Ever since Ted Cruz announced that Sarah Palin is endorsing him in his bid for Senate, we’ve been clustered around the office phone (we only have one), waiting patiently to hear a robo-call from ex-Alaska Governor Palin. It never came. That’s because, as it turns out, Palin’s calls may have…
As most people who follow the news know by now, since Craig Watkins became Dallas County district attorney in 2007, 33 local men have been exonerated of crimes they didn’t commit. But what does this number mean in the context of the rest of the nation, and what are the…
If you appreciate the signs of life that have sprouted downtown in recent years — and anyone who loves this city does — Jeff West is at least partly to thank. The 54-year-old, who died Monday, was a tireless advocate for downtown and the city. He headed the Sixth Floor…
Dallas has a knack for self-regard. Self-promotion? Not so much. The city’s efforts at branding itself (“Live Large. Think Big.”) are, well, embarrassing. We’ve had nothing with the catchiness, not to mention production values, of Las Vegas’ “What happens here, stays here.” But Vegas has a slush fund of $95.5…
The practice of law is a subtle art, one which requires finesse, tact, and skill. Sometimes too, we’ve learned, it necessitates calling the other guy’s lawyer a pansy, an asshole, an ignorant slut, and threatening, not very subtly, to sodomize him. (What’s with lawyers and threatening to sodomize people?) Martin…
What is the single most embarrassing thing that could happen to a college? Accidentally writing ‘pubic’ in the school’s title in the graduation program, of course. Hands down. No, not down there, gosh. And with the tagline ‘Unlimited Possibilities’ … you just cannot make this stuff up. To the graduates…
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the race for the 33rd Congressional District is still a pissing match likely to end up in a runoff between between Domingo Garcia and Marc Veasey for the Democratic nomination. A quick recap: Garcia called big SUVs un-American, which led Veasey to proclaim…
My 3-year-old son is crushed. Yesterday, his dad was about $1,052,480 shy of purchasing a 75 percent complete fossil skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Or at least I would have been had I put in a bid. It’s just as well, though, because whoever purchased…
Cases of pertussis, widely known as whooping cough, are on a “modest” uptick in Dallas County, county health officials say. So far this year, the number of cases is higher than in 2010 and 2011. And with the death of one infant this year, health officials say it’s “very important…
It wasn’t without some pride that I saw last week that my alma mater, the University of Texas at Dallas, had earned what may be its first superlative. (OK, maybe its second, but the most-hideous-architecture label was unofficial.) The Texas Tribune has helpfully compiled a list of average tuition and…
Word came early Saturday afternoon that the Dallas Police Department had identified veteran shit disturber Dominique Trevun Thornton as one of the suspects in a string of armed robberies along the Katy Trail. And it wasn’t 24 hours later before they announced that 23-year-old Thornton was in custody — reportedly…
On Friday, Dallas police reported that they were investigating the apparent overdose deaths of two students from Thomas Jefferson High School in March and April: 14-year-old Jaime Morales, who was found dead at his home in Northwest Dallas, and an unnamed 17-year-old, found dead in an apartment on Ferguson Road…
“Cheese,” the cheap-as-hell mixture of cold medicine and black tar heroin, is again rearing its head at DISD’s Thomas Jefferson High School. The school, which was known by students as the Cheesehead Factory, had reportedly done a pretty good job of ridding if from their hallways.Now, another student has died…
Rick Halperin, head of SMU’s human rights program, has been saying for years what became nationally recognized this week: “Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man,” to borrow a headline from the Atlantic. Halperin has spent his career doing the academic equivalent of banging his head against the wall…
Beleaguered is how you might describe efforts to clean Texas air. Emissions reduction plans — leaning primarily on cutting vehicle exhaust — have been gutted by the state Legislature. But one provision, passed in the last legislative session and sponsored by Woodlands Republican Senator Tommy Williams, promises a seeming panacea…
While some in Congress have raised concerns about Facebook’s privacy policies and others are already grousing about the company driving the “biggest Mack truck ever driven through the stock option loophole” with a $16 billion tax deduction, a pair of local congressmen are liking Facebook very much. Representatives Pete Sessions…
The Dallas Independent School District elections were held last weekend, and as we maybe should have known all along, Elizabeth Jones, Dan Micciche and Bernadette Nutall — the candidates with tens of thousands of PAC dollars and personal endorsements from the Citizen — blew out their competition. The most interesting…
You don’t shoot the goose that laid the golden egg. You just don’t — not unless you really, really have to or the goose stops pooping out gold. Which is why SMU’s firing of athletic director Steve Orsini yesterday was so perplexing, and why the non-explanation offered by school President…
As Matthew Haag noted yesterday over at the Morning News’ education blog, DISD’s Citizen Budget Review Commission made several recommendations at last week’s board briefing for how the district might cut costs. The most eye-catching: consider getting rid of metal detectors in middle and high schools. The commission’s report calls…
Michelle Flores finished her bartending shift at a Dallas nightclub and was driving home to Fort Worth late Sunday night when someone pulled alongside her car, mouthing ‘Your tire, your tire … pull over.’ The 35-year-old mother of three would have normally ignored such a warning, but this time pulled…
Every kindergartener with a sense of self-preservation knows not to trust the stop signs that jut out from the sides of school buses, because even though they are the same reflective red octagons as those planted in concrete and the word “STOP” is written in the same white font, people…
Super PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability, a bipartisan political organization that claims to have its barrels loaded for both parties, just fired its opening fusillade. It aims to oust two long-serving congressmen in what would otherwise be shoe-in primaries. The targets: One El Paso Democrat and U.S. Representative Ralph Hall…
