File under mysteries of the soul: that the suicide of the widow is somehow heavier to bear than the savage random murder of her husband. And then again, that’s nonsense. Who are we, strangers, to assign weight or relative value to the death of Patti Stevens, who committed carbon monoxide…
Christina Casas has lived on Rusk Avenue all her life. She remembers sitting on the front porch early one afternoon in about 1973 as her family bustled past her, lugging furniture and boxes into their new home, a small, wood-frame workman’s bungalow at the corner of Rusk and Carroll Avenue…
For a while, since April’s special Dallas City Council meeting about Trinity toll road, the two sides in the city’s never-ending fight over what, exactly, to do with the Trinity River bottoms seemed to reach a cease-fire. Both sides were still suspicious, sure, but many people seemed ready to give…
The last time Dallas Animal Services came to the Dallas City Council’s Quality of Life Committee to talk about the city’s loose dog problem, council members said they wanted substance. Scott Griggs and Mark Clayton, especially, sought numbers and an actual plan to answer complaints from their constituents about the…
We have a confession to make. Two weeks ago, we published a piece in this space purporting to identify Dallas’ 10 HOTTEST Apartment Complexes. While this might seem to imply that we used some sort of objective methodology for determining HOTNESS — or, for that matter, had any knowledge at all about…
Aha! Answers exist, after all. The argument against requiring a high-dollar apartment developer to include affordable apartments in his or her project is always that doing so will tank the whole deal and cause the developer to abandon America and live out his or her years on a desert island,…
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins lost the battle but he, and the families of inmates at Dallas County Jail, won the war. Last fall, Jenkins was on the wrong side of a 4-1 vote in favor of giving Dallas-based Securus Technologies a contract to provide phone service at Dallas County…
It’s time to start paying attention to the protests. Over the past month, drivers from across Uber’s platform — black-car drivers, UberSelect luxury sedan drivers and UberX drivers who just use their personal vehicles, whatever it is — have protested at the technology company’s Dallas headquarters in the West End…
I get that Hillary kicked ass in that Benghazi hearing, but in national politics I’m strictly a peanut gallery guy. I know that The Christian Science Monitor asked recently if it’s already inevitable that Hillary Clinton’s running mate will be Julian Castro, HUD secretary and former San Antonio mayor, and…
Trinity Groves, the most exciting restaurant theme park in the world, sits across the street from a 7-acre concrete mixing plant. This is unacceptable. “Right now the plant spreads a lot of unneeded cement dust all over the area,” explained Karl Zavitkovsky, the city’s Office of Economic Development director, at…
It’s hard to understand what the state of Texas did to Planned Parenthood Thursday as anything but a raid aimed at intimidating the healthcare provider. Thursday morning, Texas Office of the Inspector General personnel showed up at a Planned Parenthood in Dallas and demanded documents from at least 10 different…
It doesn’t feel like it, but the 2015 Cowboys still have everything to play for. Despite the first five games of the season going as badly as they possibly could have, the Cowboys are still in decent shape to win the NFC East. They can still make the franchise’s first…
Tuesday, the Texas State Auditor’s Office released the findings from its long-running investigation of how the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s used of forfeiture funds when Craig Watkins was DA. Wednesday, Watkins gave us a call to tell us why the auditor’s report wasn’t worth the (digital) paper it was…
In the old culture of Dallas, the one I hope is half-dead already, it was bad form to try to connect the dots. Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow is gone from those pages now, and I sort of miss him: He always painted me as a tinfoil hat crazy-head…
Perhaps more than anything, the ongoing skirmish at Dallas City Hall over whether and how to bump hourly pay requirements for contractors doing work for the city is an object lesson in how ideas that aren’t that controversial often whither on the vine. The way council member Philip Kingston describes…
In news that’s late coming and not all that surprising, the Texas State Auditor’s Office announced Tuesday that the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office misused forfeiture funds during former District Attorney Craig Watkins’ time in office. Among the ill-spent cash? Nearly $50,000 Watkins’ office shelled out to a driver he…
Transgender Texans are bearing the brunt of pressure from agencies across the state that seem dead set on preserving whatever amount of legal discrimination they can. Over the course of week that’s just over two days old, transgender teens have found out that they’ll like face some of the strictest…
Depending on how you looks at it, and the news media you choose to get your information, Irving is either losing one of its most promising young residents or bidding good riddance to a teenager and a family of troublemakers. Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who got arrested for bringing a…
Some of our state agencies have confusing names. The Texas Railroad Commission, for instance, is the name of the entity that regulates fracking. And the agency called the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has actually kept a fairly consistent stance against environmental quality. Don’t feel bad if you’re confused. The…
At a certain point, perhaps after they defund the roads and utility lines leading to its clinics, Texas politicians and policymakers are going to run out of ammunition in their jihad against Planned Parenthood. But that hasn’t happened yet. Last week, Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission promulgated rules banning…
Oh, we can’t just talk about the f-word 24/7 352 f-bomb days in the year, I know, much as I would like to, but with your gentle indulgence I would like to drop a few more f-bombs here today just to get the f the f out of my system…
Riding public transportation in Dallas is not nearly as bad as you may have been led to believe. One can, especially with a little help from Uber or Lyft, successfully navigate the city without owning a car. Nevertheless, DART is decidedly not great when compared with transit agencies in city’s…
