Barack Obama

A Gun-Dumb Brit's Journey into American Gun Culture

To conquer his fear of guns, a British immigrant takes a road trip to gun lovers' mecca: the NRA Convention.

Mike Bishop, Hellbent on Stopping the Keystone Pipeline, Sues the Corps of Engineers

Earlier this year we introduced you to Mike Bishop, the irascible ex-Marine with 20 acres in the path of the Keystone pipeline, just east of Nacogdoches. When we met him, the retired chemist and bio-fuel tinkerer was livid, cataloging the insults to his land -- the 'dozed crops, the clear-cut woods ... More >>

An Arlington Lawmaker Wants to Give Democrats a Slice of Texas' Electoral Votes

In the wake of Barack Obama's reelection victory last Novembers, Republican lawmakers in several swing states -- Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconson -- introduced bills that would change the way the state's electoral votes are awarded, from a winner-take-all system to a proportiona ... More >>

The White House Is Unmoved By Your Ridiculous Secession Petition, Texas

The dream-crushers over at the White House will not be building you a Death Star, and they will not be considering your requests to secede. Two months or so ago, just after President Obama won reelection, 23-year-old UT Arlington student Micah Hurd hastily wrote up the Texas version of the secessi ... More >>

Mark Davis Says "Today is the First Day of Talk Radio." Ain't That the Truth.

Not long after the networks started calling Ohio for Obama last night, but before Karl Rove tried to convince himself that Cleveland and Cincinnati were going to miraculously turn the state red, Mark Davis, the local conservative talk-radio host and Morning News contributor, dispatched the Tweet you ... More >>

Everclear's Art Alexakis: "I Can't Believe I Am Going to Be in a Red State on Election Day"

At 50, Everclear's Art Alexakis has just about seen it all. The guy has beat a drug addiction, formed a band, and was even elected a delegate at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Oh, he's also toured Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Maybe he really has seen it all. Speaking from a tour stop in New Je ... More >>

Obama & Romney's Country-Club Sopranos

American banks are on a massive crime spree. The Presidential candidates hope you won't notice.

Pizza Hut Will Give You Free Pizza for Life If You Ask "Sausage or Pepperoni?" at the Next Presidential Debate

President Obama and Mitt Romey will square off for their second debate on October 16 at Hofstra University in New York. It's a town hall meeting format-thing, which likely means slung jackets and awkward, aimless candidate-walking. The debate is set to cover foreign policy, domestic policy and, if ... More >>

Day After Obama Talks Up Medicare Fraud Fight in Debate, Feds Say They've Taken Down $100 Million of Local Schemes

One of the things Obama took pains to highlight during last night's debate was just how aggressively his administration has gone after Medicare fraudsters. Remember Jacques Roy, the Rockwall physician accused of masterminding a scheme to bilk the government of $375 million? Probably not, since the d ... More >>

Liberty Institute: Assault on Religious Liberty is at All-Time High (and That's Just Counting Christians)

You know the Liberty Institute as the group that has steered Plano's infamous Candy Cane Case through the courts. More recently, it's championed the cause of Angela Hildenbrand, the Texas high school student who wanted to pray during her valedictory speech. As part of its work, in 2004 the nonprofi ... More >>

Dallas State Rep. Stefani Carter, Now a Romney Surrogate, on Why Romney Should Get the Black Vote

Seems like it was only a month-and-a-half ago that Stefani Carter, the Republican state rep from North Dallas, was just another face in that Mitt Romney campaign piece about how, despite having just been booed during his speech to the NAACP, black people love him. Now, she's a full-fledged surrogate ... More >>

Isn't DACA Just a Ruse to Identify and Deport DREAM Act Students?

The Morning News and John Cornyn: A Match Made in Fantasyland

An "op-ed" page in a newspaper -- the page opposite the editorials -- is supposed to be a kind of village square for diverse voices, but does that mean it should be a billboard for lies? The case in point today would be the op ed page of The Dallas Morning News, given over to an especially sleazy pi ... More >>

Tiny East Texas Towns Join Fight Against Keystone Pipeline. Should Dallas?

