There comes a time in all Dallas parents’ lives when they must decide whether their iron-clad commitment to city living is really clad in enough iron to see them through a dozen years of DISD. The crisis point often arrives with the letter from Dealey or Harry Stone Montessori informing…
When Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez changed the way her office handled some detention requests from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), charges arose that she created a sanctuary county. On Thursday, she returned to the Texas Capitol to answer charges. It seems increasingly likely that there is going…
More than a year after worker’s rights advocates and members of the Dallas City Council began pushing for it, the city of Dallas has guaranteed a 10-minute rest break every four hours for construction workers. Throughout the winding process that led to the rest break ordinance being passed, proponents have…
Sorry, Dallas gay Episcopalians. You still can’t get married in your own church, even with the “enthronement” (Episcopal-speak for hiring) of a new bishop last month. As one of his first orders of business, Bishop-elect George R. Sumner announced he’s sticking with a prior rule that nobody gay gets married…
Workers hadn’t even patched the bullet holes in Dallas police headquarters, put there by crazed shooter James Boulware, when City Hall promised to better secure the building. Police Chief David Brown called it “critical work.” After three months, the city allocated $1 million from the 2015-16 budget for police…
Come and Take It Texas and Don’tComply.com are going to hold an open carry walk near the University of Texas at Austin campus on Saturday. Then they’re going to have a mock mass shooting, complete with fake blood, victims, vigilantes and gunshot reports coming from bullhorns. The festivities are the…
The chance is still alive that casual pot smokers caught by the Dallas Police Department would not get hauled straight to county jail. The Dallas City Council’s Public Safety Committee, after hearing testimony from Chief David Brown, yesterday voted to move “cite and release” policy proposal to the full council…
Hopefully, this story won’t matter. Hopefully, figuring out who’s on the hook should Dallas’ massively underfunded Police and Firefighters Pension Fund go broke won’t matter because the fund never goes broke. It’s something that would be good to know though, considering the fund is currently sitting on an unfunded liability…
The black specks that appear to grow out of Elida Lopez’s driveway have the distinct look of the industrial waste. And, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, they probably are. These squared off chunks of rubber, called battery casings or battery chips, are byproducts of car-battery recycling. In other cities, the…
The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments today — again — in Fisher v. University of Texas, so colleges and universities all over America will be on edge — again — to see if UT has bollixed up all affirmative action admissions programs for good. But “for good” has been a…
DART and Miller Lite are teaming up to give free rides to anyone who wants one on New Year’s Eve. Sounds great, except for one thing: Actually taking advantage of the offer. Unless you’re willing to get home before midnight or leave a Deep Ellum bar at the stroke of midnight…
I was sitting in the gallery at a City Council session last week where they were talking about the city’s deteriorating credit rating, and I felt kind of like Widda Shoots, like a little old white-haired, black-dressed, sensibly shod lady on her cane-bottomed chair with her Social Security check folded…
It’s taken some time — either a little over a year or a little over eight years, depending on how you count it — but the city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department finally appear ready to arrest fewer people for marijuana possession. Since 2007, Texas law has allowed…
This is just what Jerry Jones does when he doesn’t have anyone around who will stand up to him. After one of his Cowboys teams has a bit of unexpected success, Jones begins to tinker, trying to find a way to return his beloved team to the Super Bowl promised…
Everybody not familiar with efforts to resolve chronic homelessness, myself included, is shocked to learn what it costs to do anything effective. Part of what I have been learning this week is that it just does. Like it or lump it. Or we can do nothing, which would make us…
Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez wasn’t kidding around when she announced a change in the way her office deals with requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold some undocumented immigrants in jail until ICE can come collect them. Those charged with certain minor offenses could make bond and…
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was very upset about the New York Daily News’ Thursday cover. Released after the shooting deaths of 14 people in San Bernadino, California, the cover took issue with the claims of prominent Republicans, including Texas’ Ted Cruz, who said they were praying for the victims…
On Tuesday night, the Denton City Council set the city on a dark path from which it may never recover. After hours of wrenching debate, the council voted 5-2 to give Buc-ee’s Ltd. $8 million in tax incentives to build one of its beaver-themed convenience store-cum-amusement parks on a vacant plot…
It sounds like The Dallas Morning News is going to take another run at getting people to pay for their online content at some point next year. I am strongly in favor of getting people to pay the media for content, because I want the media to pay me. So…
The Dallas Police and Fire Pension system is in bad shape, really bad shape. So bad, in fact, that it has affected the city’s bond rating, with both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s bumping the city’s creditworthiness down one notch in recent months. It isn’t hopeless, though, and changes are…
This should not be hard. There is no reason the city of Dallas shouldn’t or can’t pass an ordinance that would ensure construction workers in the city get to take a break. Ten minutes every four hours, that’s all that advocates have pushed for, and that’s all that’s been in…
Ten weeks ago I had my hair shirt on with my sandwich board sign hanging from my shoulders predicting possible Biblical-scale flooding catastrophe as we entered the season of the fall rains. Might be time to grab those Bibles soon. All those stories you saw on TV last weekend of people…
