It looks like the Continental Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, one of the city of Dallas’ more pleasant recent additions, will be getting a new name. The city council’s transportation committee voted unanimously Monday to recommend naming the bridge after former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to the full city council. The recommendation…
Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and confirmed member of the 1 percent, spent three hours on a DART bus on Monday morning. Granted, the bus had been chartered for the occasion, meaning that Kaplan didn’t get the full DART bus experience. No scruffy gentleman sat…
When I saw last week that Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings had sent a letter to Austin regulators in support of a bid by the Hunt family of Dallas to take over our local electric transmission utility, all of the “how high” jokes I have ever heard in my life started…
Heading into 2016, the Texas Rangers had many question marks. Despite winning American League West in 2015, last season had been a little fluky. They’d outperformed their advanced metrics and wrung the most they’d could out of a team that was beset with injury and, consequentially, occasionally haphazardly assembled. As…
Texas’ Child Protective Services is in crisis. In the wake of the brutal, March 13 death of 4-year-old Leilana Wright in Grand Prairie, a parade of news report have documented that the agency, through some mixture of incompetence and an acute staffing shortage, is fundamentally incapable, as currently organized, of…
Early last week, the state of Texas got a bit of good news. Despite Governor Greg Abbott’s categorical refusal to take federal funds to expand Medicaid in the state of Texas — leaving thousands of Texans without the coverage to which they were supposed to be entitled after the passage…
This week Robert Wilonsky at The Dallas Morning News and Peter Simek at D Magazine both have been telling some of those important but very painful stories we all need to hear about the city’s racial history. I just want to make sure we don’t throw the old guy out with…
Just a month ago, the marshaled conservative forces against Donald Trump seemed to have a foothold. Their man, whether they liked it or not, was Ted Cruz, and Cruz had just put up his strongest showing of the 2016 primary in Wisconsin, beating Trump by a shade over 13 points…
In the months before she was murdered in Midlothian’s Creekside Church of Christ on April 18 while setting up for her fitness class, Missy Bevers was engaged in an online relationship that turned “flirtatious and familiar” Midlothian police said in a search warrant released Thursday. Beginning in January, Bevers communicated…
The sun shines brightly on Texas, and there’s a lot of Texas for it to shine on. Little surprise, then, that Texas has the potential to generate more electricity from solar — more specifically, the solar panels people and businesses can install on their roofs — than any other state…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not going to take Target’s announcement that they want people to use the restroom of their choice sitting down — or standing up, as it were. In a letter provided by Paxton to Fox News that we managed to track down on a Breitbart…
What mystery? Republican leadership offered Republican primary voters a choice between 16 conservatives and a white guy. The voters have spoken. Yesterday morning after Trump nailed the Republican nomination, I’m reading Nate Silver, I’m reading The New York Times lead editorial, reading Ross Douthat, The Washington Post editorial, The Wall…
Former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel turned himself into Dallas County authorities Wednesday afternoon. His surrender came after a Dallas County grand jury indicted him last week for assault causing a bodily injury to a member of his household, a misdemeanor. Manziel is accused of hitting his…
Voice Media Group, the Dallas Observer’s parent company, announced Tuesday that it’s getting into the marijuana advertising business. Along with the digital marketing firm AdCellerant, VMG will back a “programmatic advertising network” for businesses in the weed industry. “We are excited to bring to market an advertising solution that has…
For supporters of equal rights and equal protection, the outcome of Monday night’s Rockwall City Council meeting was good. Despite the best efforts of Mayor Jim Pruitt, the city did not pass a bathroom ordinance that would’ve required city facilities and businesses to make sure customers use the restroom matching…
Halt! Or should I use the German, “Halt!” An idea is afloat out there, almost certainly well meaning, for dealing with the city’s homeless population by creating a concentration camp at a disused military base where you and I won’t be able to see the problem any longer. Who else…
After being throttled in a make or break Indiana primary, Texas’ Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential nominating contest, ceding the GOP nod to New York real estate mogul Donald Trump. “We are suspending our campaign, we left it all on the field in Indiana,” Cruz said, managing…
Adam P. Smith stumbled into Tent City 10 months ago, soaking wet and shivering. He’d recently been released from federal prison, where he’d spent a couple of years after being picked up after a pair of ill-conceived bank robberies. (He likes to tell of how his defense attorney jiu jitsued…
The Department of Justice has ended it’s long-term freeze of federal forfeiture funds from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. Monday, District Attorney Susan Hawk announced that as of March 14 her office had assured the feds that it had taken appropriate measures to ensure that forfeiture funds were being…
In the 1970s, when Sam Tasby’s lawsuit forced Dallas ISD to stop slow-walking desegregation, white enrollment began to drop like a stone. In 1970, there were 94,383 white students in the district. By the end of the decade, the district enrolled fewer than half that many, 42,030. The rate of decline…
Last winter’s Dallas City Council battle over the city’s soda contract was way more fun than it had any right to be. Cases of soda landed in council offices in a way that smelled a lot like patronage. There were long exchanges about something called pour rights, and City Council…
A Kimball High School student’s week got off to a bad start Monday, Dallas ISD police say, when he shot himself in the leg at the end of first period. The student, who has not been identified, was able to get inside with the gun because typical metal detector policies…
