District Attorney Craig Watkins has escaped from the contempt-of-court allegations that have dogged him for six months like Charlie Brown’s personal rain cloud. A specially appointed judge — a Republican from Wichita Falls who is far removed from Dallas County political intrigue — ruled that the hearing at which he…
It’s such a familiar scenario, you suspect there’s some sort of script. Some fresh-faced young man, or else an adult whose face is a bit too weathered for their years, knocks on the door. They’re a troubled youth in a crime-ridden urban area, a single parent trying to make ends…
More than 100 people filed into Dallas City Hall this morning to speak on the city’s proposal to regulate Uber out of existence. The expected showdown, however, will have to wait after the City Council unanimously approved an investigation into how the proposed rules were developed and wound up on…
The legal fight aimed at halting the advance of the Keystone pipeline through Texas was cut off at the knees on Tuesday. A state appeals court in Texarkana threw out Lamar County landowner Julia Trigg Crawford’s lawsuit against TransCanada, rejecting arguments that Keystone can’t condemn land because it’s an interstate…
Late one night in July 2009, Sachse police officer Kenneth Paul Smith happened upon a 13-year-old girl in a car with her boyfriend. When they tried to drive away, he turned on the lights and made them stop. It was around 3 a.m. when Smith arrived with the girl at…
Luminant, the Dallas-based energy generator, has long been a ripe target for environmentalists, who complain that its aging, coal-fueled power plants — in particular North/Northeast Texas’ Big Brown, Martin Lake, and Monticello — are fouling the air with extraordinary amounts of toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases. Under the Obama Administration,…
Dallas ISD warned parents that it might not be a yellow school bus picking up their kids at their stops on the first day of school Monday morning. Smaller routes, like those serving magnets, would be served by a contractor, which promised to shuttle students in a van, SUVs or…
The soccer fields at the city’s $31.4 million Elm Fork Athletic Complex, at the western terminus of Walnut Hill Lane, are still several months from being put to use. City crews have been obsessively tending the sod this summer with an eye toward keeping it “in perfect condition” for next…
Over the course of several months in 2008, undercover narcotics detectives with the Dallas Police Department visited El Palacio Bar at 4430 Maple Ave. on three occasions and asked for cocaine. Each time, their server dutifully retrieved a small plastic baggie of powdered nine-hour energy from a storage closet. It…
On Monday, the same day a big new elementary school re-opened in Jubilee Park, a woman who lives near the school called us from the hospital. She said her husband was recovering from a heart attack. “He’s been kind of a silent partner with this fight,” Norma Hernandez tells Unfair…
Get More: Big Tips Texas, Full Episodes We don’t know Jenni’s last name. We don’t know if she went to business school. We just know that she’s the marketing coordinator for Redneck Heaven and that she’s a genius. How else to explain the enormous number of pixels devoted here and…
On any given day, the Dallas Police Department’s vice control unit is combing the city’s streets in search of prostitutes and johns, illegal gambling parlors and people having sex in parks, restrooms, and bars. Recently, they’ve shifted their focus to a less traditional target: drivers for Uber. See also: Dallas…
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott should have learned by now that running for governor requires far more caution and cunning than suing the federal government. He’s already stumbled twice since mid-August, first when he took the mind-melting step of joining forces with the Obama administration in a lawsuit to block…
The local Twitterverse is currently exploding with people explaining why Dallas needs Uber and why City Hall shouldn’t shut it down: Because cabs in Dallas suck; because it increases competition; because you can’t stop progress. The city, meanwhile, says everyone is overreacting. The proposed ordinance, which would require a 30-minute…
Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, Texas’ biggest power generator and utility, is in danger of going bankrupt, and some believe it’s quite possible that the Texas taxpayer will get left with the tab. As we noted last month, the Railroad Commission of Texas allowed EFH’s subsidiary, Luminant Mining, to post what’s…
There was something about the man that seemed suspicious. Maybe it was that he was riding a bike through an otherwise slumbering West Dallas neighborhood at 2 a.m. on a Monday. Maybe it was the way he paused to glance into the cars parked along the street. Maybe a streetlight…
Environmental activists, in spite of the lobbying of the energy industry and some sleight of hand by city staff, appear to be winning the fracking debate. The City Plan Commission has twice denied Trinity East Energy permits to drill on city parkland it leased for $19 million. Last week, it…
Local officials talk a good game about killing mosquitoes this West Nile season, but are they doing enough to warn us before they unleash mosquito-killing insecticides in our neighborhoods? These are insecticides that, as we’ve covered, might not be so good for people to breathe in. City Hall’s own website…
Update on November 11: Sergio Ramirez was no-billed by a Dallas County grand jury. Original post:When Lisa Decatur arrived at the West Oak Cliff apartment at 7 a.m. Saturday, the child was fine. The 43-year-old home health care nurse is part of the team that provided round-the-clock to Sergio Arellano…
The city of Dallas doesn’t buy Uber’s oft-repeated claim that it’s simply a technology company. Its lawyers made this perfectly clear to the company 10 months ago, when they warned the California-based purveyor of private driver apps to get taxi permits or shut down. Uber has done neither of those…
Jeffrey and Henry Buck were married in Massachusetts on September 22, 2006, some two years after the state recognized same-sex unions. They moved to Texas in 2008 and quickly discovered what heterosexual couples have known for ages about the sanctity of matrimony: Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. The Bucks…
Maybe you’ve had a bad week. Maybe work sucked. Maybe your car broke down or you were dumped by your significant other or your cat died. Maybe you experienced all of that. Even if you did, you had a better week than Reginald Keith Zackery Jr. Zackery’s misery began last…