Together, they have a population of fewer than 2,000, but the tiny East Texas hamlets of Reklaw, Alto and Gallatin have an outsized mission: To halt the southern portion of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, a conduit designed to ferry some 830,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands a day from an Oklaho ... More >>

Why is Obama Stealing Mexico's Bright Young People?

Arlington Pastor Hates Gays and Mormons

First Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress gets most of the press for his outspoken views on homosexuality and Mormonism, but over at the Dallas Voice, John Wright highlights the, um, retrograde views of another prominent local preacher, Dwight McKissic of Arlington's Cornerstone Baptist Church. McKissic ... More >>

America's War on Brown People Has Gone Too Far

A hostile Supreme Court. A feckless Obama administration. America's war on Mexicans has gone too far.

Why Does Karl Rove Hate America So Much?

Oh, boy. Another chance to say something good about Detroit. Nothing gets a bigger rise out of a certain element among you loyal Lawners than when I utter anything even faintly complimentary about my hometown. For reasons I may never fully understand, I would incite less mouth-foaming if I sang the ... More >>

Victoria Jackson, Tea Party Princess

Victoria Jackson went from the big leagues of comedy to the rabid right of modern politics.

School Till July 26? Sneak a Peek at Five Calendars DISD's Looking at For Next Year.

Dave Granlund, via​Used to be, you knew school was back in session day after Jerry Lewis was on teevee, teetering in a tux. Now, of course, kiddos report back at the end of August. But how long will that last? Not quite sure: Amongst the many, many, many items of interest on the Dallas Independent ... More >>

A Breath of Fresh Air: Plano East Senior Named One of America's Great Young Inventors

Param Jaggi​Spend this morning learning how to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen -- by filtering it through algae, duh. Thanks, Param Jaggi! No, seriously. Thanks. The Plano East Senior High School senior's a genius. Says so right here, in the latest issue of Popular Science, in which he was name ... More >>

No, God Doesn't Talk To Kinky Friedman. But Rick Perry Does, So There's That.

Kinky Friedman​From the sound of it, the phone woke Kinky Friedman up. He was in Georgia, hanging out on the set of his buddy Billy Bob Thornton's movie, Jane Mansfield's Car. The previous night's fun had lasted until 5:30 in the morning, and here I am, at 10 o'clock, full of questions about his ... More >>

Area Gun Dealer Pretty Sure That New Two-Per-Customer Law Won't Solve Border Violence

Via.So long as we can still get one of these​An edict from the Justice Department to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives paved the way Monday for tighter regulation of repeat purchases of semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines in border states. The feds' f ... More >>

Five Things Servers Say That We Wish They Wouldn't

Flickr"Did you save any room for my obnoxious banter?"​No, hold on. Don't leave yet. I know that I, disgruntled bearer of coffee and a bad attitude, should be the last breathing person to give serving advice. But I've worked in restaurants for years. I've talked some tables into leaving a few ... More >>

Feds Want to Ditch "Excess Property," Including 75 Acres in Fort Worth. Will Dallas Follow Suit?

One of three vacant library branches, this one on Marsh Lane and Northwest Highway​Earlier this week, the White House announced that it's looking to sell off excess federal properties -- chief among them, the million-square-foot, 75-acre Fort Worth Federal Center. Says the Obama administration, "B ... More >>

Central Market Canvassing For Cheese Votes

Central Market is hoping its patrons can muster more enthusiasm for Limburger and Gouda than they've shown for the current crop of political candidates. ​The grocer is rolling out a cheese promotion tomorrow that calls upon shoppers to vote for their favorite cheeses in an online poll. "Which c ... More >>

Q&A: The National's Scott Devendorf Talks Meeting Obama, Collaborating With St. Vincent and The Stresses of Recording

Keith KlenowskiThe National​In this week's print edition we featured The National's Saturday show at the House of Blues. But the article--concentrating mostly on the band's latest album, High Violet--offered only a glimpse into an interview with bassist Scott Devendorf. Here, we're giving you the ... More >>

No. 22 Can Also Hand Off Some Political Cash

Pro Football Hall of Fame​The great Dave Levinthal decamped from the City Hall beat in the spring of '09 for the Center for Responsive Politics, where we find this item of some local interest: Emmitt Smith, freshly minted Pro Football Hall of Famer, is also a generous federal-campaign contributor ... More >>

Whitt's End: 2.19.10

​Whether you're at the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End: *I'm setting the over/under on Tiger Woods saying the word "sorry" in this morning's sanitized statement at 4.5, and I'm taking the under. I'll also be shocked if he cries. At some point he will, b ... More >>

Meanwhile, Down at the Convention Center Hotel Construction Site ...

