Rattle Can was a real person. His family wants you to know that. He was a “big ol’ bear” of a man, tall and strong and slightly rotund, with a long, ginger beard hiding a strong-jawed, handsome face. His given name was Jacob Lee Rhyne, though most people called him…
Last week, Dallas Police Chief David Brown appeared on YouTube to offer a personal thank you for helping the city achieve “an unprecedented 12th consecutive year of crime reduction.” Between 2004 and 2015, Dallas experienced a 53 percent drop in crime, which he touted as the “largest of any big…
Wait. Tell me again. Where do you get money? Do you get money from the mall? I thought the mall got money from you. Nothing against malls. I just don’t get how malls make the people around them richer. Last week the Dallas City Council gave investor Peter Brodsky $2.4…
Dallas’ urban core is in the midst of a renaissance. Empty nesters and yuppy millennials are eschewing the grownup responsibilities of suburban homeownership. Developers are clearing dilapidated inner-city neighborhoods to fill the seemingly insatiable demand for luxury Khrushchyovkas. There are people downtown after business hours, and many of them aren’t even…
Slowly, as if it could go any other way, the process that might eventually lead to another process that will end in both the Trinity park and Trinity parkway getting processed is coming into focus. Friday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced the names of the six people who will join…
Texas Senator Ted Cruz handled the biggest moment of his campaign for president thus far with humor and aplomb. Facing increased pressure over his Canadian birth and a misreported personal loan he took from Goldman Sachs in order to fund his 2012 Senate campaign, Cruz cracked wise about making Donald…
Goldin Auctions is very happy to fill the needs of even the most demanding JFK assassination aficionado. You know, the guy or gal who sits around thinking, ‘You know what would really make my fireplace mantle shrine to the assassination of the 35th president? A bullet fired from the gun…
Planned Parenthood has sued the Center for Medical Progress over a series of videos released in 2015 that CMP said showed Planned Parenthood officials engaging in illegal conduct — namely, attempting to sell fetal tissue obtained from abortions, for profit. The videos touched off a firestorm from anti-abortion politicians. In…
I think we’ve actually reached the point where nothing, not one single thing that anyone, very much including myself, has to say about the so-called “Trinity toll road” can be understood by anyone, by which I mean any human being, living, dead or unborn. Yesterday Brandon Formby had what I…
Yesterday the Dallas City Council took kind of a dive on a tough issue about a charter school that wants to expand on a new campus in the racially segregated southern hemisphere of the city. This will prove to be Round 1 in a war for the soul of southern…
The University of Texas athletic department is unlikely to face any NCAA sanctions for accusations that members of the Longhorns’ basketball teams cheated in several classes. That’s the takeaway from an independent report commissioned by the university to investigate the claims of academic impropriety — at least if you believe…
Oil prices are cratering, hitting just $30 yesterday, and what happens next is hard to predict. While some ideological enemies of crude might shrug their shoulders at this news, North Texas has a very good reason to keep an eye on these prices and trends. Dallas is home to a…
Despite the “Texas Miracle” and incomes that are above the national median, Texans are doing a crappy job of maintaining their financial health. At least, that’s what a new report from creditcards.com says. Those aforementioned incomes are about 2 percent higher than the national median. Because incomes and credit scores…
Surely, it was just a coincidence, but as soon as Ted “Canuck” Cruz crept past GOP national front-runner Donald Trump in Iowa polling a couple of weeks ago, Trump started nudging the issue of Cruz’s alleged Canadian-ness. People, Trump said, were talking to him. They had lots of questions about…
Westlake seems like a perfectly lovely place to live, so long as one doesn’t mind being neighbors with Glenn Beck. It’s astoundingly prosperous, with a median household income north of $250,000, which is where the Census Bureau stops counting. Children there are automatically admitted to Westlake Academy, the charter school…
I finally found Mary Suhm, and guess where. In a videotaped deposition. The former Dallas city manager sat down in front of recording equipment for five hours early last December and answered challenging questions in a lawsuit against the city brought by Trinity East Energy, LLC, an oil and gas…
On Friday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott put forward the “Texas Plan,” a radical proposal to reshape the U.S. Constitution and shift power from the federal to state governments by calling what’s known as an Article V Convention. Under the Constitution’s Article V, a two-thirds super-majority of state legislatures can call…
Tonya Couch, mother of affluenza-afflicted drunk driving killer Ethan Couch, was given reduced bail Monday afternoon. After an ill-fated sojourn to Mexico with her son Ethan following his skipping a probation appointment, Tonya Couch was accused of helping him flee. Her bail was set at $1 million after she was…
A trio of national leaders of the Bandidos motorcycle gang have been arrested on federal racketeering and drug charges related to a war the group waged against the rival Cossacks club, according to federal authorities. That war erupted publicly during the now-infamous shootout between members, and police, in Waco in…
The Dallas Morning News has been carrying out a tough-worded editorial campaign against a Dallas family the paper calls slumlords, describing their business practices as “despicable’ and dismissing the family’s own arguments as a “massively most absurd defense.” The paper wants a court to enforce a petition from the city that…
The problems that have dogged Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk over the last 16 months or so — prescription drug abuse, paranoid delusions and a bout of severe depression that sidelined her from work for months — are yesterday’s news. She’s feeling better, and her employees say her office…
For all the buildup, it was over pretty quickly Friday morning. Susan Hawk, dogged since the fall with the possibility of being kicked out of her Dallas County District Attorney’s chair, will stay in office. Semi-retired Judge David Peeples, who also handled the removal suit against drunk-driving District Attorney Rosemary…
