Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will tell the city council on Wednesday that she had every authority to lease a 22-acre parcel of parkland to Trinity East, the gas-drilling company that wants frack the Trinity River floodplain, despite that land not appearing in original lease approved by city council. She’ll…
When the City Council passed new rules in December laying down a $300 fine on any driver caught cutting off, or throwing things at or otherwise behaving dangerously around bicyclists, there was an acknowledged need for a public awareness campaign to let drivers know about the new rules. No one…
Update at 4:43 p.m.: Dallas County Juvenile Department director Terry Smith sends her response: “Actually the county is ready to go and I am unaware of any issues.” Original post: Ground on the Letot Girls’ Residential Therapy Center, the $9.8 million facility planned in Northwest Dallas for child sex trafficking…
If Andy Roddick didn’t walk away from tennis as the biggest asshole in the professional game, he was definitely in top two or three. His wasn’t the lovable brashness of, say, a John McEnroe either, but a whiny, self-indulgence reminiscent of a spoiled toddler. Justly or not, a lawsuit filed…
The Texas Department of Public Safety got itself in a bit of a public relations mess last October when state troopers in a helicopter tracking a red pickup suspected of smuggling illegal immigrants opened fire, killing two Guatemalans and raising inevitable questions about the appropriateness of a law enforcement agency…
Last summer brought us the story of Anson Chi, a Plano man who’s accused of trying to detonate a bomb next to a gas main on West Park Road. The bomb did go off, perhaps earlier than Chi was hoping; police believe it detonated while he was “tampering” with the…
Joey Dauben’s reign as the muckraking king of Ellis County came to an ignominious end last month when he was sentenced to three 10-year sentences for raping a boy, then 14, on a church camping trip in 2007. It was an ironic end for the 32-year-old, who crusaded against child…
Hidden deep within the bureaucratic folds of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which devotes most of its resources to overseeing cosmetologists, air conditioner repairmen, auctioneers and the like, is the state’s weather modification bureau. It’s not nearly as post-apocalyptic as it sounds. You might use the term “cloud…
An appeals committee at City Hall on Thursday upheld Dallas Police Chief David Brown’s decision to fire a 911 call-taker over her mishandling of a call last August. Angelia Herrod-Graham answered the 911 call from the mother of Deanna Cook, saying she hadn’t seen her daughter in two days and…
State Representative Van Taylor, a real-estate investment banker from Plano, has introduced legislation that would settle, once and for all, who gets the last word on drilling under private property: That would be the Railroad Commission of Texas. The bill, filed Tuesday, would strip from Texas municipalities the ability to…
The Economist isn’t conservative in the American sense of the word, which has come to be defined as much as by views on abortion and Jesus as by a desire for limited government, but it’s consistent in its support of free market capitalism relatively unfettered by government. The magazine did…
As Tim Tebow’s decision to cancel his Easter Sunday appearance at First Baptist continues to reverberate, the church and its pastor, Robert Jeffress, have gone on the offensive. In a radio interview with the American Family Association, Jeffress says he and Tebow “had a very pleasant conversation. He explained to…
Last month, Gary Lacara was “100 percent” sure that Bike the City, his 30-mile, Dallas-to-McKinney charity bicycle tour scheduled for a Sunday morning in April, was a go. “I wouldn’t attempt this if I wasn’t,” he told Unfair Park at the time. And there was no reason to think he…
Just about a year ago, Dallas’s atheist community announced a new billboard in South Dallas, celebrating “black atheists and freethinkers.” This year, just in time for the tail end of black history month, the Fellowship of Freethought, Dallas’ largest atheist group, is announcing a spinoff organization for its black members…
It’s no secret that First Baptist Church of Dallas’ pastor, Robert Jeffress is a lightning rod for controversy because of his less-than-PC remarks on homosexuality. And Mormonism. And Islam. But it seems that Tim Tebow, who was scheduled to appear at the local megachurch as part of the grand opening…
Howard Hendricks has never been one of the marquee names of conservative Christianity. He was too naturally reserved for that, more comfortable in the classroom than behind the pulpit, though he delivered his fair share of high-profile sermons. But over more than five decades as a professor at Dallas Theological…
A week before Christmas, Cedric Dewayne Caddell, Jr. and a friend went to the Denny’s at Stemmons Freeway and Walnut Hill. Their goal: to score some weed. To that end, Caddell had gotten in touch with a dealer, later identified by police as 20-year-old Dangelo Dewayne Wilhite, who showed up…
It wasn’t a run on baked souffle that kept the phones ringing off the hook at two Panera Bread locations in Dallas yesterday morning. It was one guy — an especially creepy one — who apparently enjoys harassing female crew members at fast-casual bakery/cafe chains. According to two police reports,…
On a cool Thursday evening in January, several women gather around folding tables in a Central Phoenix warehouse to sort thousands of books, pausing only to pull out a greeting card used as a bookmark or to show off a rare find. This ritual takes all year — and every…
The fount of red ink spilling onto the pages of beleaguered power generator Energy Future Holdings’ quarterly reports continues unabated. The Dallas company logged $3.36 billion in net losses for 2012. In its last quarter alone, the company reported a $1.95 billion net loss, due largely to a write-down on…
The House State Affairs Committee was scheduled today to consider Rep. Dan Flynn’s proposal to ban “religious or cultural law” from Texas courts. Rep. Flynn apparently withdrew his proposal, HJR 43, from committee consideration at the last second, but it’s still worth a look. As the Texas Freedom Network reports,…
As it stands, anyone caught watering their lawns more than twice a week and/or during daytime hours and/or outside the official watering days ordained by City Hall faces a fine of between $250 and $2,000. As of last summer, the city had handed down slightly more than a handful. But…
