Despite what its name implies, Exel Transportation Services does not actually transport anything. It’s what’s called an intermodal marketing company; basically, it helps other companies ship things. Not the sexiest business to be in, but lucrative enough to convince Exel CEO Michael Musacchio to jump ship in 2004 after a…
Dallas will never be able to completely escape blame for killing JFK. There’s simply too much documentation of how reactionary hate-mongering gripped the city. Esquire’s Charlie Pierce dredged up one of those documents yesterday, a leaflet distributed in the streets of Dallas on the day of the assassination. Except that…
Not long after police announced that a ninth women had come forward as a victim of a serial rapist prowling South Dallas, and a few hours before they would identify 29-year-old Alan Mason as a person of interest in the assaults, residents packed into a community meeting hosted by Dallas…
There’s something fundamentally troubling about seeing a judge on the campaign trail. Take Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, for no other reason than that he has waded into the debate. He knows the system and has successfully held onto his place on the state’s highest bench. Voters, assuming they…
When Danny Secker died unexpectedly last January at the age of 41, he left behind a widow, three sons — one 3 years old, the others 5-month-old twins — along with a $1 million life insurance policy through Transamerica to help see his family through. The timing of the life…
It was a lovely idea, trading in the lumbering yellow school buses for minivans, sedans and Suburbans on routes with just a handful of students, thereby reducing fuel consumption and saving money. The problem with Dallas ISD’s recent adoption of the plan is twofold: Parents, through some mix of aesthetics…
Larry Poulos wasn’t very close with his roommate. They had only been sharing their Arlington apartment for a few days, and they had never been formally introduced. The roommate knew him only as “Chino.” So, when Poulos announced on Saturday that he planned to rob a bank, the roommate took…
Alif Laam Meem — or, for those who prefer fraternities to go by a Greek acronym, Alpha Lambda Mu — first blipped across the national radar this past spring when they attended Mayor Mike Rawlings’ anti-domestic-violence rally outside City Hall. A photo the group posted to Facebook showing members holding…
Back in March, on the same day that a third Lake Highlands woman was raped in her home in as many weeks, Dallas Police Chief David Brown addressed the media and pledged a swift and comprehensive response. When a serial rapist began targeting South Dallas three months later, it took…
Stanford Hill’s glory days as a Dallas ISD basketball coach are now officially behind him. After winning a state title with Roosevelt in 2006, he moved to Skyline. During his tenure the team sunk from near dominance to mediocrity, posting a losing record in the 2012-13 season and barely sneaking…
Since the first Rick’s Cabaret opened three decades ago, the company has grown into a publicly traded strip club empire with more than two dozen locations nationwide. It prides itself on classiness, boasting on its corporate website that it was while dancing at Rick’s Cabaret that Anna Nicole Smith met…
Is the gas industry mature enough to have a serious discussion with the American public about hydraulic fracturing, one that explores the benefits of domestic natural gas drilling but also carefully considers methane leaks, groundwater contamination, earthquakes and other potential risks that peer-reviewed research has linked to fracking activity? Fracking…
It may have been that Johnny Charles Butler and James Robert Cleveland Butler hoped to etch their names in bank-robbing history by going out in a Bonnie and Clyde-style shower of bullets in August 2012. Perhaps the two brothers simply overestimated their chances against a professionally trained FBI SWAT team…
When federal agents raided local hacktivist Barrett Brown’s apartment last fall, throwing him in prison for what could wind up being the rest of his life, they succeeded in shutting him up for about a day. Soon, however, he was scribbling letters from prison claiming the FBI had broken his…
Updated at 4:56 p.m.: Dallas County Community College District sends word that, following a hearing in federal court this afternoon, they have agreed to allow Rodin to observer all the holidays. “Rodin has agreed to make up those clinical requirements on appropriate dates in January 2014,” DCCCD says in a…
The way Railroad Commission Chairman and Texas Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman tells it, the aim of his 10 years of public service was not brazen tub-thumping for the industry he regulates in order to shore up deep-pocketed benefactors for his political aspirations. It’s only ever been about readying Texas…
Frisco residents worried about a power company’s plan to install high-voltage power lines above ground next to their homes have been frustrated by the company’s handling of their complaints in recent weeks, but this morning they can celebrate a momentary victory: Their city council last night passed a resolution opposing…
Pastor Chuck Kitchens sees God’s hand at work in the creation of My Son, the first feature film produced by Burleson’s Retta Baptist Church. As he’s told the religious press, it was the Lord who placed its director, a 31-year-old film editor named Jarod O’Flaherty, in the pews every Sunday…
Here’s the bad news: If you are young, poor, black or Hispanic, disabled, or just graduated from college, you are significantly less happy than you were two years ago. Recent polling says so. Now, the same folks at Harris Polling who brought us that depressing tidbit now bring a spot…
It was 1:30 a.m. when Cornellias Simon, aka “Bean,” burst through the door of the apartment. The tenant watched as Simon staggered for a moment, then collapsed onto the kitchen floor, dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. That was the first surprise. The second was the man who…
When Mike Miles announced a month ago that his wife and son were headed back to Colorado Springs, the question of whether Miles himself would soon join them was unavoidable. It would at least have been understandable given the shellacking he’s endured over the past year and a half. But…
Barry Smitherman recently leapt off the political springboard that is the Texas Railroad Commission and dove into the attorney general’s race. Heretofore, he has focused his campaign primarily on extolling the virtues of hydraulic fracturing, firearms and suing the Obama administration. Yet Smitherman isn’t just another Greg Abbott wannabe mindlessly…
