Six years ago, wooing a high-profile commencement speaker was the last thing on Paul Quinn College’s to-do list. The southern Dallas school, the city’s only historically black college, was in disrepair, physically and academically, after years of mismanagement. With its accreditation set to be revoked, the entire institution was about…
A couple of speakers showed up at the 1500 Marilla this morning to ask that the City Council to hold off on a fast-moving proposal to rename the Dallas Convention Center after recently retired U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Former councilwoman Sandra Crenshaw called for a public hearing before any…
It’s freezing in New York–where the hell is global warming?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2013 It’s cold this morning. Not quite freezing like in New York, but it’s 40 degrees. In North Texas. In late April. It’s a little odd, a bit of a surprise. Less surprising: That…
With North Texas’ population exploding and near-perennial drought seeming more and more like a certainty rather than a fluke, state water planners have been scrambling to secure new supplies, going further and further afield in search of waterways that haven’t been tapped out. Several years ago, that quest took the…
When police arrived at 3:30 this morning, they found the woman sitting in an otherwise empty parking lot off Stemmons Freeway in Northwest Dallas, her face swollen and her upper lip bleeding. She was distraught and not a little drunk, and kept repeating “He’s going to kill them! He’s going…
Journalists across the globe have been busy churning out copy about the looming Thursday dedication of the Bush Presidential Center at SMU. Some of the pieces wrestle with the Bush legacy, some describe the center itself. Others explore the practical effect that a massive ceremony featuring five presidents and innumerable…
The House just voted 64-82 against reauthorizing the Texas Lottery Commission.— Dave Montgomery (@daveymontgomery) April 23, 2013 Big news coming out of the Texas House this afternoon. Lawmakers there were considering HB 2197, which would tweak the structure of the Texas Lottery Commission. More importantly, the bill would allow the…
Back in March, the Keystone XL pipeline’s approval looked practically assured. Construction of the 1,179-mile leviathan, connecting Alberta’s tar sand mines with Texas Gulf Coast refiners, was already well underway in Texas. The State Department said Canadian tar sands production would proceed apace, with or without the pipeline. By rail…
A week ago, the Washington Post came out with its annual list of the country’s best public schools. This week, it’s U.S. News’ turn. The two lists take a fundamentally different approach to evaluating schools. The Post takes into account only the number of AP, IB and Advanced International Certificate…
Early this morning, about 1:30 a.m., a 23-year-old Old East Dallas man found himself driving along an unfamiliar stretch of Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas. He pulled his 2009 Hyundai Sonata off the road near Bernal Drive to get his bearings using GPS. When he stopped, he noticed two men…
Ever since prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit last May asking to seize nearly $500,000 of County Commissioner John Wiley Price’s allegedly ill-gotten gains, political observers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. An indictment was a month or two away, tops, it was predicted at the time. Any…
It started last night when 24-year-old Carlos Valencia Jr. got into a fight at a house in the 5400 block of Singleton Boulevard. Police haven’t said what they were fighting about, just that Valencia ended up pistol-whipping the roommate. Police showed up at 11 this morning. The injured roommate left…
It’s no secret that Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill doesn’t approve of homosexuality. It’s why she’s made refusing to participate in the city’s gay pride parade an annual ritual, once explaining to the Voice that, while we are all God’s children, “there are acts that God does not bless.” Hill is…
The iconic Alamo Plaza sign stood sentry over the corner of Fort Worth and Sylvan Avenue for nearly six decades. It remained there even after the roadside motel it identified was demolished to make way for the long-awaited Sylvan 30 development. Then, two weeks ago, it was removed. The development’s…
Updated on April 23: April Reiling, the town’s marketing manager, says the Town Council defeated the logo on a vote of 3-2. Mayor Connie White was absent from the meeting but, even had she been there and voted for the new design, it wouldn’t have made a difference since a…
Last summer, Texas, Big Oil interests, the automotive industry and other assorted industrial polluters were dealt an unambiguous defeat in a legal challenge to dismantle greenhouse gas regulations. The Feds, a federal appeals court panel ruled, were “unambiguously correct” for setting limits on carbon dioxide and other pollutants — an…
Last week we told you about a group of activists who were suing the City of Dallas, claiming they’re being illegally barred from participating in a protest during SMU’s dedication this week of the new George W. Bush Presidential Center. On Friday, noting a “strong public interest in the freedom…
Someday, technology will become so pervasive, such an ingrained part of existence, that it will erase the markers that once distinguished individual human beings and merge them into a single consciousness floating somewhere in the cloud. It’s inevitable, really. Just a matter of when. Working to usher in that era…
Officer Jennifer Bell and Corporal D.J. Lusty remember the night of April 9, 2011 quite clearly. The Fort Worth cops were working off-duty traffic jobs at Texas Motor Speedway following the Samsung Mobile 500 when Bell spotted a golf cart driving on the grass. She watched as the cart laden…
Despite some halting progress on implementing its two-year-old bike plan, Dallas remains a national laggard when it comes to bike friendliness. Meanwhile, our neighbor to the west has been climbing the cycling ranks, quickly implementing its own expansion of cycling infrastructure. And, last summer, Fort Worth won close to $1…
The West Nile virus is officially back. Public health officials got their first confirmation of that last week when mosquito pools in Richardson tested positive for the disease. Today, Highland Park announced a positive test of its own. Dallas County is already urging residents to use insect repellant, drain standing…
The blog 5 days in Connecticut is a rambling, navel-gazing tell-all about a man’s struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. There’s little to distinguish it from the reams of self-published addiction stories that populate certain corners of the Internet. It would be an entirely unremarkable piece of work were it…
