“Unless we adjust, we as a party are at tremendous peril of vanishing forever.” This was Jason Villalba, the state rep from Dallas, over the phone today, imagining the doomsday scenario that could break his Republican party, if far-right members don’t shuffle toward the center aisle on immigration. Villalba recently…
In a perfect example of why it’s best — if you’re looking to run a successful drug empire — to keep the manufacturing and distribution arms of your outfit separate, the Drug Enforcement Administration moved to seize 35 financial accounts, six cars, jewelery, almost $20,000 in cash, seven gold Canadian…
Moving away from Lower Greenville last summer, longtime neighborhood activist Avi Adelman could have turned over a new leaf. The camera he used to shove in the faces of drunk teenagers and public urinators could have been stowed in his closet. He could have quietly pulled the plug on Barkingdogs.org…
The Republican National Convention committee on Tuesday kicked off a week of host city-searching with a trip to Cleveland, the first of four stops. After Cleveland, committee members will make stops in Kansas City and Denver before rounding out the trip in Dallas late next week. Dallas city officials, for…
In court documents, he is referred to as “Ruben.” We don’t know his real name, and we don’t know if he was the first to make contact with the now-27-year-old Gerardo Cisneros, aka “Tatuado” or, simply, “Jerry.” But we do know that in November 2012, Ruben made a call to…
There’s plenty of money to be made in public education. You just need to be in the right job to make it. And once you’re in that job, it helps if you can get fired. Take Walter Dansby. The former superintendent of the Fort Worth Independent School District, Dansby resigned…
And you thought jury duty in Dallas sucked. Tarrant County residents are being contacted by a man calling himself Lieutenant Allen who claims to be with the sheriff’s office, police department or constable’s office. “Allen” informs the person receiving the call that they have been fined between $2,000 and $4,000…
An early draft of the 2014 Texas Republican Party platform obtained by the San Antonio Express-News would get rid of some of its most strident anti-LGBTQ language while maintaining staunch opposition to marriage equality and any state or federal benefits for same-sex couples. The draft also includes an endorsement of…
Though he was prepared to do so, it turned out that Brent Herling has not had to repaint Northwest Dallas’ longest, funkiest mural all by himself. Paintbrush-wielding volunteers have flocked to the half mile of wall along Forest Lane, eager to help restore the masterwork left by W.T. White students…
Baby, it’s really freaking hot outside. And it’s only getting hotter, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Texas has landed itself toward the top of another undesirable list, according to a recent federal climate data study by the Associated Press. The AP analyzed weather trends from the National Climatic…
As a recent transplant to Dallas from Austin, where I apparently spent 76 hours in 2013 banging my head against a steering wheel, I have little sympathy for Dallasites. But traffic is traffic is traffic, and it sucks in any form. TomTom, the company responsible for most in-car navigation and…
After three years of bus service, Mesquite, DART’s first non-member city partner, appears set to spurn the agency for Star Transit, a private bus company that serves Balch Springs, Kaufmann County and Rockwall County. City officials said the potential move stems from DART’s changing its policies for non-member cities and…
After DeAndre Upshaw repeated his story, this time for the Dallas City Council, about the bouncers at Uptown’s Kung Fu Saloon who appear to discriminate based on race, the City Council had an idea. They could all meet there for happy hour. “You mention about no socks,” Councilman Dwaine Caraway…
OK. So maybe the bike-helmet mandate the Dallas City Council passed 18 years ago wasn’t really about protecting people’s heads. Maybe it was really about giving cops in general an extra reason to interrogate suspicious-looking people in poor, minority neighborhoods, and for one cop in particular to express an apparent…
It’s hump day, people, so lose yourself in a fantasy of jetting off on a one-way flight to exotic Lubbock or Wichita, with one of Southwest Airlines’ trademark ultra-cheap flights to … somewhere. Southwest announced yesterday that it would be offering a three-day sale on tickets for as low as…
Monday afternoon, the same day Governor Rick Perry announced a statewide advertising campaign to combat human trafficking, Dallas’ Dereck Johnson pleaded guilty to that offense in United States District Court. According to court documents, on June 1, 2012, Johnson lured a 15-year-old girl away from the Downtown Dallas Greyhound Station…
There was a time, not long ago, when police routinely issued tickets to Texas middle and high school students for chewing gum, wearing skirts a little too short and turning their desktops into pillows. Students who swore were ticketed for disorderly conduct. An 11-year-old Galveston boy even faced criminal assault…
As the Division Director of Immigration and Legal Services for Catholic Charities of Dallas, Vanna Slaughter has long received email updates whenever young migrants arrive alone in the Dallas area. For some time, she says, she’s received around 250 of these cases in a given month — already a large…
Judging from an altogether odd post to The Dallas Morning News’s Center Stage blog, the newspaper’s architecture critic, Mark Lamster, has apparently decided that those “progressive types” who might be a little wary of the city’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics are just Debbie Downers who don’t know…
It all started with a letter. Dallas Police Association President Ron Pinkston sent one to city officials in April, accusing Dallas Police Chief David Brown of allowing a recruit who continually failed his Police Vehicle Operations Course test to retake it until he passed. Brown put Internal Affairs on the…
Fort Worth veterinarian Lou Tierce has been sued by another dog owner who claims he kept her pet dog alive after telling her it had been euthanized. The lawsuit filed Monday claims that the doctor kept her pet Chihuahua Hercules alive and suffering for more than four months without her…
Hidden Cash, for those of you living under a WiFi-free rock, is the Twitternet sensation that rocked San Francisco last month. An anonymous local millionaire placed envelopes of cash around the city and released clues to their whereabouts on @HiddenCash, calling the exercise a “social experiment.” Hidden Cash events have…
