Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, a Texas-based affiliate of the women’s health organization, has joined a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood branches across the country against the Center for Medical Progress and the people behind it. Posing as tissue researchers, Center for Medical Progress employees — they fancy themselves investigative journalists —…
Ted Cruz has officially lost it with Donald Trump. Texas’ Canadian-born junior senator went after the GOP’s presidential front-runner Thursday afternoon with all the bluster he could find, putting an end to any hope the two candidates could revive the congenial relationship they had earlier in the campaign. “It’s not…
Coming soon to a city near you (very near you): the prize fight of the century. In the one corner, with a left fist loaded with lawyers and a right glove packed with money, we have the Big Contender, Dallas City Hall, determined never to admit that the “whitewater feature,”…
Let’s put this out here: There is no better playoff season in the four major sports than the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs. For the next two months, the best of the league’s best will embark on a thrill ride of pain and emotion, of heartbreaking goals, mysterious injuries, and mind-blowing…
Dallas’ quest to keep Exxxotica out of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will keep its puritanical legal eagle on the job, thanks to the majority of the Dallas City Council that voted to keep Scott Bergthold on the team defending the city against the porn convention’s lawsuit. Bergthold, a…
On Tuesday evening, Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance president and CEO — with an assist from former homeless czar/current Mayor Mike Rawlings — delivered some bad news in her second annual “State of the Homeless Address.” As we predicted two months ago, the homeless count in Dallas and Collin counties has spiked, jumping…
The city of Dallas will not be piloting a cite-and-release program for marijuana possession after all. Wednesday morning, the Dallas City Council shot down a long-in-the-works proposal that would’ve required Dallas police officers to issue tickets, rather than making arrests, when they discovered Dallas residents with less than four ounces…
So far, no one has caught the Zika virus in Texas from a mosquito. The virus has only been transmitted once in the state, and that happened when a man returning to the Lone Star State from a trip to South America had sex with an uninfected woman. As mosquito…
At the end of last week, the Dallas City Auditor issued a report (copy below) saying the city handed out $29.9 million to housing contractors in a three-year period and forgot to keep any records to show whether any of the housing got built. Oh, and they also forgot to…
According to the first reports out of Brussels, one of the two explosions that shook Zaventem airport Tuesday went off near the check-in counter of Fort Worth-based American Airlines. Despite many outlets still reporting that version of events, a statement issued by the airline says that no explosion took place near…
One of today’s bombing attacks in Belgium occurred at a familiar location — an airport. This is not unique or surprising. Here are a few reasons why terrorists choose to strike there, and why it’s so hard to stop them. 1) They are irresistibly soft targets. Let’s start with the…
The Dallas County Courthouse filled with African American luminaries on April 18, 1921. Something special was going to happen, and the assembled group was there to show support as public testimony decided the fate of two children. On a Saturday evening in early April, firefighting trucks from two stations responded…
A bad wig, sometimes black and other times gray, and dark sunglasses seems like a weak disguise for a bank robber to wear. It’s not the most interesting disguise compared with the New York bank robber who dressed up as Darth Vader, the Illinois bank robber who wore a nun…
There was a day when the three men who sat in front of me in the Dallas City Council chamber for Monday’s Trinity toll road meeting could have said jump, and the entire Dallas City Council would have fainted from embarrassment for not having thought of it themselves. But this…
Nothing about Donald Trump is new. In any major American city, no one need dig far to find people who exhibited the traits that make Trump so appealing to the Republican electorate, and Dallas is no different. None of its residents may have had all of Trumps’ charms rolled into…
They’re the superheroes of the Democratic Party, swooping in to save the day with their super vote before a misguided populace burns the Democratic establishment to the ground by selecting a candidate who spews radical ideas as if it were 1972. Birthed in the flames of George McGovern’s ’72 presidential…
OK, Dallas City Council, this is between us and please don’t tell our readers about it here at the Dallas Observer, in fact please don’t tell the Observer about it, either. I wish you would go into a smoke-filled room, shut me out totally, draw the blinds, refuse to comment,…
The lack of hard data available to help predict the effects of Texas’ anti-abortion House Bill 2 came up again and again earlier this month when the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether to strike down portions of the law. The most contentious regulation, the one that requires any abortion…
Mr. Trump, this is from me, an old middle class white guy watching from the sidelines here in Dallas. You said if they took the nomination away from you at the convention, “I think you’d have riots. I’m representing many, many millions of people.” I’m looking at your people, Mr…
Presented (mostly) without comment, here’s Dallas City Council member Rickey Callahan bringing in St. Patrick’s Day, and his birthday, with a lovely, lilting brogue and a song. Thanks, Rickey, and District 8 council member Erik Wilson, who brought our attention to this video…
In any other political environment, Merrick Garland, the man nominated by President Obama to take Antonin Scalia’s spot on the Supreme Court, wouldn’t be particularly controversial choice. He’s got impeccable credentials, has been a justice on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C. for nearly 20 years and has…
The threat of oil and gas extraction within 850 feet of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-controlled Joe Pool Lake dam in 2010 initiated a red alert for the federal agency that controls our nation’s dams. Corps officials pleaded with energy giants XTO and Chesapeake to stop exploration so close…
