We wrote last week about how the Environmental Protection Agency is catching heat from both sides of the fracking debate, for its continued backing away from research suggesting that drilling for natural gas can contaminate drinking water. It’s happened in Parker County, Texas, as well as in the Pavillion area…
Meet Chip and Trump, Pantego resident Kristen Beauregard’s prize miniature ponies. As of Wednesday afternoon, they were healthy and contented. By that evening, they were dead. Their end came after the pair was swarmed by 30,000 bees that emerged from a nearby shed. “They were chasing us down, they were…
The question Dr. Kevin Schug set out to answer was refreshingly simple: Does drilling activity in the Barnett Shale contribute to groundwater contamination? There is no shortage of assurances of safety from industry, or claims of mysterious illness from aggrieved landowners and environmental types. So, Schug and a fellow researcher…
Rangers reliever Tanner Scheppers had a simple explanation for the black eye that left him unavailable to take the mound during Friday’s 11-inning loss to the Indians: He’d been sucker-punched the night before as he walked back to the team hotel after grabbing dinner. He decided against filing a police…
At closing time Tuesday night, the cash register at Afrika Fusion came up short. The restaurant’s manager, Mondi Baskin, recounted the money and checked her math again. It was stil short. Baskin narrowed the source of the discrepancy to one of the servers, a woman who’d been working at the…
The San Antonio City Council is debating whether it should update it’s anti-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The move would make it illegal for landlords, businesses and the city to deny housing, services and, in the latter case, employment to people because they’re gay or transgender…
George P. Mitchell, the billionaire wildcatter behind Governor Rick Perry’s “Texas Miracle,” died this morning at the age of 94. His legacy, you could say, is an unconventional oil and gas revolution that utterly upended the energy calculus in this country. Where we once built liquefied natural gas import terminals,…
This morning, at a half hour past midnight, 20-year-old Benjamin Boyer was riding his bicycle south down Cole Street when his front tire slipped into the groove of the trolley track. He was thrown from his bike and, this being Dallas, he sailed straight into the back of a 2012…
When the Lewisville City Council voted last week ago to effectively ban Redneck Heaven’s signature Anything But Clothes Day — a move that garnered coverage in outlets ranging from local alt-weekly blogs to iconic women’s magazines — the breastaurant didn’t complain. It celebrated. “My girls made it in Cosmo!!!” Jenni,…
Back in 2003, a photographer named Lee Emmert bought a vacant 89-year-old church near Maple Avenue and the Tollway and turned it into a live/work space with two spacious lofts and studio areas. Emmert moved to Portland a couple of years later but kept the church, dubbed the Sanctuary, which…
Beth Tucker, deputy commissioner at the IRS, did not seem particularly happy to be sitting before the House Oversight Committee on June 26. Maybe it was the way the focus of the hearing shifted quickly from a possibly fishy but obscure IRS contract to the agency’s admitted targeting of Tea…
One way or the other, it seems, the folks behind Prime Prep Academy, Deion Sanders’ taxpayer-funded charter school, are going to make some money off it. It’s just a matter of how — and how much. The “how” is a little clearer today, after Oprah Winfrey’s cable network announced plans…
Dwayne Harris doesn’t typically get a lot of ink in the local sports press. The wide receiver, selected in the sixth round of the 2011 draft, didn’t catch a pass in more than half the games he played last year, and his 222 receiving yards put him seventh on the…
District Attorney Craig Watkins’ reelection campaign has been considerably more difficult than expected, owing to the accusations that he prosecuted Hunt family scion Al Hill III for mortgage fraud at the behest of a wealthy political benefactor. The embarrassing parade of hearings and contempt charges, followed by more hearings and,…
A few months back, we broke the very important news that Dallas is in midst of an epidemic of hair weave heists. Sometimes, the thieves would try to palm a few packages while pretending to shop. Other times, they went for volume, knocking holes in the wall of beauty supply…
The name “Cowboys Stadium” is everything the structure itself is not: concise, blandly functional, lacking in imagination, panache and, most notably, a high-dollar corporate sheen. There was never any chance that it was going to last, despite Jerry Jones’ protestations to the contrary. Today, it’s officially gone…
Jimmie Jerome Hiners, aka Jimmie “Nookie” Hiners, is kind of an open book. The marijuana leaf tattooed on the front of his neck tells you that he really likes weed, probably too much. The word “Blood” on his left arm tells you that he claims affiliation with that particular street…
The surveillance camera shows the whole room, not that there’s much to see. Mainly just a desk, an office chair, and a door leading to another, smaller room in the back. The footage from March 1, 2012, begins right at 4 p.m. with Michael Meyler, a 44-year-old Russian-born jeweler, occupying…
When Jerry Waller stepped out of his garage at 1 a.m. on May 28, he had no idea he’d encounter a couple of Fort Worth police officers. The 72-year-old grandfather had heard a noise and suspected burglars, so he roused himself, grabbed his gun, and went to check it out…
Yesterday marked 40 years since Dallas police officer Darrell Cain handcuffed 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez in a squad car and shot him in the head while trying to force him to confess to stealing a few bucks from a vending machine. Rodriguez’s death sparked outrage, which ultimately prompted significant reforms to…
This year the Texas legislature approved a measure that requires the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to cut $23 million from its budget and continue paying for five of its six secure facilities by the first day of 2014, meaning that one of those six facilities has to go. To meet…
House Republicans have now voted 39 times to repeal Obamacare. On a certain level, their persistence is admirable in the same way that I admire the way my dog never stops believing that this will be the time that he finally catches that squirrel. One’s esteem is diminished only slightly…
