Two deaths will be answered for in a trial only intended to account for one. See also: – Imaginary Monsters Chased Jonny Holden All His Life, Then a Real One Caught Him First, starting Monday, Steven Lawayne Nelson, a deeply troubled 25-year-old, will be tried for the murder of Clinton…
Fracking is finally getting the Hollywood treatment. Promised Land, an anti-fracking film conceptualized by The Office’s John Krasinski, co-written by Dave Eggers, starring Matt Damon and Hal Holbrook, and directed by Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting), is set in a hard-luck Pennsylvania farming town. Damon must win hearts…
This much we can tell you about the man suspected of robbing Chase Bank and Northern Trust Bank downtown Monday, just before noon: He’s around 25 years old; stands 5-foot-7 to 6 feet tall; wears a goatee that must be so wispy it doesn’t even register in the surveillance photos…
Jonny Holden would need his sister always, even at the moment he was born in a Houston hospital when she was only 11. His translucent newborn’s skin glowed a livid red. His tiny legs worked spasmodically. His body recoiled as his blood metabolized the last of the opiates he had…
Anybody who is at all familiar with the Texas Railroad Commission won’t be surprised to learn that the almighty oil and gas regulator isn’t exactly aggressive in its enforcement of the rules. The highly political commission’s contradictory charges are to promote oil and gas development while holding the developers accountable…
We haven’t checked in on our favorite congressman, Representative Ralph Hall (R-Antediluvian Era) lately. Not since he dove from a functioning aircraft dressed in nothing but a form-fitting American flag. Turns out, he’s been rummaging through a dusty, cobwebbed steamer trunk stuffed with contraceptives and religious freedom, the war on…
Nearly half a million dollars seized by the FBI during its investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price are headed for civil forfeiture proceedings over the protestations of Price and his top aide, Dapheny Fain. Both say the thick stacks of $100 bills — confiscated from a safe in…
Some six million Texans are one health emergency away from financial ruin, and the state of affairs in Dallas County isn’t any better. Nearly 30 percent of its residents are uninsured. That’s 672,681 of our neighbors whom the health insurance markets have excluded, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau…
Every year, the wealth fetishists over at Forbes compile an exhaustive list of the 400 richest Americans. It’s a rarefied club, whose admittance requires an aggregate worth in the billions. Not surprisingly, a number of Dallasites made the cut — 16 in fact. They range from oldies-but-goodies like Ross Perot,…
A six-year court battle waged by the feds against an ExxonMobil policy mandating the retirement of all corporate pilots at the age of 60 was dealt its second defeat in a Dallas federal court. The challenge, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, characterized the policy as ageist and in…
A Grapevine ad agency is accusing WFAA of throwing its weight around and scuttling a relationship with its biggest client. Ann Page-Cahill of AP Commnications filed suit against WFAA’s parent company, Belo Corp. and her former client, Baylor Health Care system in district court Tuesday, claiming Baylor cut her firm…
A case out of Marshall, reported today by Courthouse News, is truly the Bermuda Triangle for moral compasses. Janna Ardoin brought Chester, her Chinese Pug, into Patchwork Pet Resort and Veterinary Clinic with his eyeball dangling from its socket, attached by the merest of threads. She had three choices: Pay…
Chesapeake Energy, the country’s second-largest producer of natural gas, has been hit with a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of violating royalty agreements with landowners in Tarrant and Johnson counties. As you may recall, an identical suit was brought in July by a family of Johnson County landowners who claim…
We put photos of his tattoos up on this blog — a rat in a top hat, smoking a cigarette; a grinning shark; a winged heart bearing the name “Lena.” They were the only identifying features police found on a body that had been burned, dismembered, and abandoned near railroad…
Three protesters tied themselves to logging equipment clearing trees for the southern portion of the Keystone pipeline early Wednesday morning. A representative of the group, which calls itself the Tar Sands Blockade, says work on the East Texas site is currently halted. “A caravan of between seven and nine vehicles…
Does Texas’ biggest electricity generator, Dallas-based Luminant, just have one hell of a poker face, or should we not read too much into Friday’s announcement that it will idle two units at its Monticello plant for six months? If you’ll recall, the company threatened to idle the units last summer,…
It was a question the legal system had never faced before: If the state pays a man millions of dollars for locking him up for a crime he didn’t commit, does the wife he left behind get a piece of that? There was no need for an answer before the…
When a farm animal comes to Bob Williams, it is dying of extreme neglect or violent abuse. Slowly, and through the beneficence of local veterinarians, foster families who offer up their pastures and the intensive care of Williams and his staff at Ranch Hand Rescue in Argyle, horses and llamas,…
Dr. Meenakshi Prabhakar, an infectious disease specialist, probably wishes August would hurry up and end already. Earlier this month, we wrote about Prabhakar’s receptionist, who sued the doctor for allegedly forcing her to get an abortion. Why? Tough to say. But someone from Prabhakar’s office told us it was a…
A Parker County man who can ignite a 2-foot flame with gas siphoned from his well water won’t get relief in a state appeals court under a law intended to stifle abusive litigation. Steve Lipsky says natural-gas producer Range Resources contaminated his water well with its nearby fracking operations. Range…
Texas isn’t really a red state anymore. It just doesn’t know it yet. The Hispanic population nationwide grew from 35 million to 50 million over the last decade or so, and 20 percent of that growth was in Texas. Meanwhile, the white bloc that does all the electing around here…
Ten ICE agents, including one from the Dallas office, are suing ICE and Homeland Security in a Dallas federal court over a directive from President Barack Obama that would defer in some cases the deportation of undocumented immigrants brought here as children. Dallas enforcement and removal officer David A. Engle…
