In the abandoned, aging mansion on Live Oak Street, around the corner from a dive bar and a convenience shop, Charlie Price once pictured an elegant wedding chapel. Or, if that business failed, maybe the boarded-up structure could be converted into a law office or an art gallery. Price bought…
This week, Ken Paxton took time out from fighting his multiple felony indictments to send a set of directives to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick outlining the attorney general’s priorities for the period leading up to the Texas Legislature’s next session in 2017. If you’re a woman, someone who thinks…
During the first week of August, when we first starting thinking that the Rangers might conceivably make the playoffs, we were talking about the possibility of a possibility. That they might be able to sneak in if everything broke right, grab the second American League wild card and get lucky…
Like much of Dallas, I was late to work Tuesday because of a failure to anticipate just how bad downtown Dallas traffic was going to be Monday morning. Late buses and added time navigating downtown were the rule of the day. The traffic mess stemmed from a bunch of streets…
When our older son began kindergarten last fall, my wife and I rejoiced. Some of our joy naturally sprung from watching him pass such a key childhood milestone — OMG, the little guy’s starting school! — but most of it admittedly came from the game-changing impact it had on our budget…
Let me state one thing clearly for you at the top. I am not anti-baby. If anything, I may be the biggest fan of babies you know, especially other people’s babies. In fact at this point in life I think I could say I am a fan only of other…
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, or at least the person running his Twitter account, is generally pretty feisty on the social media platform. His tweets are usually signed with the infamous TCOT hashtag — the portal to wingnut Internet hell, search it at your peril — and the governor’s not afraid…
The Texas State Board of Education, the body that decides what millions of Texas schoolchildren should and shouldn’t learn, is the frequent subject and ridicule, and rightly so, what with its penchant for pushing creationism into science curricula, identifying Moses as an architect of the U.S. Constitution, chalking up the…
Dallas park “ambassador” Courtney Wright, patrolling the front lines of Lake Highlands Park, stood firmly next to the destroyed soccer goal post as angry parents confronted him. One of the parents, videotaping the encounter, asked him why he broke their soccer equipment. “You guys have been instructed to take it…
Last weekend when I made the first of what will be my many visits, The State Fair of Texas, now in the second week of its annual run and blessed by beautiful weather, was vibrant and jammed with happy human beings, not to mention livestock. I love the fair. I…
Now that Susan Hawk is back to work as Dallas County’s DA after seeking treatment for clinical depression, she should offer her prosecutors paid maternity leave. Because why not? It’s a decent thing to do, but even better for Hawk, it would be a badass political move. Hawk is the…
On Sunday afternoon, with a 9-2 drubbing of division rival Los Angeles Angels, the Texas Rangers clinched the American League West title. Given the Rangers’ performance since their second consecutive World Series appearance in 2011, this should have been cause for unbridled celebration. But as slugger Adrian Beltre was shrieking girlishly under…
House Bill 2, the deeply controversial anti-abortion law passed by the Texas Legislature in 2013, still isn’t fully effective. The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed perhaps the most onerous provision of the law, the one that essentially requires any facility performing abortions to be a mini-hospital, until it decides whether…
That didn’t take long. What, a millisecond? The door-slam was still reverberating behind departed Dallas schools chief Mike Miles — supposedly the very devil incarnate, author of all ills, according to the teachers unions — when they went after merit pay, their real target all along. In a press release,…
First, please don’t expect us in the news business not to act like we’re in the news business. Second, speaking of the news business, Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk is off to a real bad start. Hawk, who disappeared from public view three months ago apparently struggling with mental…
Every year or so, the Texas Transportation Institute releases its Urban Mobility Report, which looks at the impact of traffic congestion on major metropolitan areas in the United States, and every year or so the report’s release prompts a barrage of critiques from transportation wonks whose livings aren’t tied to building new…
I would love it if the Rangers moved into a new stadium in downtown Dallas. Absolutely love it. I might go to 60 games a year if it happened, and I would definitely buy season tickets. I am about as biased as you can be toward all things baseball, and…
World-renowned performance artist Donald Trump’s ongoing piece, titled “What if Pat Buchanan Was a Billionaire and had a Queens Accent,” continued Friday with his announcement that he’s hired state campaign directors in three states that are not among those with the earliest GOP nominating contests. Included in those hires is…
It’s not a shock, but disappointing nonetheless: State Representative Jonathan Stickland, the Observer’s BFF and favorite member of the Texas Legislature, is getting a primary challenger. The Reverend Scott W. Fisher, pastor of the Metroplex Chapel in Euless, announced this week that he’s taking Stickland on. “With my background in overseeing…
The Volkswagen emissions scandal is not quite two weeks old, and it’s already spurred lawsuits from dozens of angry car buyers. The first such suit in Dallas was filed Monday, though it surely won’t be the last. All or most of these early cases revolve around a straightforward allegation of fraud. Customers…
The looming battle over a big loan proposed for the school system in Dallas’s wealthy Park Cities enclave is but the local version of one very big fat squawky chicken coming home to roost for rich people everywhere in America. I would say it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,…
Yesterday I told you White House cabinet member Julian Castro, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had slipped into town under the radar the day before to chat with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. Rawlings’ spokesperson said after the meeting, “The secretary challenged the mayor to push…
