Good news first: the kittens have their own room now. Bad news: most of those kittens are still going to die. Every few months, the Animal Shelter Commission gets together for a progress report from shelter manager Jody Jones and director of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin. It’s always a mixture…
At right you see former First Lady Laura Bush, cheerily painting a door at a health clinic in Zambia. The photo was taken earlier this month by a staffer at the Bush Institute, part of the press surrounding the former first couple’s visit to Africa earlier this month. It’s also…
President Barack Obama will be in Texas for approximately five minutes today, attending some fundraisers in San Antonio and Austin. An LGBT Leadership Council event in Austin costs anywhere from $250 to $7,500 to attend, while the Statesman claims another event at the Four Seasons there will cost $25,000 per…
Pleasant Grove grandmother Elizabeth Smith, 45, had a wild hour last night, after a 3 a.m. trip to the corner store to get medicine and food for her grandbaby turned into an attempted kidnapping followed by a high-speed chase. Smith told police that as she was walking back from the…
At the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m. today, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System board of trustees held their monthly meeting. We decided to join them, both due to our love of waking up in what was basically the middle of the night to sit in a conference room,…
Honest to God, we have no idea what’s going to happen at Glenn Beck’s upcoming three-day-long “Restoring Love” rally at Cowboys Stadium. None whatsoever. When Robert Wilonsky first tipped you to the event back in December, he mentioned, per the promo materials, that there would be “music, speakers and fireworks.”…
As Governor Rick Perry vows not to take any of that filthy federal money to expand Medicaid in Texas, state lawmakers may also have to find another $39 million next year to keep the Medicaid Women’s Health Program alive. These days, the WHP has been going through some prolonged death…
What timing. Just as the trial of Texas’ voter ID law kicks off in D.C., a new analysis by the Associated Press has found that such laws in other states have led to hundreds of ballots being rejected, both in 2008’s general election and in the primaries this year. The…
Yesterday afternoon, Beau Chandler and Mark “Major” Jiminez went down to the Dallas County Records building to apply for a marriage license. They were refused, naturally. So they quietly handcuffed themselves together, sat down and refused to leave. When the building closed for the day, they were arrested and taken…
The Dallas Police Department would like you to know they’ve fired one officer and disciplined another, effective immediately, following two disciplinary hearings Thursday morning. The first one is pretty straightforward: Officer Kelly Schumpert was arrested in Forney for DWI in February of this year. An Internal Affairs investigation concluded she…
Erika Perdue, the 41-year-old University Park woman indicted in May for collecting and sharing child pornography, has been kicked out of a rehab facility for attempting suicide, court records show. Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney ordered that Perdue be detained until trial, deeming her a flight risk…
One night in late June three years ago, police and TABC officers entered the Rainbow Lounge, a new gay bar in Fort Worth. By the time they left 40 minutes later, six people had been arrested. A seventh, 26-year-old Chad Gibson, was taken to the hospital with multiple skull fractures…
After only a minimal amount of mind-numbing bureaucratic discussion, Dallas City Council members voted Wednesday afternoon to approve a new ordinance regulating the city’s boarding homes. Set to take effect October 1, the rules apply to around 200 of the cities 300 boarding home facilities, where several thousand people with…
Perhaps you’ve heard by now: the Morning News reports that negotiations “have all but broken down” between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, who own the neighboring Museum Tower, which its critics say is really lighting up the neighborhood. But a statement sent to…
After years of struggle, Dallas may be on its way to regulating the city’s boarding home facilities. Finally. City Council members are set to vote Wednesday on a new ordinance that would require licenses and annual inspections for boarding homes, as well rules aimed at keeping the homes “safe, sanitary…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. State District Judge Teresa Hawthorne had been on the bench for less than a year when she…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. On a cold night in 2009, SMU freshman Monika Korra was kidnapped at gunpoint by three men…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue. In January, Mayor Mike Rawlings held a closed-door meeting with 25 LGBT leaders. It was his way of…
While American Airlines is busy feuding with its unhappy pilots, Southwest Airlines is dealing with the PR fallout from yet another customer who had an unpleasant run-in with the airline’s self-appointed clothing police. A woman who only gave her first name, Avital, told the website Jezebel that she was traveling…
We know the value of things at Unfair Park. We appreciate a fine wine. A beautiful painting. A rare book. That excellent marijuana you had to drive across town and sit in your dealer’s living room for 40 minutes feigning an interest in his girl problems to get. Yeah, we…
Corpus Christi Congressman Blake Farenthold appeared on CNN yesterday to tell Soledad O’Brien that he disapproves of President Obama’s recent executive order, which will keep the Department of Homeland Security from deporting some undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children (for now, anyway.) “The president needs to come to…
Once upon a time in the last legislative session, Arlington state rep Bill Zedler tried and failed to introduce a law requiring a whole slew of new information that abortion-seeking women and their doctors would have to provide to the state. His bill failed, but as we told you a…
