Newly minted Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, conveniently oblivious to the mountains of scientific evidence that people are slowly but surely turning the planet into a scorching greenhouse, isn’t sure if he believes in climate change. But he’s damn sure about the best way to address it. “I’ll leave it in…
On January 14, vice cops fanned out across East Dallas and descended on a half dozen aging storefronts in crappy, low-rent strip centers: one off Columbia Avenue a mile east of Deep Ellum, another where Garland Road transitions from isn’t-it-nice-to-be-near-White-Rock-Lake! to all-beauty-has-been-extinguished-from-the-world, the rest along Ferguson Road. Later, they visited…
When Alexis de Tocqueville penned his meditation on the American prison system in the 1830s, the country’s experiment in solitary confinement was a half century old, begun in 1786 by pacifistic Pennsylvania Quakers as an alternative to execution. As the Frenchman noted, it hadn’t worked: Nowhere was this system of…
Rabbi Yaakov Rich wasn’t trying to initiate a battle for religious liberty when he moved his living-room synagogue into the Highlands of McKamy neighborhood in Far North Dallas; he was simply trying to fulfill the spiritual needs of his tiny flock while keeping them from having to walk a half-marathon…
If you were going to buy steroids online, Trusted Anabolic Solutions seems like a pretty good bet. According to online reviews, TAS offered a good product, discreet packaging, and fantastic customer service from someone going by “Big H.” Then, a few weeks ago, something went awry. On Muscle Gurus, jilted…
On Wednesday morning Connor, my 5-year-old, shot up in bed with panic on his face. DID THEY ALREADY BLOW UP THE BUILDING? He’d been wanting to know this since the previous weekend when, as we drove past the hollowed-out skeleton of the ACS building on Central Expressway, I told him…
Remember, back a few years ago, when Craig Watkins’ reputation as a crusading do-gooder district attorney was still relatively intact? When he could credibly present himself — on The Colbert Report for example — as someone helping to restore public faith in the criminal justice system? In case you needed…
The two cases of Bud Light in the bed of John Werthing Jr.’s, pickup were still cold when Hutchins police pulled him over around 8 a.m. on September 30, 2013. A clerk at a Shell gas station had called in a shoplifting complaint a few moments before; a man matching…
By the ordinary laws of Internet fame, the universe should have long ago forgotten Teddy Bear the talking porcupine. It’s been three years his emergence as a viral celebrity, roughly 8.6 billion years in Internet time. Adorable though he may be, with his vaguely anthropomorphic squeaks and amusing dietary quirks,…
Two years ago the Texas Legislature slipped into the state budget an item mandating a thorough review of certain civil forfeiture proceedings. Civil forfeiture — the process state and federal prosecutors use to seize property from suspected criminals, whether they’ve been convicted or not — is a source of perpetual…
Bobcats almost certainly won’t eat your children; humans, even tiny ones, are too large and awful-tasting. Bobcats probably won’t eat your dog, unless your dog is a free-ranging tea-cup chihuahua that — let’s be honest — totally had it coming. They will eat your backyard chickens in a heartbeat, so…
Edgar Diaz’s life had all the trappings of the quintessential American success story. After fleeing his native Colombia in a harrowing escape from leftist guerillas in 2001, he and his wife settled in Dallas with little money and less English. With a diligence and entrepreneurial spirit that would do Horatio…
Somehow Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins managed to escape the cameras on his way to his municipal court hearing this afternoon. By the time they arrived — one from the Morning News, one from one of the TV stations — he was seated with his attorney in the front…
From its beginning last fall, the narrative of the Great Highland Park Book Ban — and I think all spectators can agree that it’s been great — has been about sex. This is understandable. Almost all great book-ban fights are about sex — about when kids should be exposed to…
During the middle part of the 20th century, the U.S. Air Force cataloged 12,618 UFO sightings. It was part of a program, Project Blue Book, that aspired to subject the reports to scientific analysis to see if UFOs posed a threat to national security. In retrospect, such an endeavor seems…
If there were ever any doubt that the people of Arlington are endowed with an uncommon love of freedom and liberty, it will be put to rest at 4 p.m. this afternoon. That’s when activists will deliver a petition to City Hall, signed by 11,402 Arlingtonians, calling for the abolition…
On Tuesday, Toyota will break ground on its new North American headquarters in Plano. Toyota North America CEO Jim Lentz is celebrating the launch of the project by pretending that Texas’ outsize corporate incentives had no influence on the company’s relocation. In an interview at the North American International Auto…
Everyone in Dallas drives around with a mental map showing the contours of local traffic enforcement. It shows the places where cops with itchy ticket-fingers treat minor driving infractions as tantamount to high treason and, conversely, those spots where they are too busy catching murderers or snacking on doughnuts (depending…
One night in early March, Anita Connally was at home in Waxahachie, watching the 10 o’clock news, when a story struck her cold. Troy Causey, a standout basketball player at Wilmer-Hutchins High School, had been beaten to death in front of his house in Southeast Oak Cliff. Motive was anyone’s…
By the time Homo sapiens had made it across the narrow strip of land then linking Asia and North America and started inching their way south, the mountains that had once dominated the Dallas landscape were a geologic footnote. Thrust upwards hundreds of millions years before by tectonic collisions, they’d…
Let’s set aside for a moment the niceties of due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty and take Dallas police at their word. We’ll take without further cross-examination the claim that they conducted a five-month investigation of Eternal Eden, a regular, all-night rave at Northwest Dallas’ Jaguars strip club, and that undercover officers…
Anyone foolish enough to expect that his move to Junius Heights would quiet neighborhood gadfly Avi Adelman was sorely mistaken. Lower Greenville’s longtime Barking Dog has merely shifted his territory about a mile to the southwest, which is how he wound up at Ross and Haskell avenues last Monday. Adelman…
