The summer of 2011 will go down as one of the hottest, driest years on record. Heat drove Texans to their thermostats and the electric grid to the brink of rolling blackouts. Tuesday, with those unbelievable temperatures in mind, grid managers convened to discuss whether they should raise the target…
Late Saturday night, a jury arrived at the unanimous conclusion that George Zimmerman had not committed an act of murder when he shot an unarmed teen named Trayvon Martin. As Jim Schutze noted earlier, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which allows for the use of deadly force without the retreat…
A few years ago, in a case fracking opponents believed was the smoking gun they’d been waiting for, the Texas Railroad Commission sided with the industry. It said that Parker County homeowner Steve Lipsky’s gaseous and incredibly flammable water well was a product of naturally occurring, biogenic methane originating in…
If the Keystone XL revelations have demonstrated anything, it’s that the people and companies revolving around the proposed continent-straddling mega-pipeline form an incestuous, revolving-door miasma, powering a conflict of interest-generating engine. We learned Wednesday from environmental network Friends of the Earth that the firm conducting the pipeline environmental impact study…
A procession of Texas Parks and Wildlife trucks pulled slowly past Sharon Anderton’s home in southern Hunt County not long after daybreak. They carried ATVs and pulled short trailers that, for now at least, were empty. As Anderton caught the scene on video, a child could be heard in the…
Grand Park, Frisco’s planned $23-million, 275-acre paradise of the outer-ring ‘burbs, will probably be contaminated with lead, and staffers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality know it, according to documents and emails obtained by Frisco Unleaded. As we’ve reported before, the park’s lake and water features will be fed…
Expert Global Solutions. It’s got one of those corporate-speak, nonsense names just nebulous enough to defy Yellow-Pages categorization. But it is, among many other things, a debt collector — the biggest around, in fact — and it’s headquartered in Plano, where the Federal Trade Commission says it has been harassing…
Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, Texas’ largest power generator and utility, is getting its books scrutinized by state mining regulators. The Railroad Commission of Texas is apparently worried that if the company goes bankrupt, which analysts expect it may, it could jeopardize more than a billion dollars in bonds the company…
Senator Wendy Davis stood beneath the dome for 11 hours in Mizuno sneakers (and, quite possibly, adult diapers) filibustering abortion legislation that could have shuttered all but a handful of providers. At one point nearly 200,000 tuned into watch, until three rather sketchy points of order brought brought her marathon…
Penny Terk, 73, was a former actress who’d become the toast of book review clubs across Dallas. In a few weeks, she was set to host her annual Summertime Showcase, a conclave for book club leaders and speakers, where “a LIMITED number of rectangular vending tables must be reserved in…
Updated at 5:46 p.m.: WFAA is reporting that Ricky Don McCommas, the assault rifle-wielding man involved in a shootout at a parking lot outside of Granbury City Hall, had been charged with the alleged rape of his niece. He’d missed a court appearance Friday morning, and instead came to Granbury…
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 Stanton Stephens. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. Dutiful young men whipped through Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck, the rotating restaurant at the tip of…
On the same day a grand jury handed down indictments accusing former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife, Kim, of capital murder, she filed for divorce. According to a petition filed Thursday in district court, Kim Lene Williams is seeking to end her 17-year marriage,…
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 Stanton Stephens. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. There’s a delicate choreography in the way they move through the cramped kitchen in the back of…
Last night, Senator Wendy Davis’ epic filibuster against an antediluvian piece of abortion legislation was ended because Roe v. Wade apparently isn’t “germane.” So, the “unruly mob” up in the gallery finished the job for her. The votes could not be counted in the din before the special session ended…
Ever heard the quotation, “Past is prologue”? The U.S. Supreme Court apparently hasn’t, and its ruling Tuesday on the Voting Rights Act virtually assured that we’re doomed to repeat history. In an incredible sweep, the majority chucked the nearly unanimous, bipartisan will of Congress and dismantled the preclearance measure of…
Twinkie is risen from the ashes of its liquidated parent, Hostess, and will visit the shelves of grocery stores and gas stations once more on July 15. That means Ho Hos and Ding Dongs will return in what its new owners have dubbed “The Sweetest Comeback in the History of…
Some 285 miles above the Earth’s surface, a pair of NASA satellites can measure changes in groundwater levels at river-basin scale. And what they’re telling us about Texas and much of the South is disturbing. The satellites are identifying hot spots that blanket East Texas and much of the Panhandle,…
The Glenn Beck media empire won’t be paying rent in Irving anymore. Mercury Radio Arts, Beck’s “news, opinion and entertainment network,” announced Wednesday afternoon its purchase of the Studios at Las Colinas, which has served as home base for The Blaze and his Glenn Beck show since 2012. Lest we…
It’s been more than a year since a task force sent the Dallas City Council its recommendations for retooling the city’s gas drilling ordinance. But the first step toward updating city code will finally be taken at the Plan Commission. The city attorney’s office will brief commissioners at this Thursday’s…
In case you missed it, Gov. Rick Perry used his veto Friday to override the bipartisan will of the legislature, which sought to inject the most meager, almost universally agreeable ethics reform into the state oil and gas regulator. They attempted to do this because the Railroad Commission of Texas…
A bigwig at NRG, Texas’ second-most prolific electricity generator, took to the editorial page of the Houston Chronicle the other day, and the result was remarkable — a tacit admission from one of the sector’s biggest players that deregulation simply does not work. As we noted recently, Texas’ power grid…
