Megan Margolies, a local burlesque performer, hairdresser at Halo Salon, and beloved member of the Deep Ellum music and art scene, died on Tuesday in a traffic collision, when a scooter she was test-driving on Abrams Road collided with a tractor trailer. She was 23. The Margolies family was unavailable…
In this last legislative session, the one that turned out to be pretty terrible for both abortion providers and family planning clinics, Arlington state Representative Bill Zedler had a dream. That dream, as we told you about at the time, was to require women and their doctors fill out and…
When she was 15, Courtney Underwood was raped by her pastor. She’d grown up in Highland Park, attended a religious private school and had no idea how to talk about what had happened to her or ask for help. It took her two years to discuss the rape at all,…
Yesterday, Frontburner broke a bit of news: Mike Precker, who famously went from being a veteran Dallas Morning News reporter to the day manager and PR guy for uber-classy strip club The Lodge, has been fired. Precker spent five years working at the club after taking the buyout from the…
By 7:15 on Thursday night, women were already crying. By 7:30, a few were speaking in tongues, their arms raised heavenward, or kneeling in the chilly concrete aisles of the Dallas Convention Center’s Area Hall C. Onstage, a muscular, clean-cut guy with sandy hair and a black V-neck T-shirt strummed…
Think of it this way: it’s like Synn Evans just won Miss America, if Miss America contestants wore leather pants as formal wear and were required to describe a detailed sexual fantasy for a panel of judges. “Oh my god,” Evans said the other morning, calling from her Dallas home…
Movie theaters of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, do you never cease toying with the affections of local atheists? First it was Movie Tavern that backed out of showing the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason’s ad proclaiming their families are “Great Without Religion.” Now it’s the Angelika, which said just two…
For the past few days, several corners of the Internet have been all a-flutter over a recent piece on Forbes.com by a man named Ryan Holiday, who describes himself as a “strategist for big authors and big brands.” Holiday apparently had tried to arrange a donation of $500,000 from one…
Last week, the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason really wanted to run some ads about atheism . They put up some billboards along Interstate 30, but a planned advertisement at the Arlington location of Movie Tavern was rejected at the last minute. American Atheists president Dave Silverman was pretty steamed…
The storms have moved on, but chaos is hanging around for another day: According to Oncor, some 4,000 people are still without power across the ‘plex. NBCDFW reports that about 300 homes were damaged or destroyed in Lancaster, while an AP report from this morning says there were another 650…
Last week we told you about Cat Lafitte, the police officer fired for getting into a brawl with a Plano hospital orderly and bragging about it on Facebook. Lafitte filed a complaint with the city’s Ethics Advisory Commission, alleging that her superiors had created a hostile work environment and then…
The City Council’s getting briefed this week on “community policing,” the Dallas Police Department’s ongoing effort to get residents involved in preventing crime in their neighborhoods. This last came up in December, when Chief David Brown and McGruff the Crime Dog came to visit council members and enthusiastically high-five Scott…
Last week we told you about the Dallas Fort-Worth Coalition of Reason’s tiff with Movie Tavern. Once more, briefly: DFWCoR signed a contract to pay Movie Tavern three grand to show a pro-atheism ad as part of the coalition’s new campaign, “Our Families Are Great Without Religion.” But Movie Tavern…
On Monday, we told you the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had published a broad investigation concluding that hundreds of school districts, including Dallas Independent School District, displayed “troubling test patterns” that could indicate widespread cheating. That day, DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander said the district had been aggressively investigating suspicious test activity for…
We keep hammering away at this same general point, but really: It’s been a terrible year for family planning providers in Texas. First the Legislature moved $73.6 million out of the state family-planning budget for the next two years . At the same time, they changed to a tiered funding…
“That’s right,” Cat Lafitte wrote in an email to the Observer about a month ago. “I’m the idiot Facebook cop.” If you don’t remember Cat Lafitte’s name, you may remember her actions: She was one of three police officers fired in June 2011 for violating department policy. Lafitte’s offenses, according…
Just in time for Easter, the irrepressible atheists over at the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason are back. You’ll recall that back in February, the group erected a South Dallas billboard in praise of black free-thinkers. This time around, for a campaign they’ve dubbed “Our Families Are Great Without Religion,”…
The FBI and Friends are at a Mutual of Omaha bank branch this afternoon, after an armed gunman made off with a plastic bag full of loot. The industrious folks at DFW Police Scanner report: An unknown suspect just robbed the Mutual of Omaha Bank at gunpoint. Susp is a…
Before this morning, we had never heard of Reynolds Protection, a Dallas purveyor of bodyguards, or its owner, Chad Reynolds, who judging from his bio photo is roughly the size of a refrigerator. A very bald, imposing refrigerator. But this morning Reynolds Protection sent around a press release announcing the…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a sweeping investigation over the weekend of possible cheating on standardized tests in dozens of school districts across the country, and Dallas Independent School District made an appearance. The AJC examined test results for 69,000 schools in 49 states and found “high concentrations of suspect scores”…
Yesterday I wrote up sort of a half-assed blog post. It was mostly just a short clip of Rick Perry chatting with Steve Doocy from Fox & Friends about the evil feds, the nobility of the 10th Amendment and his overall job satisfaction. At the end of the clip in…
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Rick Perry dropped by Fox News early this morning to let Steve Doocy know just how happy he is to be your governor. In less than five minutes, he also managed to find the time to diss the feds and defend the voter ID…
