News

At 2 p.m. on June 21, Kevin Sullivan was in a meeting about education–appropriate, since at the time he was assistant secretary for communications and outreach at the U.S. Department of Education. He got an e-mail on his BlackBerry from Dan Bartlett, counselor to President George W. Bush and the…

No one has ever accused us of having good taste. Literally. No one. Not ever. Still, even we know some things don’t mix. Tan shoes and navy blue slacks. White wine and five-alarm chili. Executions and fun guess-the-celebrity games. That last one comes from the Texas Moratorium Network, a statewide…

Ron Price Cares He gets it: As I read your article about Ron Price (“Old School,” by Matt Pulle, July 13), I could plainly understand why people have a hard time understanding him. I am a minister and a gang specialist who works closely with Ron in the Pleasant Grove…

It’s well past midnight in Leander, Texas, and as usual, Travis Wilson can’t sleep. His skin is itching. It’s always itching. He tries not to think about it, but it’s been itching for more than a year, and he cannot make it stop. It’s driving him crazy. He paces the…

� Danny Moloshok / Blue Pixel for MBP 2006 The woman in me says this is one bad dress Zayra Alvarez is wearing. So, last week on no one’s favorite show, Rock Star: Supernova, Zayra Alvarez landed in the bottom three after an atrocious rendition of The Kinks’ “You Really…

Our old pal John Gonzalez, who apparently used to be some kind of a sportswriter for the paper version of Unfair Park before moving to some place called Boston, is famous. Well, for today, anyway. In a word-of-the-day kind of way, courtesy Merriam-Webster, which apparently could come up with no…

I just met Elisha Cuthbert. I think she dug me. No? My bad. Today, there are more celebrities in town than there are in all of, oh, Orange County. They’re here to promote three very different movies, but the actors and director in Dallas do have local ties, even if…

On Tuesday, the No. 2 man at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Executive Chief Deputy Jesse Flores, met with various employee groups to address rumors that he made some inflammatory comments about white officers at the department. A few weeks ago, I had heard that Flores said he wanted to…

This afternoon Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. held a news conference in which he said a doctor and two nurses have been arrested on suspicion of killing four patients at a New Orleans hospital during the hours after Hurricane Katrina hit that city. Dr. Anna Pou and nurses…

A transcript of Lady Bird Johnson’s account of the events of November 22, 1963, is available at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The latest issue of U.S. News & World Report features a cover story headlined “Eyewitness to History,” which is running in conjunction with an exhibit called “Eyewitness:…

Is this man to blame for a shooting downtown over the weekend? Doubtful. Don’t tell Steve Blow, though. About that headline…I’ve felt that way for some time, but I’ve never cared enough to go on the record and say so. Now, Steve Blow has gone and blamed a murder on…

Darrell Jordan wants to be mayor. And he has the wallet to prove it. Darrell Jordan insists that, at long last, it’s his turn to be the mayor. He lost in 1995 to Ron Kirk, but Jordan has always figured he was the right guy in the right place at…

There’s a front-page piece in today’s New York Times about how Dallas and Fort Worth–and, for that matter, most of Texas’ hospitals–deal with illegal immigrants. It says, in essence, that Parkland Memorial Hospital has a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy when it comes to treating its patients, since doctors there don’t question their…

Dallas Public Library Plenty of Dallas police officers and firefighters live out of town; now, says the Arizona Daily Star this morning, they’re buying investment property out of town too…actually, all the way out of state and in Tucson, Arizona, go figure. The paper doesn’t know why the Dallas Police…

Already the suggestions for what Mayor Laura could do with her leftover hundred thou are coming in. To wit: “Her Honor could buy the architectural models of the Calatrava bridges, which I understand cost quite a bit, and use them for her kids’ play and school projects. Imagine a science…

Since Mayor Laura isn’t running for re-election, last we checked, we wondered what exactly she can she do with the $96,146.54 sitting in her campaign war chest. (That’s how much she has left, according to her campaign finance report filed today with the city’s elections manager, Brooks Love, who I…

Why is this man smiling (he is smiling, isn’t he)? Because he’s already got $103,000 to spend on running for mayor, and the race is still almost a year away. Just got back from City Hall, where I snagged copies of Gary Griffith and Laura Miller’s campaign finance reports, which…

Local blues great Sam Myers died this morning. He was 70. We just received the sad news that local blues singer and harp player Sam Myers died this morning, after battling with throat cancer since being diagnosed with it in January 2005. According to his friend, local blues singer Kathy…

Guess it’s been a bad news-good news few days for Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services. At the end of business Friday, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced it was terminating its $171 million contract with ACS, which was scheduled to provide the state with a new Medicaid…