Subject: U.S. Armed Forces Activities

• Mo Money Mo Problems: Leppert's Got Some "Good News" for the Council About Trinity

  Sam Merten In February, Mayor Tom Leppert and Kevin Craig of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- and tomorrow, they're holding a repeat performance Earlier tonight, a few of us local media members found in our respective in-boxes a draft of remarks Mayor Tom Leppert is expected to deliver Monday during a 10 a.m. press conference in the Flag Room at Dallas City Hall. He's expected to announce that the city will "invest approximately 29 million dollars to determine the items that need to b

  May 31, 2009

• Yup. I Was a Cheerleader. Damned Proud of It. (Well...)

  April 12, 2007

• Green Grass for a Local Filmmaker

  December 7, 2006

• A Trinity "Tweak"? Impending Disaster's More Like It.

  November 17, 2006

• Lunch With the Trinity Muckety-Mucks

  June 7, 2007

• "Flooded with Misinformation"? Damn Right.

  October 15, 2007

• A Duncanville Soldier Died in Germany; Cause of Death Being Investigated

  January 30, 2008

• More Truth About What the Trinity Parkway Will Really Cost Us

  February 20, 2008

• To Meet a War Hero

  February 22, 2008

• The Important and Difficult Work of News Photographer David Leeson

  August 5, 2008

• Family of Fort Worth Officer Killed in Explosion Sues Ford Motor Co.

  October 21, 2008

• This Morning at City Hall, Mayor Tom Leppert Put Lipstick to Levee and Said It'll Be Fine

  Sam MertenEddie Bernice Johnson and Kay Bailey Hutchison were the levees to Mayor Tom Leppert's Trinity River at City Hall this morning.It almost isn't possible to describe what Mayor Tom Leppert and a line-up of loyal politicos were trying to accomplish this morning in the Flag Room of Dallas City Hall. Talk about lipstick on a pig.For weeks everybody has been wondering whether Leppert and the Dallas Citizens Council would be able to move enough heaven and earth, politically speaking, to force

  June 1, 2009

• Street scenes

  June 15, 1995

• 10 Questions: Jason Weaver

  The French Room's executive chef is one of those 'results-oriented' types. Perhaps his habit of accomplishment stems from the four years he spent in the U.S. Marine Corps. Or maybe the 35 year-old Michigan native can just flat out cook.Although he came to Dallas from the Mandarin Oriental in New York, Weaver began his culinary career at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn, helping push the hotel's kitchen into the number one slot, company wide. In 1999, the restaurant earned a top 10 ranking from Conde

  January 21, 2009

• The Few, the Proud, the Battered

  December 25, 1997

• The war over Gulf War Syndrome

  March 5, 1998

• The shadow of Stalin

  September 3, 1998

• Better Now Than Never, the City Council's Gonna Get a Civics Lesson Tomorrow

  Here we are, one full decade -- 10 years, count 'em, one-10th of a century -- into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and City Of Dallas's Trinity River Corridor Project, and tomorrow the city council's Trinity River Corridor Project Committee has a briefing scheduled that I would summarize as, "The Corps of Engineers: Just What in the Hell Is That Thing, Anyway?"Ah, well. Better late than never.The briefing, scheduled for 11 a.m. in Room 6ES of City Hall, is actually titled "Overview of United St

  February 16, 2009

• Somewhere, Jim Schutze is Off Doing a Happy Dance

  Sam MertenMayor Tom Leppert and Kevin Craig of the U.S. Army Corps of EngineersMayor Tom Leppert reluctantly addressed local media this afternoon regarding City Manager Mary Suhm's earlier announcement that the Trinity River levees will be rated "unacceptable" in 34 of 170 areas by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in advance of a March 31 deadline. He stressed that safety remains the city's No. 1 priority, and the Trinity River Corridor Project remains on track. Following the flooding in New O

  February 24, 2009

• Corps of Engineers' Yogi Berra, "This Project Isn't Going to End Until It's Completed."

  Courtesy the City of DallasThe Pantanal arriving in Houston with the first shipment of steel for the Margaret Hunt Hill BridgeJudy Schmidt at Dallas City Hall forwards along the following message from Mayor Tom Leppert: Till he hears otherwise, Santiago Calatrava's Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge is gettin' built, so there. You will find after the jump the entirety of the city's media release announcing that the feds have extended the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 404 Permit for another four years, whi

  March 20, 2009

• More from the Corps: Or, Why You'll Now Think Twice About Driving I-35 Over River

  Photos from the Corps' Trinity River report. You may wanna think twice about driving Stemmons over the Trinity.OK, so after the jump you'll find all the appendices from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Trinity River Floodway Report -- including all the photos and maps and cost breakdowns ("breakdown" being the operative word) you'll ever need. But below is the letter the Corps sent to the city yesterday, in which the Corps pretty much yanks its 2006 okee-doke. Jim and Sam will have much more sho

  April 1, 2009

• Enter Sand, Man

  From Page 43 of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Trinity floodway reportAstute Friend of Unfair Park "Wylie H." drilled into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' report on the Trinity River levees yesterday evening and found the real horror story that goes almost unmentioned in this morning's Dallas Morning News account of the report: the story of the day we almost lost the Margaret Hunt Hill Calatrava signature make-believe suspension bridge.Do you know that most city council members haven't even

  April 2, 2009

• Getting to No | Eat Less Live Longer

  February 26, 2009

• Has John McCain Abandoned His Fellow Veterans?

