Johnathan Turner, a former Madison High School basketball player, pleaded guilty to beating his housemate Troy Causey to death Monday. He’s been given seven years probation for killing Causey, who played hoops for Wilmer-Hutchins. If he completes his probation successfully, the case against him will be dismissed. Causey died after…
Katie (not k.d.) Lang made sure she was going to get sued last week. Flouting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, but backed by a legally dubious opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Hood County Clerk decided initially that her office just wasn’t going to issue…
On Earth, everything is connected. The streams and wetlands feed into larger lakes and rivers, and so federal regulators want to protect the smaller bodies of water in order to keep the larger bodies, and ultimately, our water supply, clean. But in business-friendly states such as Texas, corporations are not…
Last week was not good for John Wiley Price. Christian Campbell and Karen Manning, charged in connection with Price’s federal corruption case, pleaded guilty to single counts and agreed to testify against Price. Campbell admitted funneling cash to Price’s political consultant Kathy Nealy. Manning admitted to filing a false income tax…
Try this on for size. The University of Texas is back in the soup big-time over its admissions policies, for what will be its second tour before the U.S. Supreme Court. In putting itself there, UT has dragged every other public university and college in the nation back into the…
If the city of McKinney is to be believed, the $79,229.09 bill it sent Gawker was a mistake. The bill came in response to a request from Gawker for records and emails related to Eric Casebolt, the former McKinney police officer who resigned after he was caught on video earlier this…
For years, Republican lawmakers have tried their hardest to make sure poor women who depend on their local Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions or just regular check-ups won’t get the help they need. An “unprecedented” number of state-level abortion restrictions have been enacted since 2010, the Guttmacher Institute Found, and In Texas,…
Texas, or at least tiny, tiny part of it named Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, responded to last Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage across the country with bluster and defiance. Patrick spurted out that he didn’t care if he was on the…
The federal bribery and tax evasion case against John Wiley Price got a human face Wednesday. Christian Campbell, one of the Dallas County commissioner’s co-defendants, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to commit bribery concerning a local government receiving federal benefits. Put simply: Campbell admits he funneled money to…
Every Supreme Court decision is a “landmark decision” until it gets rewritten by a new Supreme Court,. But the recent decision in favor of a Dallas-based fair-housing advocacy organization has the scent of staying power. After all, it was based on a principle that hasn’t changed much since Brown v…
Former Cowboys safety CJ Spillman turned himself in Wednesday morning on a sexual assault charge stemming from an alleged September 2014 attack at the Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine. The arrest follows a Tarrant County grand jury’s decision to issue an indictment of Spillman on Monday. The alleged assault was…
As he pulled out of Brenham’s Blue Bell factory without any ice cream in the back of his delivery truck in April, Tim Smith (not his real name) couldn’t shake the feeling he was forgetting something. After almost a decade of delivering ice cream for Blue Bell, Smith had been…
David Brooks has an essay in The New York Times this week called “The Next Culture War” in which he quotes former Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rod Dreher as saying that, in the wake of the Supreme Court gay marriage decision, now is time for Christians to take what Dreher…
In 2013, D Magazine published a story under an anonymous byline, “Anonymous Park Cities Parent,” that trashed another Park Cities parent for being on welfare. While the author of the piece had the luxury of anonymity, the subject, a woman named Janay Bender Rosenthal, did not. Called “The Park Cities…
Somewhere in the midst of his presidential campaign, Texas’ junior senator and Simpsons fan Ted Cruz took the time to audition for the Simpson’s roles vacated by the recently retired Harry Shearer for Buzzfeed. The results are equal turns amusing and horrifying. Amusing, because Cruz as Mr. Burns is just…
A government agency has two basic ways to slow down or avoid a legitimate public information request. It can either refer the request to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, forcing Ken Paxton’s employees to issue an opinion as to the request’s validity and potentially pushing the date the request is…
Listen. We could sit here and go on and on all day long about Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his basically insane exhortation to county clerks not to issue marriage license applications to gay people. But somehow talking too much about people like Paxton just makes us feel sort…
First Baptist Dallas’ Robert Jeffress’ reaction to the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States was bound to be homophobic. That was inevitable. And the smart money said he probably wouldn’t offer up the most rational, thoughtful response. Why start now? What he said Sunday, though? Hoo-boy. Following…
An emergency stay issued by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday will keep 10 Texas abortion clinics open at least until the court’s fall term. The clinics were set to close following the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in June to uphold a Texas law that requires any health…
Sunday, ahead of what should be the first full day of Texas County Clerks signing marriage licenses for same-sex couples, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton gave cover to those officials whose personal religious dogma is more important to them than following the U.S. Constitution following Friday’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing…
You know what this unusual season of heavy rain and flooding is really? It’s Mother Nature giving us a big wake-up call. She’s telling us we need to go all the way back to zero. We need to rethink everything we thought we knew about flood control, which is everything…
It’s probably fair to call Brett Sanders, like Kory Watkins, a provocateur — the nice word for troll — scheming to get police to act in a way that can go viral on YouTube. But whereas Watkins rushes to traffic stops and the like to aggressively videotape officers in action,…
