There is a certain primal joy to be found in setting of your own legal, or illegal, fire storm to celebrate the birth of our United States. It’s you, the amateurs, who make July 4 one of the busiest days of the year for fire departments, emergency rooms and burn…
This is what happens when a Dallas restaurant has the gall to charge for chips and salsa. Early Saturday morning, a brawl broke out at the El Paisano taqueria on Lombardy Lane near Love Field because, Isael Rojas says on Facebook, “chips were $5 and they wanted green salsa instead…
Probably all I’ll ever have to tell you about myself is that recently, while reading a City Hall PowerPoint presentation on a proposed new housing policy, I laughed out loud. You already know never to invite me to dinner, right? Can’t help myself. Look. I have written about Curtis Lockey…
On Tuesday afternoon, four weeks to the day after Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick asked his office to weigh in, Attorney General Ken Paxton opined that a Fort Worth ISD policy allowing students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity was illegal. The AG opinion is a curious thing…
Local police and federal agencies are investigating the murder of Jacinto Hernández Torres, better known under his byline, Jay Torres. Torres worked for more than 20 years at La Estrella, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Spanish language sister paper. Someone shot the reporter dead, police believe, a few days before…
Nineteen Texans, mostly women, were arrested Tuesday for their role in a methamphetamine distribution ring the U.S. Department of Justice says was operating out of the southeast Dallas County towns of Pleasant Grove, Seagoville and Balch Springs. Each person named in the indictment is charged with one count of conspiracy to possess…
In an opinion issued late Tuesday afternoon, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says Fort Worth ISD’s attempt to let all students use a restroom consistent with their gender identity is likely illegal. Paxton was asked for the opinion in May by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, an outspoken opponent of…
Nicholas Fierros Jr., a Dallas 10-year-old kidnapped during an apparent home invasion Monday afternoon in Dallas, is “physically fine,” Dallas police said Tuesday afternoon. A couple found Fierros after several hours and identified him from photos distributed by Dallas police, Assistant Police Chief Randy Blankenbaker said. The three men who…
Defining counterculture used to be so easy. There were “us” and “them.” And if there were any doubts, the dictionary helped clear them up. Counterculture, to Merriam-Webster, is any culture “with values and mores that run counter to those of established society.” That worked in the early 1960s. That decade…
In an election year, even mainstream political parties seem a little wild. But North Texas is home to groups who are on the fringe of politics, grouped together to target the status quo. Here’s a guide to some of the most noteworthy activists taking their messages to the streets in…
In Dallas as in Houston, the twin termini of what they hope will be the nation’s first bullet train, government officials and civic boosters have expressed enthusiastic and unreserved support for Texas Central Railway’s effort to bring high-speed rail to Texas. At a joint 2014 press conference, Dallas Mayor Mike…
Every once in a while something sticks in my heart or my craw. This one was heart. Last week, writing about a city-funded program to build houses in central oak Cliff, I quoted Raymond Crawford, who lives in one of the target neighborhoods, as saying, “Everyone knows the city really…
Even before Monday, there were two main points of the rationale Texas Republicans claimed in support of House Bill 2, the anti-abortion law largely struck down by the Supreme Court Monday morning. The first revolved around protecting women, and they pitched the second at ending abortion. Texas Governor Greg Abbott…
John Wiley Price’s federal corruption trial has been delayed again, this time until February 2017. This guarantees that Price will be sworn into his seat as Dallas County commissioner one more time before the case’s resolution. Price’s attorneys and federal prosecutors agreed to delay the trial in deference to the…
Thanks to a 5-3 decision from the United States Supreme Court, Texas still has 21 operating abortion clinics. The portion of the state’s 2013 anti-abortion legislation that would have shut down 13 of the 21 clinics by requiring them to be certified as ambulatory surgical centers (essentially mini-hospitals) will not…
The Observer has an opening for a part-time social media editor. This twenty-hour/week position combines journalism with social-media skills to increase the Dallas Observer’s audience and serve as its online public face. The social media editor manages the Observer’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, among others, with the expectation of continued…
Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston has changed the name of his campaign Facebook page, the one he calls Dallas’ “3rd best media outlet,” from Philip T. Kingston for Dallas City Council District 14 to Philip T. Kingston for Dallas. Kingston, long rumored to be a future mayoral candidate, says…
Ester Zapata’s sister and brother attended Mount Auburn Elementary. Zapata’s two eldest children, now 24 and 18, went there as well. So when it came time for her youngest, Emily, to enter kindergarten, there was no question that she’d follow in the footsteps of her aunt and uncle and brother…
Only two months after a recent mass eviction of homeless people from a downtown encampment, Dallas officials already are preparing for a second mass evacuation of the new camp that the homeless people moved to when they got kicked out of the first one. This confirms a prediction I made the first…
Compiling a list of history-making places in Dallas could be a task of the lazy — there are many well-known landmarks — but we chose a different path. Let’s assume we all know about Dealey Plaza, and the Old Red Courthouse, and the Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park…
Daniel Miller is seizing his moment. Following Great Britain’s vote Thursday to remove itself from the European Union, Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement, has jumped on the opportunity to push his message of Texas sovereignty as hard as he can. “From the looks of it, the British…
One of the last session of the Texas Legislature’s rare moments of compassion and common sense is bearing fruit. A bipartisan coalition of representatives passed a bill that makes it easier to buy naloxone, a medication that can quickly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Tuesday, Walgreens became the first…
