It must be codified somewhere in the Conservative’s Guide to Crisis Management: Ensnared in scandal? Come across like an uninformed buffoon? Or are you a judge whose campaign fliers dispelled any appearance of impartiality in a really important case? Just blame it on the media. Sarah Palin became a journo-castigating…
Former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz was the designated whipping boy at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing this week, though it proceeded in absentia. Armendariz totally blew it off, to the supreme indignation of Chairman Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, and the assembled GOP congressmen. Maybe Armendariz decided…
The ability of a leukemic cell to remain in an immature state, capable of relentlessly propagating, has remained one of the vexing obstacles to the effective treatment of leukemia, particularly acute myeloid leukemia. Rather than maturing, or differentiating, inside the blood-cell forming kitchen of the bone marrow, they grow and…
Voters up in Parker County must not have thought much of district Judge Trey Loftin’s campaign mailers bragging about how his “decision regarding deceptive actions by environmental extremists made the EPA reevaluate its national policy.” That’s pretty grandiose, and it sounded like he was referring to the case of Steve…
All you need to know about U.S. Representative Ralph Hall’s decisive win in the 4th Congressional District Tuesday night is that he went skydiving on Memorial Day. He wore a jumpsuit printed with undulating American flags and fell from the plane, plummeting briefly in free-fall, his arms flapping slightly, like…
Today, the unalloyed, wedge issue-driven, throbbing heart of the Grand Ol’ Party will cast their ballots so that the candidates can stop chest-thumping about who’s the real conservative and start running against Obama because, let’s face it, this is Texas and they don’t really have any one else to attack…
On May 5, the badly burned body of a man was found in a vacant field in far southeast Dallas, not far from the railroad tracks. Pieces of him were missing. The body’s condition made identification difficult, so Dallas police released macabre photos of his tattoos to the press: A…
Politics is politics, and incumbents running for re-election in conservative Parker County, Texas, where the local economy is fueled entirely by shale-gas production, want to look like champions of the industry. But what if you’re a judge? And what if, at the very moment you put up fliers of Rush…
Tricky work deciding who gets the protections of a journalist in court. In the case of a natural gas production company suing a Parker County man who blames it for contaminating his water well, state district Judge Trey Loftin attempted to suss it out in a recent order compelling fracking…
Billy Frederick Allen served 26 years in prison for two drug-related murders in University Park. In February 2009, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin freed him, citing ineffective lawyering and “newly discovered evidence” that gave them “no confidence in the outcome of the trial.” In March 2010, Allen filed…
Cases of pertussis, widely known as whooping cough, are on a “modest” uptick in Dallas County, county health officials say. So far this year, the number of cases is higher than in 2010 and 2011. And with the death of one infant this year, health officials say it’s “very important…
Beleaguered is how you might describe efforts to clean Texas air. Emissions reduction plans — leaning primarily on cutting vehicle exhaust — have been gutted by the state Legislature. But one provision, passed in the last legislative session and sponsored by Woodlands Republican Senator Tommy Williams, promises a seeming panacea…
Super PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability, a bipartisan political organization that claims to have its barrels loaded for both parties, just fired its opening fusillade. It aims to oust two long-serving congressmen in what would otherwise be shoe-in primaries. The targets: One El Paso Democrat and U.S. Representative Ralph Hall…
Take a look outside your window. You’ve probably gotten used to that omnipresent, smoky haze that hangs over the Metroplex like a pall of economic viability — upwind power plants a’chugging; cars snaking down tangles of toll roads and highways; shale gas production amid the cities and ‘burbs slowed but…
Police rolled into the roundabout encircling Kelly Gordon Rogers’ fountain at his sprawling estate in Frisco recently, with warrants charging him with money laundering, securities fraud and aggravated theft in a $2.8 million oil and gas rip-off. The indictments, issued by a Collin County grand jury, provide a laundry list…
Congressman Ralph Hall, the near-nonagenarian, oldest serving member of Congress, who was elected to things five years after World War II ended, just turned 89 years old. What do you give the man who has everything — a powerful committee chair; a devilish sense of humor (he loves Mormons!); and…
Last summer — the state’s hottest and driest on record — brought Texas ranchers to their knees. Rains have revived parts of the state, especially the east. But 50 miles west of Fort Worth and further, the drought varies from severe to exceptional. So, what’s in store for us this…
Stephen Benavides, the Occupy Dallas protester arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer during a scuffle at the November Bank of America protest, has signed a plea deal that reduces the felony to a misdemeanor resisting-arrest charge and keeps him out of jail. Benavides pleaded no contest to the…
Two Dallas high schools — the School for the Talented and Gifted and the School of Science and Engineering Magnet — didn’t just survive the multi-stage culling process U.S. News and World Report used to arrive at a list of the country’s 97 cream-of-the-crop schools. They snagged two of the…
Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher and a gaggle of other titans, from former U.S. Spec Ops commanders to Sam Gilliland, chief executive officer of Dallas-based Sabre Holdings, reject outright the idea that we can drill our way to energy independence. In an Energy Security Leadership Council report unveiled Tuesday at…
The badly burned body of a man in his 20s or 30s was found Saturday in a vacant field at the end of Wixom Lane in far southeast Dallas, not far from a set of railroad tracks. His death is being treated as a homicide, but police haven’t yet identified…
Rep. Ralph Hall finally found his General Services Administration-style confab scandal. No, it doesn’t involve EPA employees playing a blindfolded game of Crucify the Energy Executive during a conference at The Venetian. But it’s the next best thing: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with its heretical climate change studies…
