There was another earthquake near the former site of Texas Stadium Monday morning. It wasn’t a big one, just 2.4 magnitude on the Richter scale, but it was the first in about two weeks. That North Texas being tremor-free for 15 days is news would’ve been unfathomable before 2008, but…
In November 2014 Mayor Mike Rawlings braved a breath-catching chill and the self-defeating inadequacy of the notion that two isolated docking station could constitute a functioning system and enthusiastically kicked off a bike-sharing program at Fair Park. Rawlings gleefully hopped on one of the $8,000 bikes (the city paid $125,000…
Five months ago I told you about David Jensen, a semi-retired art-handler and antiques collector who lives in a warehouse in West Dallas. He’s right in the path of major real estate developments that are changing that realm from a disused industrial wasteland to an urban oasis. He moved there…
As many of you know, the Observer is a safe no-judgement zone, so we will not point any fingers of blame as to why methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking out of North Texas gas wells and associated facilities more than it was supposed to be leaking. In North…
Ostensibly, Texas justices of the peace can do two things now that same-sex marriage is legal in the state: They can either stop performing marriages entirely — they aren’t legally required to officiate ceremonies — or they can marry anyone who wants who wishes to get married in their courts…
Sometimes, you don’t realize what you had until it’s gone. Amid what’s been a downright depressing stretch for newly minted Texas Governor Greg Abbott — on gay marriage, guns, military exercises, etc — our former governor, the immaculately bespectacled Rick Perry, has gone out and started sounding like a centrist,…
Twenty-one. That’s the number of times the state of Texas has sued the Environmental Protection Agency since President Obama took office in 2009. No one is going to tell us what we can and can’t do to our planet, especially not the federal government. Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken…
Here’s a mental exercise: Think of the rain that falls on your head as if it were continuing to fall through the soil beneath your feet. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Rain falls fast through the air, hits the earth, then falls slowly through the soil until it reaches…
On the one hand, it might be comforting to know that the new, huge, taxpayer-funded but privately operated detention camp in South Texas for immigrant women and children is providing its young inmates with vaccinations. On the other hand, one should remember that vaccines, while life-saving, are not candy but…
When Dallas police arrived at Leonard Mornes’ Ledbetter Drive home at around 7 p.m. Wednesday night, the 60-year-old homeowner told them he’d caught the two dead women inside breaking into his house and shot them. Which, given the rights endowed upon property owners by God and the state of Texas,…
Forest City is not happy about Tim Headington’s plan to install luxury goods purveyor Forty Five Ten on Main Street downtown. The apartment management company — which owns the Wilson Building next door, as well as the Mercantile, Continental and Element buildings nearby — says it was misled about the height…
Evil is probably too strong an adjective for Time Warner. The company is not, at least so far as has been documented, propping up despotic regimes in Third World countries, pumping radioactive waste into baby formula or systematically clubbing baby seals; it merely delivers some of the most mind-bendingly atrocious customer…
First, I want to say that that Digital is God. Second, I know digital when I see digital. An item that appeared on The Dallas Morning News crime blog yesterday was the new digital version of how to cover a murder trial. It was really breezy and first-persony and it focused not…
T.J. Arterberry sits on his front porch and watches his 2-year-old son, Trey. The boy had been searching for dead fish that washed up in the yard after rain flooded the creek near the house, and now he’s thirsty and trying to take a bottle of wine out of an…
When we first heard that Jade Helm 15, the upcoming large-scale U.S. military exercise, was in fact a plot to impose martial law on the southwestern United States, we were both a skeptical and ambivalent. On the one hand, given the Texas’ current administration and its drive to turn the…
Baylor University just made an exciting change to its sexual misconduct policy. Formerly, the Waco-based Baptist university had outlined the many ways that Baylor’s students, staff and administration could misuse “God’s gifts” of human sexuality. The list of “misuses” included sexual assault, adultery, sexual harassment and, because God says, “homosexual…
The Dallas Morning News had an editorial this week about how City Council members need to be more polite, under the headline, “Yelling and Hurling Insults Is No Way To Lead.” Wrong. Sure it is. Depending on what you’re leading. If you’re leading the Sunday school class out onto the lawn…
Good news for those of us who prefer our late night breakfast taquitos without a side of Sig Sauer: Whataburger has confirmed it will not allow the open carrying of handguns in its restaurants after the practice becomes legal in Texas on January 1. “We’ve had many customers and employees…
The $125,000 bike-share program at Fair Park — those two forlorn rental kiosks that Mayor Mike Rawlings tried so ardently last November to make seem like a good idea — is, for all practical purposes, a city project. Rawlings, along with various members of city staff, pushed it as a way…
You can almost hear the echo of John C. Calhoun, Ross Barnett or George Wallace reading Molly Crimer’s statement. The county clerk of Irion County, smack dab in the middle of the middle of nowhere in West Texas said late Monday that she will not be issuing same-sex marriage licenses…
Try to imagine the ravaged heart of Patricia Allen, whose three children drowned last month in an Irving apartment pool so murky that emergency crews couldn’t tell how many kids were even in the pool. These were not toddlers. Treshawn Smith was 9. His brother Anthony was 11. They lingered…
Coppell police arrested a suspect Monday afternoon following the Sunday evening shooting of former Coppell High School running back Charles West. West graduated this spring and signed a football letter of intent with BYU. The alleged shooter was identified in a photo lineup by West, according to police. The suspect’s…
