There’s something in the water. Or something (rumbling) underground. Something that’s driven us all, everyone who lives in North Texas’ ever-expanding web, quite mad. One of the best things about our shared condition is the verbal insanity it so often inspires. Without further ado, here are Unfair Park’s the Dallas Observer…
This is the last thing I will ever write about water, I promise, really and truly. It’s all going to be about space aliens and sexual enhancement operations from here on out unless something gigantic happens. But since we’ve been chatting anyway these last few days about problems with a…
The “geek” label is not the derogatory term it once was. It’s an all-encompassing term for a cultural subgroup that spans all demographics. The common denominator is that we take our movies seriously. The Observer canvassed the spectrum of Dallas-area geeks for their initial reactions to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a significant…
Ethan Couch is in the wind. Just don’t expect him to stay that way for long. A judge handed the “affluenza”-inflicted teen 10 years probation in 2013 for killing four people while driving drunk. The judge, Jean Boyd, apparently bought Couch’s defense team’s contention that he wasn’t responsible for his…
Eggnog. Caroling. Lawsuits. It’s Christmas in Texas. Every year the legality of public nativity scenes generates court cases and headlines. San Antonio atheist Patrick Greene unsuccessfully sued Henderson County over its courthouse-fronting nativity scene in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2011, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) took issue with…
North Texas Journalism professor George Getschow’s piece in The Dallas Morning News on dangers in the Lewisville Dam managed to put urban flooding in Texas in what I have always believed is the most useful framework — the Bible. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for safety of this 6-mile…
For what it’s worth, Texas is still the death-penalty capital of the United States, which in turn employs capital punishment more frequently than any other western country. Only Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China — none of them shining beacons of human rights and individual liberty — kill more prisoners. In 2015,…
It was made up. The fantasy that the Rangers would leave their comfy suburban confines for Dallas’ rough and tumble streets was never going to happen. It was a media story built around the wisp of a rumor that the club and the city were holding some back-channel meetings. People…
Spent the morning yesterday out on Lewisville Dam at the foot of Lake Lewisville with an entire caravan of other mediatoids getting de-panicked by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which seems to be in sort of a public relations panic. Small wonder. Publication last weekend by The Dallas Morning…
The city is suing low-rent landlord Dennis Topletz to have a court seize all his property, because his family name, according to City Hall, is “synonymous with dilapidated and often crime-ridden, single-family rental property located primarily in the southern area of Dallas.” (See the suit below.) So, wait. What does…
The popularity of Lakewood Elementary has effectively warped the East Dallas real-estate market as upper-middle-class-to-rich families outbid one another for homes within the school’s attendance boundaries. This makes a certain amount of sense, as Lakewood is a really good school that the surrounding community is heavily invested in, but it’s also…
Tuesday’s action at the Texas Racing Commission ended in a push: Four votes for so-called historical racing, four votes against and one abstention. For now, to the chagrin of much of the state’s legislative leadership, the TRC’s regulations still provide for Texas horse tracks to allow patrons to bet on…
Monday, Dallas ISD trustee Mike Morath was appointed Texas Education Commissioner by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott touted Morath’s reform work within Dallas ISD, their shared commitment to early childhood education and Morath’s mountain-climbing experience in announcing the appointment. Basically everyone, including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawling and former School Board…
Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate could not come at a much better time for Ted Cruz. Texas’ Canadian-born junior senator is in the ascendancy. He’s currently seeing his best poll numbers of the campaign, he’s scoring points in rhetorical fights with the most visible candidate in the field and he…
Far be it from me, at this holiest period in the Christian calendar, to defend slumlords or, heaven forfend, Mr. Scrooge himself, as The Dallas Morning News has now formally characterized low-rent landlord Dennis Topletz on its editorial page. But I do have a few small questions to ask about…
Nearly 200 countries signed a historic agreement to combat climate change last Saturday during the global climate summit in Paris. To achieve that goal would mean a massive slow-down of carbon emissions, climate scientists warn, an effective “de-carbonization” of the world economy. But it’s not just carbon consumption that scientists…
Mike Morath, the reform-minded former Mike Miles ally who currently sits in the District 2 seat on the Dallas ISD school board, is now the highest ranking education official in the state of Texas. Since being elected to the school board in 2011, Morath, along with former superintendent Miles and…
“This is a sausage fest,” Tony Romo said to no one in particular. He accepted his Miller Lite from the attendant in this hospitality room in a tucked-away corner of the Radisson Paper Valley hotel in downtown Appleton, Wisc. Romo had looked around the suite and seen that only one…
The 84th session of the Texas Legislature was weird, man. The most conservative body of representatives ever elected by the people of Texas killed the two-thirds rule — the way the minority party had retained a small amount of power in the Texas Senate for almost a century — cut…
To the court of public opinion: In the matter of City Council member Scott Griggs, who is also member of the board of trustees of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Board, on the question of whether a lawyer representing Griggs as a member of said pension board ever hired…
In 2012, after two decades of steadily marching skyward, Texas’ obesity rate dropped, from 30.4 percent to 29.2 percent. That hardly made Texas thin, to be sure; the state was still the 19th fattest state in the chubbiest country in human history, but the drop theoretically meant that there were…
Yesterday when WFAA was live-feeding a press conference about undocumented immigrant children to be housed in a church camp south of Dallas, I could swear I heard Ellis County Sheriff Johnny Brown say he intended to keep the camp surrounded and make sure his officers keep track of everybody who…