Someone doesn't look like they want to be in this photo with the mayor, the U.S. treasurer and some council members.​Like I said, we're a wee bit shorthanded at the moment, and I couldn't find anyone willing to spend a damp afternoon at the Omni construction site with Mayor Tom Leppert and U.S. Tr ... More >>

Outside a Quiet Two-Party Town Hall, Health Care Demonstrators Take To the Streets

Patrick MichelsDemonstrators on both sides of the debate shared space outside this morning's town hall meeting with Rep. Pete Sessions and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson.​Update: Check out our slide show for more photos from the meeting and the protest.Walking up to the health care reform protest outs ... More >>

Trucks, Trucks, Trucks

Gig Alert: Vice Squad, Lower Class Brats Tonight at The Prophet Bar

Lower Class Brats open for Vice Squad at the Prophet Bar tonight.Beki Bondage (born Rebecca Louise Bond) helped start UK punk stalwarts Vice Squad way back in 1978. She left the band for an ill-fated solo career in 1982, but resurrected the name in 1997. Since, she and an assorted crew of sidemen ha ... More >>

What Summer Vacation?

School's out for summer, but the Dallas Independent School District's board of trustees has one hellacious evening ahead of it, beginning with a 5 p.m. public hearing at 3700 Ross Avenue concerning the proposed 2009-'10 school year budget. After that's done, it's down to big business, some of which ... More >>

Ron Kirk's About to Trade Up

'Bout 20 minutes from now, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk will go before the Senate Committee on Finance for his confirmation hearing as U.S. trade ambassador -- finally, right? We're having a watch party at Unfair Park HQ: Schutze brought the churros; Merten, the Moosehead. And I brought the Maker's ... More >>

Sundance Lays Low

Soderbergh and solitary on the fest's 25th anniversary

Picture Show: Fantasia Barrino at TBAAL's 26th Annual Concert

Fantasia Barrino, who you may recall from her American Idol days, headlined the 26th Annual Black Music and Civil Rights Movement Concert, presented by the Black Acadamy of Arts and Letters at the Meyerson Symphony Center Sunday night.Dancers, poets and more singers performed at the show, which was ... More >>

Breast Inauguration Ever? (Or, How Obama Became The "Magic Man" At The Lodge This Morning.)

At, oh, about 11:15ish last night, Robert gave me a call. Earlier in the day, we'd half-kidded about going to a strip club to watch the inauguration--surely, it was the most inappropriate place we could think of for watching the festivities (without putting ourselves in harm's way, at least). But n ... More >>

What No. 1 Songs Tell Us About Inaugurations

History, as predicted by Inauguration Day's No. 1 hits

Suhm to Tell City Council: Do Not Live Large, and Think a Little Smaller

Seems like we were just here, hashing over the city's budget. But as you may have read -- and may have guessed -- FY2009-10 is already shaping up to be a) lousy, b) godawful, c) yech or d) all of the above. Which is why, at this morning's Dallas City Council briefing session, City Manager Mary Suhm ... More >>

FOX News Takes an Interest in Harold Simmons and Oprah's Friendship

This morning, Roger Friedman of FOX News has cobbled together a series of old newspaper clips and federal tax returns in an effort to make sense of the Oprah Winfrey-Harold Simmons love affair. Because, after all, Winfrey was chief among Barack Obama's backers, while the Dallas billionaire and Swift ... More >>

In the Bishop Arts District Last Night, Cautious Optimism Gave Way to Joy

Election Night Parties...At A Price

At Last, Harold Simmons Gets His Money's Worth From Ayers Ads

What Texas Delegation?

Wherein We Step Gingerly Into That Whole Sandra Crenshaw "Imbroglio"

Lewisville Think Tank Unhappy Hillary Clinton Won't RSVP, Dang It

Playing Good "D" in Dallas County

You Kids Today and Your Voting. Now Get Off My Lawn.

Voting This Morning? No Prob.