  October 23, 2008

• The New Face of Evil

  Call of Duty 4 might hit a little too close to home

  November 22, 2007

• Food Fantastico

  February 16, 2006

• "Babe, I leave this for you"

  Seven years after her police-officer husband died in the line of duty, Lydia Galvan clings to his memory -- any way she can

  March 23, 2000

• Nostalgia Trip

  Steven Soderbergh tries, and largely fails, to make 'em like they used to

  December 21, 2006

• Woe Is They

  Conservatives need not apply

  May 24, 2007

• Patriot Acts

  Far from his Kurdish home, Adnan Kirkuki seeks out soldiers to defend his new one in the United States

  March 1, 2007

• Ride the Legend

  The World's Fastest Indian is powered by Anthony Hopkins

  February 2, 2006

• Virtual Quagmire

  The Army's realistic first-person shooter bogs down under fire

  December 15, 2005

• Killing Time

  In the profound Jarhead, a soldier can be his own worst enemy

  November 3, 2005

• G.I. Jerk

  Phil Haberman claims he fought with special forces in Iraq, but he's about as real as Rambo

  September 1, 2005

• The Shootist

  Terry Anderson thought he'd be in Athens right now, chasing his lifelong dream of Olympic gold. Instead, he's in prison, his life plugged full of holes.

  August 19, 2004

• Free Thinkers

  Moral lessons get electrified

  September 4, 2003

• The Gulf Between

  When these soldiers became writers, the pen turned into a very mighty weapon

  April 17, 2003

• Toy Soldiers

  Computer game designers in Bedford re-create the greatest generation online

  April 10, 2003

• Pitching Woo

  There's a lot to love about Nicolas Cage in the WWII melodrama Windtalkers

  June 13, 2002

• Out of Their League

  Want to have some fun playing soccer? Stay out of Plano, kid.

  October 5, 2000

• New Model Army

  Can the big-brain boys of the defense community change the way America fights?

  September 28, 2000

• Unlucky strike

  Less than two years after Billie Bob Harrell Jr. took the $31 million lottery jackpot, he took his own life

  February 10, 2000

• Fly joys

  The Magic of Flight on the big screen

  September 23, 1999

• Corps Approved Bridge Without Geotechnical Data, Still Trying to Solve Sand Mystery

  Sam MertenKevin Craig of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flanks Mayor Tom Leppert as he tells the press about the levees' "unacceptable" ratings.After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its report on the city's levees, we were baffled to learn that construction on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge would continue, especially since drilling a concrete pier for the bridge into the floodway resulted in the troubling discovery of sand and the botched installation of the pier. So we asked Kevin

  May 5, 2009

• Yeah, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, What'd a Tree Near a Levee Ever Do To You?

  One week ago today, city officials were cautioning the council not to worry -- Dallas ain't about to spend $3 million to reduce 2,800 trees along the Trinity River to firewood just because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says so. But this isn't just a Dallas issue: Friend of the show Bethany Anderson directs our attention this morning to this Associated Press nationwide survey of levee projects that counts a grand total of 100,000 trees to get the chainsaw adios per Corps orders to "chop down e

  June 10, 2009

• Pretty Sure I Saw the Dallas Tornado Play the Cleburne Quake at Cobb Stadium Once

  Brian Stump, the Albritton Professor of Geological Sciences in SMU's Dedman College and part of the team set to study the recent Cleburne quakes, wants you to calm the eff down. Seriously. It's all right. Nothing to worry about. It's nature, for God's sakes. Right, Prof. Stump?The recent earthquakes that have occurred near Dallas-Fort Worth and Cleburne are not unexpected: They illustrate the earth's natural dynamic nature. Rocks in the earth's crust store energy that is relieved when faults sli

  June 11, 2009

• Who knew sand flowed under the Trinity? Everybody but the folks building bridges there.

  June 11, 2009

• Lunching with History

  August 6, 2009

• The Remarkable Life of "Tex" Biard, North Dallas High Grad and WWII Codebreaker

  Forrest "Tex" Biard​There is one rather remarkable item in this morning's Metro section: Among the paid-for obituaries is a notice that retired U.S. Navy Captain Forrest R. Biard died Tuesday at the age of 96. A Bonham native and North Dallas High School grad in 1930 (he is, in fact, a recipient of its Distinguished Alumni Award), Biard left the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934, graduating 11th in his class, and landed at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo -- where, according to his family, he studied "Japan

  November 8, 2009

• In the Washington Post, a Tribute to a Dallas WWII Vet Seeking Only Recognition for Others

  ​I've learned quite a bit about Ed Malouf this morning -- like the fact that all nine of his children with wife Marie, and three of their 23 grandchildren, went to Bishop Lynch, where Ed is said to have literally built the field house with his bare hands while Marie taught theology and worked as a school counselor. (Their children established a trust fund in their folks' names at the school, as well.) And I've discovered that Ed, now 84, spends much of his free time trying to get members of Co

  November 11, 2009