The First U.S.-Made Smartphone Will Be Built in North Texas

There’s still some debate over whether the return of manufacturing to the U.S. — “reshoring,” it’s called — is a lasting trend or just a bump on the road toward an entirely knowledge-based economy. Some experts suggest it’s merely a byproduct of the recession. But there’s no doubt that it’s…

Strongest Email Privacy Bill in the U.S. Is on Gov. Rick Perry’s Desk

Unless Governor Rick Perry uses his veto, Texas is set to enact the most stringent email privacy protections in the country. The legislation, passed unanimously, would require state law enforcement agencies to secure search warrants before accessing emails. Previously, Texas mirrored federal rules, which make a nonsensical distinction between recent…

Local Man Really Likes Smoking His Liquor

Broderic Allen, aka Ballen, aka B.A., is an aspiring Dallas rapper and member of local hip-hop collective The Chaos Theory. But it’s not his music that’s landed him on TV, and on AOL News, and in the U.K.’s Daily Mail. All that stems from his drinking habits or, more accurately,…

The Push to Tear Down I-345 Gains Steam

There would be some practical questions that would have to be answered if the Texas Department of Transportation decided to tear down I-345, the short stump of Central Expressway between Woodall Rodgers and Interstate 30. Where will one find shade at Bark Park Central? Where will those artsy, bohemian types…

Does This JCPenney Tea Kettle Look Like Hitler to You? [Updated]

Oh, JCPenney. The Plano-based department store chain just cannot seem to stop stepping in it, in the weirdest ways possible. Last year, there was Gay Dad-Gate, in which the company pissed off homophobes everywhere by featuring a photo of two gay fathers in its catalog, just after it had the…

The Wall Street Journal Checks in on the New “Mr. Tex”

It’s easy to forget, immersed as we are in creepy YouTube renderings of Big Tex’s face, that the rest of the world probably isn’t obsessively tracking the progress in replacing the gangly 50-foot cowboy. And so, over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal filled them in on the rebuilding effort…

Coal Is Making a Comeback, and Nobody Burns it Like Texas

For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. This…