Now that she has returned from the lengthy mental-health sabbatical that put a bold-faced exclamation point on her remarkably tumultuous first several months in office, Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk is projecting an air of super-competence. Not only is she fielding the public’s questions (and quite deftly, by all…
Not only has Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy neglected to show any remorse for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend Nicole Holder, he’s made it clear this week that he doesn’t even believe he did anything wrong. First, a brief recap. In May 2014, Holder told police that Hardy choked her,…
When it comes to prison phone calls, security is kinda a big deal. The whole premise behind the calls being recorded is security. Doing so, states and counties have argued, prevents crime both inside and outside of jail. Securus Technologies, the Dallas-based company that provides prison and jail phone services…
Dallas City Attorney Warren Ernst insists his sudden retirement at age 61 after two years on the job isn’t being driven by anything special going on at City Hall at the moment. OK, fine. But I think it has to do with everything happening at City Hall these days. Every…
Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate offered little in the way of new rhetoric or tactics from Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The Canadian-born first-termer stuck to usual strident style — one picks up things like that as a college debater at Harvard — decrying the big government boogeyman, Kentucky Senator Rand…
Given her past woes and some of her past performances, Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk’s appearance Monday night at a community meeting was pretty damned striking. She’s back in the ring, man. Throwing punches. I would even have to go ahead and pay her what may be an old…
So, the Dallas City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to fix the language in the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance to more accurately describe Dallas’ transgender residents. Essentially, the council made a tweak to clarify that gender identity an sexual orientation are not the the same things. Everybody who was protected under the…
Cattle, like other mammals raised on a pasture, eat grass. But if there’s one things humans do well, it’s mess with nature, and so hundreds of years ago humans began sharing their discovery that feeding cattle corn makes them grow fatter more quickly. Sometime around the 1950’s, modern Americans took…
Abdullah’s favorite place to park cars in Dallas is an Italian restaurant that closes early. The people there tend to be kind and sober. “It’s not about the tips,” the valet driver says. “It’s about the customers themselves. They are really nice … and they are not drunk, like trying…
You and I saw the stories. Dallas defensive end Greg Hardy’s girlfriend had ditched out on prosecutors so that, even though he had already been convicted of beating her, the court tossed out the case against him on appeal, and he walked. We saw later that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones…
The forebears of the modern-day feral hog arrived in Texas well before there was a Texas, tagging along with and occasionally escaping from early Spanish explorers in 17th century. They took to the wild, where they spread like kudzu and interbred with subsequent waves of formerly domesticated swine gone rogue,…
City Council member Adam Medrano, the head of the city’s LGBT task force, wants to fix something pretty simple in Dallas’ non-discrimination ordinance. Let’s just tweak some language, Medrano says, to make sure all Dallas residents are treated equally. Medrano wants to ensure that Dallas’ transgender population is protected and…
Thanks to God’s grace, the intrepid work of a few counter-revolutionaries and a governor smart enough not to believe the lies the military was spinning, Texas, barely, survived the menace that was Jade Helm 15 this summer. The U.S. Army Special Operations Command-led operation turned out to be military exercises, just…
Do you ever pause, put the paper down or look up from your tablet and wonder what’s really going on? Maybe we should all do that. Every day. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott couldn’t find a real sanctuary city to attack in his state, so he threatened Dallas County Sheriff Lupe…
Last week, less than two years after taking the gig, the city of Dallas’ “bike czar” Ashley Haire abdicated her throne in favor of a working on bike and pedestrian design projects for a Denver consulting firm. Haire’s job with the city was so tough as to be nearly impossible. A…
On the front page of its Metro section last Monday, The Dallas Morning News had a piece reporting that the Dallas Police Department’s attrition rate (i.e. the number of officers who resigned, got fired, retired or died last year) was higher than it’s been in Chief David Brown’s five-year tenure leading the…
Friday afternoon, Deadspin released the staggering body of evidence it’s collected from the state of North Carolina’s case against Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy. There are detailed, harrowing statements from witnesses, disturbing evidence of Hardy creating a cover story as his alleged assault on his ex-girlfriend was taking place…
Based on what we know, calling University of North Texas journalism dean Dorothy Bland a race-card-playing, self-aggrandizing, lying, cop-hating bigot is entirely unfair. Not that some people care. Trolls, mainly. Still, some serious humans are upset with Bland too. She’s the target of an online petition demanding her firing for…
When is being fat a legitimate political issue? Ever? Even theoretically? Is it ever right for a skinny person to get mouthy about other people being fat? I winced, I admit, when I read that Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs was talking about people at City Hall being too…
You may have read about how firefighters discovered several dozen marijuana plants inside a burning house at the corner of Peavy Road and Carnegie Drive in East Dallas on Sunday. Crazy, right? Well, what you may not have realized is that, after the fire, a team from the Observer discovered an antique…
The short of it is this: Dallas’ pension fund for police and firefighters is in big trouble. This week, the City Council heard from an outside auditor that the fund has $5 billion in commitments that it doesn’t have assets to pay, based on the new way the Governmental Accounting Standards…
Nearly every day, volunteers visit a wooded area in Southeast Dallas that has become notorious for abandoned dogs. Many of the dogs are dumped in plastic bags, and one was found with rope tied around its hind legs, suggesting that the animals could have been been abused before being killed…
