It’s been awhile since Kory Watkins has haunted these electronic pages. Since storming through the last Texas Legislative session, the former leader of Open Carry Tarrant County has been pretty quiet. Especially compared to 2015, when we saw the gangly anarcho-libertarian intimidate state Representative Poncho Nevarez — who had the…
Monday, Texas public universities ushered in the first day of a new reality. Anyone on campus licensed to carry a handgun is now legally allowed to do so on portions of state owned, four-year college campuses, thanks to a bill passed during the 2015 legislative session. On Tuesday, Texas Attorney…
Richardson firefighters who came to an office building on the 500 block of E. Arapaho were met with an odd chemical smell, too rancid for a regular fire. The source of the blaze was a nondescript suite with no business name on it, Suite 105. What they found inside on…
Mayor Mike Rawlings invoked the five police officers murdered in Dallas July 7 in an effort to pressure the Dallas Park and Recreation Board to sign a contract Thursday that would turn over control of Fair Park to the mayor’s personal delegate, retired oil executive Walt Humann. “In recent weeks,…
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center in South Dallas. From the porches of tumbledown homes, neighbors glanced with mild curiosity as the school’s principal, Dionel Waters, stepped aboard. Waiting for him on the…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is doing everything in his limited power to make sure that Dallas Fair Park gets off of the city of Dallas’ ledger. In Dallas’ system, the mayor only enjoys two privileges outside of his single city council vote: the power to set the council’s agenda and…
The group of lawyers that shepherded the plaintiffs through the case that eventually led to the Supreme Court toppling most of Texas’ onerous anti-abortion law, House Bill 2, is readying itself to take on the state again, this time over Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s under-the-radar call to require facilities that…
The Rangers have sold out to win the 2016 World Series. Monday afternoon, already leading the American League West by six games and just before Major League Baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline, the team acquired outfielder Carlos Beltran from the New York Yankees. They also dealt for catcher Jonathan Lucroy and…
One day in November 2014, Anga Sanders hard a revelation when she walked into an Albertson’s at Mckinney and Lemmon Avenues. She stopped in her tracks, staring at the salad bar just a few yards within the entrance of the store — the fresh greens, the tomatoes, bell peppers, bacon…
Southern Methodist University seismologists recently revealed human-induced earthquakes in North Texas are not only caused by oil and gas operations but also have been occurring since the 1920s across Texas. Oil and gas industry professionals were quick to denounce seismologists findings, and the Texas legislature was quick to take action…
For a while Friday night it seemed like the Next Generation Action Network’s planned protest was going to be a bust. There were more members of the media than protesters at Main Street Garden Park downtown, the gathering site for Dallas’ first organized anti-police brutality protest since the July 7…
For all the political ire and law enforcement angst over securing the land border with Mexico, surprisingly few people in public focus on securing the airspace. Up there, at altitude, there are opportunities for smugglers, outlaws and terrorists to move around at will. That brings us to the King Air…
The impending release of John Warnock Hinckley Jr., the University Park product who shot President Reagan in 1981, has got me thinking in a little bit different direction. Most of the writing I’m seeing on Hinckley’s release is about the insanity defense used successfully by Hinckley’s lawyers to get him…
Tuesday, July 12 was probably the biggest gathering of Dallas and Texas law enforcement in the cities’ history. Thousands of cops, city and county officials gathered at a memorial service in honor of the five cops killed by Micah Johnson on July 7 to hear words from President Barack Obama,…
If you’ve spent any time downtown over the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen them. Stumbling around in packs, looking down at their phones, constantly nearly tripping over the walking dogs of downtown residents. They are the Pokemon Go zombies and they are overrunning any area with enough landmarks to…
On Wednesday the University of Texas’ Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis debuted a remarkable online tool that catalogs and documents each of the 6,913 people who have been killed by police or while in the custody of a state law enforcement agency since 2005. The deaths can be parsed…
As the cases of Zika and West Nile Virus continue to rise in Dallas County (20 Zika cases and ten West Nile as of today) more pesticides will be sprayed from trucks in more neighborhoods, insect repellent will be applied to ourselves and our children more thoroughly, and aerial spraying…
On Tuesday morning, the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News offered the newspaper of record’s official take on Christie Myers, a 30-year-old white woman from the suburbs: She’s awesome. What makes Myers so awesome? After hearing harrowing tales of hours-long public transit commutes from residents of the neighborhood in southeast Oak Cliff she’s…
Oh, happy day. Under a recent edict, Dallas school kids now will have to take fewer tests. And, as we all know, testing is a form of child abuse invented by testophiles. Why else would any decent adult ever make a kid take a test? Why, indeed? I thought we might…
Linda Martin, a 55-year-old real estate agent, died at a stoplight in Southlake in late May. Now the man accused of killing her, her estranged husband, is out on bond. Kenneth Martin, 52, posted his $100,000 bail at the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth where he was being held…
Two-year-old Boi Sang died on Sunday afternoon. He’d been left in his parent’s Honda Pilot in the parking lot of Dallas Matu Christian Church, which caters to the city’s Burmese population. He was the fifth Texas child to die after being left in a hot car so far this year, and…
David Daleiden is not going to go to trial for filming the infamous, undercover Planned Parenthood “baby parts” videos. Tuesday, the Harris County District Attorney requested that the remaining charge against Daleiden and his partner, Sandra Merritt, be dropped. Judge Brock Thomas agreed, dismissing claims that Daleiden and Merritt had illegally…
