Michael McDowell could have quit while he was ahead. During more than a decade spent posing as a military officer, he’d won heartfelt acclaim from military brass like CIA director David Petraeus, gotten behind-the-scenes access to the Washington Navy Yard, convinced the state of Texas to give him special Purple…
Welcome to Congregation Toras Chaim. Sure, it may look like your typical Far North Dallas house — 3,500 square feet, $330,000 on the tax rolls, a swimming pool in the back — but it doubles as one of the area’s newer and smaller synagogues. This isn’t exactly a secret. The…
Dallas has never been able to clear the homeless from downtown streets, though not for lack of trying. Bans on panhandling, feeding homeless people, library benches and sleeping in public have provided city officials with helpful tools, but they have proved inadequate. Or perhaps it’s just that because they weren’t…
Conservative agent provocateur James O’Keefe’s latest undercover video sting seemed to feed the narrative that Democrats just go around constantly making fun of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s wheelchair. This is what O’Keefe is good at: Using hidden cameras to film targets, then editing the hell out of the footage…
Jordan Ross Hatcher made a number of undeniably stupid decisions on the afternoon of January 24, 2013. He stole a Wii controller from a Grand Prairie Target, then knocked down the cop who tried to stop him. The 22-year-old, a recently discharged Marine, according to his obituary, then ran across…
Local officials had a big celebration last month when a hospital in southern Dallas finally started offering forensic exams for rape victims. “Unfortunately, Dallas has a perceived — and maybe a real — impression that individuals from the southern sector don’t receive services like those in the north,” Dallas County…
In June 2012, attorney William Trantham was riding high. He’d just scored a half-million-dollar jury award on behalf of his client, a black Denton County prosecutor named Nadiya Williams-Boldware who was outraged by racist remarks from colleagues and superiors. Two days after the verdict, District Attorney Paul Johnson fired four…
J. Erik Jonsson took over as Dallas’ mayor at a turbulent time for the city. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated on Elm Street, and residents and leaders were struggling to come to terms with the event and its aftermath. Jonsson responded by preaching a forward-thinking optimism, urging constituents…
At first blush, the death last week of Frisco 10-year-old Arnav Dhawan seemed like another one of those too-gruesome-to-contemplate, too-compelling-to-turn-away stories of child abuse that flash across the local headlines with disturbing regularity. According to police, the boy’s mother, 38-year-old Pallavi Dhawan, confessed to murdering her son while her husband…
Any creature can predict the winner of the Super Bowl. Those who have correctly done so include: an ape, a porcupine, a horde of puppies, a manatee, a seal, a panda, an octopus and a bunny. Add to that list the elusive “teen mystifier,” a 17-year-old Dallas magician named John…
When Robert Wilonsky unbolted himself from the Unfair Park throne in early 2012, there was a lot of skepticism that his boots could be properly filled. He’d started this blog several years before, one of the first and most successful blogs at an alt-weekly newspaper, and he’d slaved over it…
In news that should surprise no one, the Texas Department of Transportation will not tear down Interstate 345, the 1.7-mile stretch of highway separating Deep Ellum from downtown. The Dallas Morning News reported over the weekend that the agency will instead repair the aging span, citing the same concern voiced…
The Wright Amendment, the baldly anti-competitive 1979 law designed to protect DFW International Airport, dies for good on October 13, when the ban expires on direct flights from Love Field to anywhere that isn’t in Texas or the four states that border it. And what exciting new destinations might be…
The United States has never quite figured out what to do with its spent nuclear fuel, some 68,000-plus highly radioactive tons of which is sitting in temporary storage at the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants. The plan has been to bury the stuff in a secure geological formation deep underground,…
It was the shot heard by a couple of neighbors in Rylie but, thanks to a neighbor’s conveniently placed surveillance camera, seen by thousands more: On October 14, 2013, Dallas police officer Cardan Spender shot Bobby Gerald Bennett in the stomach. Bennett was confronted by police after his mother called…
File this under State Board of Education news that isn’t depressing and won’t cause you to despair for Texas public education. The SBOE passed long-overdue rules Friday aimed at giving priority to the placement of experts and teachers with actual subject-matter expertise on textbook review panels. It’s a positive step…
The folly of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision to opt out of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has been well-documented. Billions in federal funds are off the table. More than a million poor adults won’t have access to health coverage. Texas businesses will wind up paying an estimated $400 million in tax…
We’ve all seen those desperate emails that Yellow Cab sent to Dallas City Hall last summer, using its influence there to demand that officials crack down on Uber, the digital-savvy car service. Poor Uber, the narrative went, just a little start-up under assault by the entrenched taxi industry. But when…
A year ago, CBS 11 brought the world the tragic but ultimately hopeful story of Whitney Mitchell. The Dallas woman, 21 at the time, had been an aspiring dancer until sepsis took all four limbs when she was 18. She was learning to walk again with prosthetics and dreamed of…
Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. A driver for Uber or Lyft is going to crash. People will be injured, property damaged. And then, some poor Dallasite with a neck brace and a stack of medical bills Dallas will discover just how lousy these ride-sharing apps do insurance. That’s…
There are some obvious parallels between Ethan Couch and Josh Brent. Both got drunk and caused fatal car wrecks. Both had the means to hire talented private attorneys. Both were given offensively light sentences that sparked outrage. To most observers, that’s where the similarities end. Couch is white, Brent black…
Sohail Raza Khan would rather die than go back to Pakistan. He’s made this abundantly clear to U.S. immigration officials, begging them to send him to federal prison, or just let him rot in the ICE detention facility where he’s spent the past several years. Anything but deportation. According to…
