Recently departed Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto is running for mayor, he tells The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky. Casto is now the second candidate to officially jump into the race, joining Dallas businessman Albert Black. Mike Ablon, a prominent real estate developer in the Design District and potential candidate, has…
After more than a year of makeshift enforcement for crimes like gambling and prostitution, the Dallas Police Department is finally set to roll out its reconstituted vice unit later this week, Assistant Chief Paul Stokes said Monday. Twenty-one officers will staff the new unit, three-quarters of the number that worked…
Dallasites gathered at City Hall in solidarity with asylum seekers on Sunday as reports came in about hundreds of migrants from the Central American migrant caravan marching along the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 50 people gathered in the cold in response to a nationwide call for a day of action…
At a town hall in El Paso on Monday, Beto O’Rourke made his first public appearance since losing his Senate race to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz earlier this month. Given the narrow, and high-profile nature of O’Rourke’s Senate defeat, one might’ve expected the soon-to-be former U.S. House representative to play…
The 2017 Texas Legislature was this close to actually doing something about the state’s draconian marijuana laws. A bill that would’ve decriminalized possessing an ounce of pot or less was scheduled for a vote in the Texas House before being scuttled by a procedural maneuver. A comprehensive medical marijuana bill made…
We have one of those doorbells you can see out of. You know what I mean. With a TV camera in it? You can talk to people through your doorbell. We were early adopters. When we first got our two-way doorbell, they were still fairly uncommon. We could still get…
In 2018, Dallas sports were all about the individual. The city’s usual suspects, the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks and Stars, were universally mediocre or worse, leaving sports fans to look for joy in the superlative performances of DFW’s bumper crop of 20-something stars, many who captured spots high on this list…
Last week, almost lost in the dense postpartum coverage of the Amazon’s-not-coming-here story, I found what I thought was an utterly fascinating and infuriating vignette. It was something I should have guessed had happened. It was never a secret. It was something I normally would have assumed was happening. But…
About a dozen protesters gathered at Energy Transfer Partners’ office building in Dallas this week, the second anniversary of when police used non-lethal weapons against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas. This time, the focus was on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which is being…
To give the Observer staff a little relief for the Thanksgiving holiday, I asked the staff to turn in five things for which they are thankful for this year. I hope they were thankful for being given a chance to kick out a simple, fast piece that got them out…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got a big lift in his fight against securities fraud allegations Wednesday, as Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that special prosecutors’ compensation in the case exceeded legal limits. Last year, a Collin County court agreed to pay almost $200,000 in legal fees to the three…
Another flyer from a white supremacist group was found in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Highland Village near Lewisville last weekend. This time, the flyer, which read “Keep America American” and “Report Any and All Illegal Aliens; They are Criminals” along with a phone number for U.S. Immigration and…
Adrian Beltre’s decision to retire Tuesday was inevitable. Beltre will turn 40 in April, and despite still being a productive player, over the last two years it’s become clear that his body simply isn’t capable of playing baseball five days a week. Time has come for the best third baseman…
Rickey Callahan will step aside in June rather than seek a fourth term on the Dallas City Council in next year’s municipal elections. Callahan announced his decision at a meeting of the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, according to The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky. Callahan, who did not respond…
Call it wild speculation, but I think we’ve just been struggling as a community to figure out the wildly troubling case of Amber Guyger and Botham Jean, a terrible event in which a white Dallas cop shot and killed an innocent black man in his own apartment last Sept. 6…
Adrian Beltre, the soul of the best teams in Texas Rangers history, is retiring after eight years in Arlington. “After careful consideration and many sleepless nights, I have made the decision to retire from what I’ve been doing my whole life, which is playing baseball, the game I love,” Beltre…
A little more than two months after activists shut down a Dallas City Council meeting while calling for police reform following an officer’s killing an unarmed man in his own apartment, the city has plans for a toughened up Citizens Review Board for the police department. According to a memo…
Jason Garrett’s coaching career is a cockroach. Ugly, basically untouched by evolution and capable of surviving anything short of global annihilation. Two weeks after being left for dead following a desultory performance in a Monday night loss to the Tennessee Titans at home, the Cowboys knocked off the Falcons in…
Last week I found myself trying to explain Beto to a New Yorker. I didn’t do a good job. I do better with a day to think about it, a desk, a web browser and an editor than I do trying to talk on my feet. I was taken aback…
The 2019 Texas Legislature must act on behalf of children in the state, or risk that they will fall further behind their peers in the rest of the United States, according to a new report from Austin’s Center for Public Policy Priorities. The report also emphasizes the need for an…
North Richland Hills, The Colony, Wichita Falls and Archer City all have been recent targets of flyers by Patriot Front, a Texas-based white supremacist group. Some of the flyers say, “Keep America American” and encourage people to report “any and all illegal aliens,” calling them criminals. Some are as inconspicuous…
Dallas County Family Court Judge and former county Democratic Party Chair Darlene Ewing died Friday. Ewing was 64. Prior to being elected to preside over the 254th Family District Court, Ewing led Dallas County Democrats for a decade from 2005-2015. During her tenure Democrats largely took over the county, losing only…
