Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez has ensconced herself in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s head. It wasn’t even that hard, really. She just slightly — and we mean slightly, none of the changes have had a tangible result yet — changed the way the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office deals with undocumented…
It’s Open Enrollment Season, which is like Christmas time for Obama-lovers who don’t have room for real Christmas in their hearts. Last season, the imaginary place people call “Dallas-Fort Worth” had more people signing up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act than any other region in Texas. All in…
Attend any pro sports event in Dallas, and you’ll be overwhelmed by patriotism. There’s red, white and blue everywhere, the national anthem gets sung with gusto and, if you’re at a Rangers game on the weekends, they’ll wheel out “God Bless America” for the seventh-inning stretch. There are color guards…
On paper, Edwin J. Kiest Elementary in East Dallas’ Casa View neighborhood and Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary in South Dallas/Fair Park, seem about the same, poverty-wise. Dallas ISD counts 96.1 percent of students at Kiest as “economically disadvantaged,” compared with 99.7 percent at Dunbar. Both are overwhelmingly, distressingly poor. On the ground, the…
Many of the employees at City Hall are women, and many of those women work in certain areas — Office of the City Secretary, Office of the City Manager, Office of the City Council — where tensions and tempers can run high. Conflict with elected officials is not just probable…
One of the vagaries of a process filled with them — suits to remove Texas public officials — is that the county in which the official serves can be charged with appointing the prosecuting attorney in the case. Normally, the choice isn’t difficult, because counties in Texas have an elected…
The hearings held by the Texas Railroad Commission to determine whether or not fracking companies XTO Energy and Enervest could continue injecting wastewater brine into the ground in Azle and Reno — towns in Tarrant and Parker County that have been hit with dozens of earthquakes in 2013 — went…
Why would anyone step into this? It’s a sincere question. The Confederate flag was at the center of national horror again all summer. Now someone wants to design a new one? Why even touch that? That flag. Three weeks after a white supremacist gunman murdered nine people in a church…
OK, Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs probably didn’t threaten to break a city staff member’s fingers, as he was accused of doing the infamous Affair of the Fucking Digits earlier this year. But he did call city staff a bunch of lard-asses Monday. We know, because we heard him…
Dallas County won’t be able to stop the most notorious for-profit prison operator in the United States from taking over management of a large halfway house for ex-prison inmates, but opponents of Corrections Corporation of America did manage to win a delay they hope will give them time to set conditions how…
Car crashes are part of the background of life in a big car-dependent city. The really awful ones maybe you’ll catch on the news. Others you gawk at as you drive by, or else rage at from a line of traffic. Sometimes they come and go like phantoms, vanishing by…
Late last week, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn seriously cut the intrigue in the race for the District 3 seat on the Dallas County Commissioners Court. Acceding to a request made by incumbent John Wiley Price, Lynn granted a second lengthy postponement for Price’s trial on charges of corruption. The delay…
Dallas ISD’s Bonham Elementary was a gem. The school reliably received an exemplary rating from the Texas Education Agency plus an impressive number of accolades for one of DISD’s workaday neighborhood schools. In 2009, it was one of 11 campuses nationwide to receive a National Excellence in Urban Education Award…
Every eye in American higher education is about to be on Austin again. Next Monday, the University of Texas will file a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the latest Abigail Fisher anti-affirmative action case, to be heard by the court in December. The Fisher case — supposed to…
Joseph Randle, the guy who began 2015 as the Dallas Cowboys’ starting running back, might never play another down for the team, following reports from the NFL that the former Oklahoma State player is facing league discipline. The action stems an incident at a Wichita hotel in February that ended…
Former EPA regulatory director Eric Schaeffer remembers sitting in on an industry meeting in which an executive reacted to finding his business was on the list of the country’s top benzene polluters. The company boss told other executives he didn’t want to be on the same list next year. When you…
Texas has not, as it turns out, completely ended taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it might not be able to, either. Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott hopped on his Twitter account to crow about his belief that Texas health…
Two-and-a-half years ago, around the beginning of May 2013, surveyors working for the city of Dallas staked out the contours of the Texas Horse Park’s centerpiece arena. Judging by the location of the stakes, the arena was going to be built more or less on top of an ancient and…
The trial that could remove Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk from office is developing, but it isn’t really coming into focus. It has a judge, David Peeples, who was assigned the case after two local judges removed themselves. It has filings on both sides that indicate where the case’s…
Half of the battle over moving a concrete plant out of the Trinity Groves restaurant theme park and farther into West Dallas was over in June, but we just didn’t know it. In June, as Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and the rest of the city staff hurried the City…
Dallas’ notorious tow companies seem to like parades. At the 2009 Gay Pride parade, Longhorn Towing illegally took 30 cars parked at the Oak Lawn post office, and the company was required to return the $138 towing fees to some customers after getting sued. This past Saturday, the night of the annual…
Any who predicted last spring that donors to Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s then-nascent presidential campaign were setting their money on fire is probably feeling pretty foolish right about now. Yep, that was a boneheaded move right there. In the six-plus months between Cruz’s presidential announcement at Liberty University and Wednesday night’s third…
