Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn’t have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here’s a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says…
I’ve got a really tough day ahead…not looking forward to the decisions I will have to make on some officers careers— David O. Brown (@DPDChief) March 1, 2013 If you follow Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Twitter, you were greeted this morning with the ominous announcement above. We’re still…
State Representative Helen Giddings was one of several Democratic lawmakers invited to the Governor’s Mansion Monday afternoon for a reception hosted by the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. But she never showed up. Giddings declined the invitation to protest the requirement that she undergo a background check before being admitted to…
On Wednesday, we watched together as the Dallas City Council sort of, kind of, attempted to ask City Manager Mary Suhm and City Attorney Tom Perkins a couple of questions. Namely: Why did Suhm quietly sign a side deal with energy company Trinity East, pledging to help it drill on…
Yesterday, we told you about an unfortunate area man whose plans for a Craigslist threesome resulted in zero threesomes and one potential watch theft. I indicated that I believed it was unlikely that a threesome would ever arise from a Craigslist-type situation, as finding even one woman who, A) doesn’t…
SMU still hasn’t released many details about what happened at the Sigma Phi Epsilon house on the night of February 10, just that a student was “assaulted and held against his will” and that the fraternity, which also counts 19-year-old John David Mahaffey as a member, had been temporarily suspended…
On March 22, 2011, SMU officials issued a safety alert to students and staff advising them to be on the lookout for Daniel Hux, a recently expelled student who had been barred from campus. The fliers didn’t go into detail about why Hux wasn’t allowed at the university, and SMU…
On Tuesday, beer drinkers in three states filed federal lawsuits against Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer and the purveyor of Budweiser, Bud Light Lime, Michelob Ultra and other innovative beer and beer-like products. A Dallas-area drinker has now joined their ranks. Michael Seidenstein, a 30-something man who owns property…
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook, Don Dunn, the superintendent at Van ISD, 70 miles southeast of Dallas, sent a memo to parents explaining what the district was doing post-Sandy Hook to ensure students’ safety. These included adding school resource officers, brushing up on emergency drills, locking…
Last week, the number of drilling rigs operating in the Barnett Shale, the massive natural gas reservoir that underlies much of North Texas, dropped to 27, the lowest figure in a decade. But the boom’s not over quite yet. There may be less drilling going on at the moment, but…
Last Tuesday, Dallas County District Judge Emily Tobolowsky temporary halted Heritage Auctions’ planned sale of the 1959 Masters green jacket. Augusta National, the famed Georgia golf club that hosts the tournament, had sued Heritage to have the auction stopped, claiming that the jacket had been stolen by former employees and…
Gentlemen. Let’s get really real for a moment, shall we? It’s very unlikely that a woman on Craigslist wants to have sex with you. Or rather, it’s very unlikely that a woman on Craigslist wants to have sex with you for free. And when two women from Craigslist are proposing…
Vashana Eugene Mims was last heard from at about 9 p.m. on February 5, when he called a family member to check on his kids and announce that he was on his way home. But he never made it. His family filed a missing person report with the Dallas police,…
The $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday — assuming Congress doesn’t reach an alternative deficit reduction deal — was designed to be so stupid and indiscriminately painful that any rational human being would do whatever possible to avoid it. But rationality is not…
In the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection victory last Novembers, Republican lawmakers in several swing states — Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconson — introduced bills that would change the way the state’s electoral votes are awarded, from a winner-take-all system to a proportional one in which presidential candidates are…
For about four months in 2007, Lakeith Fowler had a good con going. That May, the 32-year-old had hooked up with a supplier who began shipping case after case of the latest Nike sneakers at dirt-cheap prices. Fowler marked them up and sold them from his retail store, The World…
By just about any measure, Congress is at its lowest point in history. Only 9 percent of the country has a favorable view of the 535 men and women who make up the bicameral body. One poll even revealed that they’re less popular than cockroaches, traffic jams and that ultimate…
Just when you thought Robert Jeffress was going to let his jilting at the hands of Tim Tebow slip away, forgotten, after just one news cycle, the First Baptist mega-pastor took to the pulpit on Sunday and questioned the quarterback’s manhood. “I am grateful for men of God like these…
The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments today challenging the constitutionality of and need for Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, which requires Texas and other southern states with a history of suppressing the minority vote to get pre-clearance from the Feds before implementing changes to voting laws. Naturally,…
The city of Dallas is “maybe a year or two” away from considering a plastic bag ban, assistant city manager Jill Jordan told City Council members on Monday. First there will be a study to figure out its potential impact and exactly how many bags plastic bags there are in…
Yesterday morning, Highland Park High School was evacuated after school officials found a threatening note in a boys’ bathroom. It was the same boys’ bathroom where three similar notes had been found the month before. In all four cases, a search of the school revealed nothing. The danger became a…
On Friday, we told you about a memo Mary Suhm sent to the City Council, in which she insisted that she had “had the authority to sign a non-binding letter with Trinity East,” the company which has been trying so very hard to drill in city-owned park land and floodplains…
