Last night the city held a shmooze event for people who live near a proposed exclusive private golf course and horse park in a poor part of Southern Dallas, but the shmooze blew up. A carefully choreographed scene of friendly information booths and party favors turned into an angry shouting…
Clint Bench was born with with a congenital deformity that prevented his arms from fully forming. That didn’t stop him from going to college, getting married, having children or from riding roller coasters at Six Flags Over Texas. He’s done pretty much all of them: Batman, the Texas Giant, the…
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It now heads to the House for what will likely be an ugly battle over its renewal; President Obama used part of his State of the Union address last night to urge the House representatives to…
Police are on the lookout for a 6’2″, 300-pound Hispanic man who conducted a brief but successful raid on the Victoria’s Secret at Mockingbird Station. According to a police report, the man walked into the store through the front door, grabbed 20 sets of pajamas — a $700 value –…
In his State of the Union address yesterday, President Obama laid out a moderately progressive agenda, calling for a higher minimum wage, action to combat climate change, comprehensive immigration reform, and tougher gun control measures. The Nuge was not amused. The New York Times described a “stone-faced” Ted Nugent whose…
DART’s policy, or lack thereof, for offering health coverage for employees’ gay and lesbian partners was thrust into the spotlight last summer when former police officer Andrew Moss launched a petition calling for change after his husband (at least under California law) was denied benefits. The agency’s board of directors…
Governor Rick Perry is in California this week as part of his campaign to lure businesses to Texas, attempting to finish in person what his radio ads started. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News Perry said that California Governor Jerry Brown’s comments that Perry’s radio ad was…
In 2007, Dallas County came to the realization that throwing hookers in jail, as was the standard practice, was an expensive and not-very-effective way of addressing prostitution. So police, courts, and health providers teamed up to develop the Prostitution Diversion Initiative, a program aimed at treating women rather than punishing…
This morning at the Dallas Museum of Art, Mayor Mike Rawlings, along with about 1,000 other men in suits sharing the stage, announced a new campaign dubbed “Men Against Abuse.” The next stop on this tour of well-meaning gestures will be a celebrity-packed rally on March 23, which the mayor…
It’s a painful year to be a Mavericks fan. Two years removed from winning the NBA championship, the team’s a disappointing 22-29, with its playoff chances dimming with each passing game. Some might blame Mark Cuban, who dragged the team from the NBA’ cellar to its apex before dismantling it…
Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen — along with more than 80 other groups from across the country — are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency’s withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its fracking operations…
In the days since he was murdered at a Glen Rose gun range, American Sniper Chris Kyle, who recorded more than 150 confirmed kills while serving overseas, has become a palimpsest on which both those who abhor American adventurism overseas and those who view military skill as the ultimate virtue…
For eight years, Sheldrick Newton worked a menial job at Dallas’ Central Library while harboring larger ambitions. “I am a very talented person and can fit just about any part,” he wrote in his ExploreTalent.com profile. “[M]ost people see me as a person who could possibly put a movie or…
Over winter break during the 2007-08 school year, Robert Lange, then a social studies teacher at Williams High School in Plano, twice had sex with a high school student at a martial arts studio. The girl was 18, the sex was consensual, and she wasn’t his pupil but a student…
Folks in Oak Cliff have been pushing for an Oak Cliff dog park for a while now. More specifically, they’ve been lobbying the city to pitch in for a permanent one, since they have the pop-up thing down by now. Yesterday brought good news. According to a post on FIDO…
Last week a jury found 68-year-old Jackie Don Burke guilty of one count of unlicensed sale of firearms. According to Burke’s own records he sold 135 firearms in 14 months, because if you’re gonna do it then why not do it big? One of those firearms was a pistol the…
A few weeks ago, one of the digital billboards on I-30 leading west into downtown flashed a message congratulating Sarah Colmark on a successful first year at WRR 101.1 FM, Dallas’ classical music radtio station. Colmark was hired as general manager last January, nearly a full two years after the…
To say that rocker/maniac Ted Nugent is not a fan of Barack Obama would be something of an understatement. Take this quote, which he screamed to fans at a concert while brandishing a pair of machine guns: “Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk,”…
From SMU’s crime logs, we bring you a brief, somewhat disturbing, deeply weird police report: at 8:18 last night, campus police reported that a student was “was assaulted and held against his will” at the university’s Sigma Phi Epsilon house. The case is being classified as “Aggravated Assault/Aggravated Kidnapping/Personal Hazing…
In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Dallas ISD police Chief Craig Miller wasted no time in dismissing the thought of arming teachers. In fact his recommendations for making DISD students safer, which he will present to the Board of Trustees at a briefing on Thursday, involve…
The bakers union’s new president has finally broken his silence following the collapse of Irving-based Hostess, baker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies. It was the bakers, after all, who largely sat out the attempted restructuring in a New York federal bankruptcy court, then dynamited the negotiations by striking last November…
Don’t think about this: your city manager, the CEO of Dallas City Hall, signed a secret deal five years ago promising to help a gas company set up drilling rigs and processing plants in city parks. Think about this instead: the city manager did not sign a secret agreement with…
