If you could make it through the interminable hours of debate regarding the virtues of video boards; the dire necessity of liquoring up establishments zoned dry; and what sounded like a monolithic Oak Lawn apartment building, something interesting did in fact transpire during a Plan Commission meeting: a zoning request…
For more than two weeks, three young people arrested on misdemeanor charges have remained in a Smith County jail, unable to bond about because a judge set bail at $65,000. They stand accused of misdemeanor criminal trespassing, resisting arrest and illegal dumping. But the unusually high bond amounts are entirely…
As we reported earlier, newly elected state Representative Jason Villalba announced his intention to file legislation allowing Texas school districts to arm trained faculty and staff members. “School marshals,” I think he calls them. In case you were wondering whether we might see ol’ Coach prowling the halls of a…
More than three years ago, a woman Dallas police will not identify for her safety returned to her home on Frio Drive in South Dallas. A 36-year-old man named Hashim Anderson was there when she went to bed. At around 12:15 a.m., she jolted awake to “knocking noises and dogs…
Two days after a Nacogdoches County man won a temporary restraining order against TransCanada, halting construction of the controversial, 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline across his land, the judge threw it out, citing a dearth of evidence indicating the company had defrauded him. County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz said…
Nacogdoches County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz issued a temporary restraining order against TransCanada Tuesday, preventing the company from continuing construction of the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline crossing Mike Bishop’s land. I met Bishop a few weeks ago at his place in Douglass, a tiny…
An independent review of the University of Texas study that famously declared fracking could not be tied to groundwater contamination has recommended that the school retract it. The well-publicized report released earlier this year by the Energy Institute, “Fact-based Regulation for Environmental Protection in Shale Gas Development,” purported to bring…
Last winter was a godsend. After surviving the driest year in Texas history, we got one of the wettest winters on record. Since April, though, North Texas has been racking up rain deficits, according to the National Weather Service’s winter outlook. October was drier than usual, and November saw virtually…
Governor Rick Perry vows that the Medicaid expansion prescribed under Obamacare won’t come to Texas, the state with the highest rate of uninsured in the country. He fears it would render Lone Star State health care a mere “appendage” of the federal government. The feds, of course, would pick up…
Last summer, as the Dallas City Council was briefed on the ins and outs of bringing heavy, industrial processes into a densely populated, urban area, industry boosters like Ed Ireland of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council assured council members we would know in virtually all cases what was being…
Earlier this month, I wrote a cover story so bizarre, I had to periodically check official documents just to be sure I had not wandered into the realm of magical realism. Yes, in fact, a sacred white buffalo was born to a Greenville rancher named Arby Little Soldier during a…
We’ve had it good, no doubt about it. Ever since the drought of the ’50s, when Dallas water planners set forth, constructing and acquiring the rights to reservoirs that would feed the city’s growth for the coming decades, we haven’t had to worry. Even as Lake Travis contracted to a…
Once again, the Railroad Commission of Texas’ raison d’être has been evaluated by a commission comprising state legislators and two regular citizens. Once again, it was given a reprieve from being abolished, given the gang-busting pace of oil and gas development over the last several years. But not without a…
Pop culture and music writer Dan Solomon, who until recently contributed to CultureMap’s Austin and Houston sites, says his byline is no longer welcome at the digital-media venture. Apparently, corporate didn’t take too kindly to this post on his personal blog, critical of CultureMap Dallas managing editor Claire St. Amant’s…
Just after midnight on Saturday, an employee of an apartment complex off of Bonnie View Road, not far from Paul Quinn College, was sitting in his car when saw a man in a gray hoodie shooting in the direction of a nearby creek. The man was screaming: “That was my…
Now that one of the largest oil and natural gas producers in the world is behind the carbon tax, is it finally an idea whose time has come? For the record, White House spokesman Jay Carney says President Barack Obama has exactly zero interest in proposing one. But Irving-based ExxonMobil…
When Dr. Sean Morrison and a handful of researchers at UT Southwestern placed two lists side by side, it was as if the air had been pulled from the room. On one list were patients being treated for melanoma — skin cancer — and patients who had died from it…
On this Election Day, I pause to consider Representative Ralph Hall, the man from Fate, Texas. Not long after he is re-elected — and he will be re-elected — he will turn 90. Why am I so confident? Because Hall is, if nothing else, a survivor after more than 30…
Today, from the annals of meaningless, social-media ephemera, we’d like to direct you to the bitchy little TwitterFight between Mark Cuban and Donald Trump. It is, we assure you, the kind of TwitterFight that can only exist between insanely wealthy, Type-A megalomaniacs. No matter how far removed some of these…
Today, in The State of American Discourse, I present to you David Barton, religious ideologue, fantastical historian and weeping boil on the hide of Texas. No, he is not an entirely fringe crank. Barton is the former vice chair of the Texas Republican Party. He recently helped draft the ridiculous…
In this week’s edition, the cover story chronicles the short life and ambiguous death of Lightning Medicine Cloud, the rare white buffalo born to Hunt County rancher Arby Little Soldier. To the Lakota Oyate, the animal was prophecy, heralding the return of the prophet White Buffalo Calf Woman, and a…
Long ago, a holy woman came to the Lakota Oyate in the Black Hills. She gave them a sacred pipe, and she taught them how to live, how to pray, how to honor the pipe, and through it, how to become a living prayer. And when they learned everything she…
