When do we start calling the anti-accountability lobby in public education by its true name — the mediocrity lobby? When do we begin to talk about the fact that poor and minority children are not held down half so much by mean rich people as by glad-handing mediocrats who earn…
Yesterday, Dallas Animal Services officials told the City Council there was progress in the effort to deal with the estimated 8,000 loose dogs roaming South Dallas. Still, Dallas Police Department Major Barbara Hobbs said Monday, the department needs more time to transition from enforcement to education with Dallas residents. Since Hobbs…
Texans love their sports. Football is the second most cherished religion in Texas, according to Texas Monthly, with baseball and basketball following close behind. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sports every year, building stadiums, buying team memorabilia and watching playoff games. But imagine if the National Football…
T.C. Broadnax is starting to get a handle on what he calls the challenge ahead. On Thursday, a little less than a month before he takes over the Dallas city manager’s office from A.C. Gonzalez, the Tacoma city manager sat down with the Dallas Observer for a discussion about his approach…
The measure members of the Texas anti-abortion lobby are calling “the most important pro-life bill of the session” is officially on the books ahead of the 2017 Texas Legislative session. Late last week, state Representative Stephanie Klick and state Senator Charles Perry officially filed the Texas Right to Life-designed ban…
As I see it, I don’t just have a tendency to be paranoid. It’s my job — a nasty one sometimes, but somebody’s got to do it. I am still sort of obsessed with a completely inscrutable move last week by a majority of the City Council, pushed by the…
We know you’re busy, so here’s a roundup of the news of the week you may have missed. Denton True Crime Author Gives Up Retirement After Suspect Is Arrested in 29-Year-Old Murder Patricia Springer thought she had found the man who killed her friend’s daughter when she sat across from…
It’s early. Maybe the feds can still pull a conviction out of the ragged hat that has become their corruption case against Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. At of the end of this week, though, I wouldn’t bet my own money on it. Talk to me Monday. The thing…
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is going to do this, apparently. Patrick formally announced Wednesday his plans to shepherd a so-called bathroom bill through the Texas legislature. If passed the bill would require visitors and workers at Texas’ public schools, government buildings and public universities to use the restroom consistent with the…
Denton true crime author Patricia Springer says she thought she had found the man who killed her friend’s daughter when she sat across from Ricky Lee Green on death row in the early 1990s. She had traveled a couple of hours from the Dallas area to reach the Polunsky Unit…
I don’t believe it. This story the mayor and his posse on the council handed out yesterday at a city council briefing about why they won’t support a city bond campaign in May doesn’t even begin to add up. There’s another agenda in this agenda somewhere. The nice thing about…
A controversial Texas mandate that some fetal tissue be buried or cremated after medical procedures remains on hold, at least for another three weeks. After a testy two-day hearing in Austin, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said late Wednesday afternoon that he would not issue his final ruling on the…
Last summer, when a Collin County grand jury refused to indict McKinney Police Department officer Eric Casebolt, the teenage girl the officer threw to the ground made it clear that the case wasn’t over. Casebolt may have dodged criminal charges, but Dajerria Becton said she was determined to sue. Late…
In the end, it seems that the only concrete solution that will come out of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ Commission on Homelessness is another committee. Acting Tuesday afternoon on the commission’s final recommendations, the Dallas City Council’s Housing Committee agreed that the best way to pursue the commissions recommendations is forming…
In Dallas, gentrification has always arrived riding a bulldozer. Poor people get kicked out of their homes and their communities are scraped off the face of the earth. Nobody even asks where they went. But a new idea is afoot in West Dallas, the city’s latest gentrification battleground. In this…
As of a couple of months ago, it seemed as if former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was getting a break. On Nov. 18, Dallas County prosecutors agreed to dismiss domestic violence charges against Manziel stemming from an alleged early 2016 attack on then-girlfriend Colleen Crowley as long as Manziel…
Oh, thank goodness. It looks like we won’t have take Fair Park, our neglected and benighted 277-acre exposition park at the center of our city, and marry her off to the Park Cities after all. As The Dallas Morning News reported last week, national corporate interests, some with international experience managing public attractions…
Dallas is a burger, young people as the meat and fixings and rich whites and poor blacks as the buns.
The Dallas Cowboys’ regular season could not have gone much better. Behind rookies Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott, both long-shot MVP candidates, the Cowboys won 13 games for just the third time in team history. The club’s defense, maligned for most of the last three seasons, has come on strong…
Over the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many people had time off to be with, or hide from, friends and family. But the cops and criminals didn’t take the season off. Here are a few crimes that you may have missed during the holidays. Bite-and-Run Dog Attack: Late…
Creating a dramatic fireworks display is hard enough when the pyrotechnics are launched from the ground. But during 2017’s New Year’s show, AT&T Streaming Lights at Reunion Tower, the fireworks erupted from the base of the tower to the top, 560 feet high. The Reunion Tower was more than just a…
We know you’re busy, so here’s roundup of the week’s news from the Dallas Observer’s news desk. Dallas Arrivals and Departures 2016/2017 It can be painful to look two ways at once, unless you’re a gecko. But we must say goodbye to 2016 and embrace 2017, making this a good time…
