’s faded blue wooden steps. More blood pooled at the bottom of the steps and stained the porch’s handrail and floor. Along…
This is exactly what happens. Two weeks ago, the city let itself get bamboozled out of killing a dog that had bitten a 13-year-old boy in the face. Now, another dog, a pit bull mix, has attacked and mauled a 2-year-old child in a downtown park, and the dog nuts,…
If he runs for president, and if he runs as a Democrat and if Donald Trump is his opponent, Mark Cuban might win Texas, a new poll says. The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling — say that three times fast — for Business Insider shows Mavs owner Cuban, a real…
The 2017 session of the Texas Legislature, like most recent sessions of the Texas Legislature, wasn’t a good one for reproductive rights. While lawmakers rejected some of the most stringent anti-abortion legislation, including a blatantly unconstitutional bill from state Rep. Tony Tinderholt of Arlington that would’ve banned abortion statewide, Texas…
