If you’re a poor parent (i.e. your annual household income is in the bottom quarter of earners, or south of $27,200), and want your child to have a realistic shot at upward mobility, a recently published Harvard study offers a sure-fire way to boost the kid’s chances: get the hell…
The U.S. Supreme Court, depending on the relative weight Justice Anthony Kennedy gives to the dignity of same-sex couples versus the millennia man-woman marriage has supposedly remained unchanged, may very well make gay marriage legal in all 50 states. That means that every state and local government, down to the…
Pretty soon, it will probably be legal in Texas to carry a gun openly on one’s hip. It also seems likely that carrying guns will become legal on Texas’ college campuses. This is because the Legislature, meeting right now in its biennial effort to address the state’s most pressing public…
What happens when the city of Dallas takes a small-time custom-home developer, one with little or no track record building publicly subsidized multifamily projects, and gives him millions of dollars to build a large affordable housing project for veterans? And then, as it becomes clear that said developer may not…
It was just after sunset on March 11, and Rabbi Yaakov Rich was leading the men of Congregation Toras Chaim in a study of the Talmud, as is their ritual. They gather here every evening, shoulder to shoulder in white plastic folding chairs, heads bowed over the text, contemplating the…
Richardson is supposed to be an orderly place, where a citizen can settle into a comfortable existence, which includes twice-weekly trash pickup and all the plastic grocery bags one can carry, and gaze dismissively down Central Expressway to the shit-show at Dallas City Hall while thinking, Not here. And so…
Though no court has fully adjudicated the matter, it’s safe to say that Dr. James Angelo Summa is guilty of doing something creepy. To wit, in the fall of 2013, the Dallas radiologist was caught surreptitiously photographing cheerleaders at a Mesquite High School football game. Summa was arrested by Mesquite…
Christin Bates is an anomaly. She is the only woman in her doctoral program at Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative institution in a field — evangelical Christian scholarship — that is slightly more progressive on gender equality than 17th century Massachusetts. When she completes her dissertation in five years or…
Texas lawmakers are chewing over several civil-forfeiture reform bills, ranging from the weak (allowing police departments to use forfeiture money to fund scholarships for children of officers killed in the line of duty) to the strong (Representative David “God made weed” Simpson’s to do away with civil forfeiture entirely. As…
Recall last month when it came to light that, whoops, Dallas police had reissued the guns used in not one but two officer-involved shootings, despite the fact that the guns were material evidence important to the felony cases against the two cops, Amy Wilburn and Cardan Spencer, as well as…
The 9-foot-tall brick wall that runs along the southern boundary of the Highlands of McKamy subdivision in Far North Dallas offers many benefits to residents of Rocky Top Circle. It shields their homes from traffic along McCallum Road to the south, keeps out critters that prowl the unused Cotton Belt…
Back in February the Austin American-Statesman published a great investigation on so-called Brady lists. These are records kept by prosecutors identifying local police officers with credibility issues that are sometimes so severe that they the DA’s office will no longer accept cases from them or allow them to testify in…
At this late date, exactly where the idea for the Trinity toll road sprang from, and how it metastasized from a pleasant country lane into a beauty-killing concrete monstrosity, is a moot point. The project long ago developed its own queer logic and momentum and became, in a way, untethered…
When the FBI announced in November that it had taken down a Pleasant Grove drug ring, it buried the lede. Yes, the vague allegations of kidnapping and gave the story a bit more juice than the bust of a typical alligator-less street-level drug ring, and casually pointing out that one…
Since Texas lawmakers considered, but failed to pass, a measure requiring warrants for obtaining cell-phone location data in 2013, has been a major shift has occurred in public discourse over electronic privacy, thanks to disclosures, by Edward Snowden and others, of widespread government surveillance. The bill, by Representative Bryan Hughes,…
Ben Sandifer isn’t the Great Trinity Forest’s only guardian angel. A small but dedicated contingent of amateur naturalists and environmentalists have devoted themselves to exploring and preserving the thousands of acres of wildlands that follow the Trinity River through southern Dallas. But Sandifer is their leader, and he has emerged…
While Congregation Toras Chaim fights the city of Dallas for the right to operate out of a Far North Dallas house — and thus to continue existing — another peculiar legal tussle over the rites of Orthodox Judaism is playing out directly across the street. Last October, the residents of…
Somewhere along a Dallas highway is an eye-catching, emerald-tinted billboard for Breitling Energy. It features an oil derrick and an expanse of sky emblazoned with the legend “American Oil from American Soil.” It always seemed odd that a local fracking concern would be spending money directly on a billboard campaign…
Early last month, a few weeks after members Congregation Toras Chaim partook of a dessert reception to celebrate their victory in a lengthy court battle with the Highlands of McKamy Homeowners Association, Rabbi Yaakov Rich realized the synagogue’s legal tribulation had only begun. On March 3, the city of Dallas,…
In many ways, Dr. Richard Malouf is the very picture of success (See: “On Being Successful”; RichardMalouf.com). Born to Lebanese immigrants, he built a multi-million dollar chain of dental clinics from the ground up. He bought a French chateau on Strait Lane in Preston Hollow and set to work building…
A while back, residents of the idyllic Richardson neighborhoods of Canyon Creek and Prairie Creek filed into the Richardson City Plan Commission meeting to voice their objections to the Palisades, at the time a 750-unit apartment tower/mixed-use development planned for an empty plot of land along Central Expressway. At the…
At the end of 2013, there were just over 76,600 Texans living with HIV, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That’s a lot. A decade ago, the figure was about 50,000. Texas ranks fourth among states in total HIV cases and 11th in HIV cases per capita,…
