For decades, doubtless dating back to the advent of home mail delivery, the dog-bites-mailman trope has provided cartoonists and joke writers (and now meme creators) — with an easy source of cheap humor. The U.S. Postal Service, whose employees were the victims of 5,581 dog attacks last year, is not…
The criminal case against Columbia Packing and the Ondruseks, aka the Trinity River pig blood guys, sure seems like it should have been a slam dunk. How could investigators possibly botch a case in which there is literally a trail of blood leading directly to the suspected culprits? By trespassing,…
Superficially, the Republican race for state Representative Dan Branch’s Park Cities/Preston Hollow seat started off positive. Here you had three intelligent, accomplished young professionals politely agreeing with each other on how best to shape Texas’ future. Their few apparent distinguishing features — I’ve been endorsed by LeVar Burton! Holy crap…
A decade ago, the Duncanville Independent School District kicked off the 2003-04 school year by suspending 700 kids for dress code violations. The crackdown made headlines, but the first didn’t appear until late September, more than a month after the district began booting kids from class for infractions as minor…
It’s a shame, really, that D Magazine didn’t continue its morning show experiment. Not because we derived any pleasure from watching D: The Broadcast (we probably wouldn’t have, but never say never) but because it would have been mildly wonderful to watch Wick Allison dance away from yesterday morning’s Michael…
At first glance, the March 23 murder of Wilmer-Hutchins High School basketball standout Troy Causey Jr. was the result of the cruel stupidity of undersupervised teenagers. According to police, Causey and a crosstown rival, Madison High’s Johnathan Turner, started started arguing over a video game. Words turned to punches, and…
UT Dallas has always been a university, i.e. an institution of higher learning where one can take classes and learn things and get an accredited degree. But it’s never really been a college, in the sense of a vibrant campus-centered community. When I graduated five years ago, the ghetto of…
Some day, in the very far distant future, Texas may take a cue from Colorado and legalize marijuana. For now, it’s taking some very hesitant first steps toward decriminalization, such as a proposal last legislative session reduce possession of an ounce or less of weed from a class B to…
At the beginning of every Dallas City Council meeting, long before most spectators (and many council members) are fully awake, a religious leader of some stripe stands at the podium and offers a brief prayer. A few months ago, we wondered whether the U.S. Supreme Court might declare such displays…
Update at 4:09 p.m.: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just stayed Campbell’s execution on the grounds that he may legally be mentally retarded/intellectually disabled. It is regrettable that we are now reviewing evidence of intellectual disability at the eleventh hour before Campbell’s scheduled execution. However, from the record before…
Dallas City Councilwoman Vonciel Hill: steadfast opponent of LGBT rights, veteran race baiter, lover of poorly designed inner-city freeways, and … passionate advocate for walkable urban spaces? So it seems. During a lengthy City Council discussion this afternoon on a pilot program aimed at revolutionizing how Dallas does downtown parking…
It’s official: the city of Dallas has agreed to let Virgin America move into Love Field. “After consideration of a number of factors, the City of Dallas has provided its consent to the sub-lease to Virgin America requested by American Airlines,” City Manager A.C. Gonzalez said in a statement released…
When Dallas City Council members first entertained the idea of doing away with the city’s 18-year-old bike helmet requirement two weeks ago, they left promising to give the proposal “strong consideration.” At this morning’s meeting of the Quality of Life committee, it became clear that they will do way more…
Joel Burns probably isn’t the only person in Fort Worth irritated that The Weather Channel’s app shows pictures of Dallas when it delivers forecasts for Cowtown. But the soon-to-be-former Fort Worth City Councilman, whose 2010 “It Gets Better” speech went viral, is the only one to merit a bitchy response…
Your friendly neighborhood strip club, it’s safe to say, is no fan of the $5-per-patron “pole tax” the Texas legislature saw fit to levy in 2007. Its displeasure has been expressed in two ways: by refusing to pay (the tax has so far raised less than a third of the…
Dallas knows how to do car ownership. It’s kinda sorta embraced Uber and Lyft. But short-term car rental? That’s to be determined this summer, when the city dips its toe into Zipcar. The inaugural neighborhoods — downtown, the Arts District, Uptown, Oak Lawn and Mockingbird Station — have been selected…
Rickey Dale Wyatt walked out of Judge John Creuzot’s Dallas courtroom on January 4, 2012, finally a free man. After 31 years in prison, his 1981 aggravated rape conviction was set aside after Creuzot and District Attorney Craig Watkins’ Conviction Integrity Unit agreed that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence at…
There comes a time in any sustained protest movement when internal disagreements over tactics, over what ends justify what means, over the acceptability of compromise in the name of progress, reach a boiling point. It happened during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. It happened in the during the…
In late March, the parent of a high school cheerleader emailed a tip to the Observer. Last fall, she wrote, Dallas radiologist Dr. James Summa was arrested at a Mesquite High School football game and charged with improper photography for snapping pictures of underage girls. We confirmed the arrest with…
Few people in Dallas ride bikes for transportation. Dallas is a car city, and it will probably still be a car city when future archaeologists comb through the ruins of human civilization and pull our desiccated husks from fossilized car frames. Everyone knows that, but Dallas is far from the…
Earlier this week, the Dallas County District Attorney’s office mysteriously dropped all felony charges against Columbia Packing Co. and its vice president, Joseph Carl Ondrusek Jr., for dumping pig blood into a tributary of the Trinity River in January 2012. Counting last month’s dismissal of the charges against Donny Ondrusek…
On Wednesday afternoon, as the Dallas City Council gathered in a Trinity River Audubon Center conference room overlooking a shrunken pond and sea of marsh grass, there was a solid thunk of bird hitting glass. No one seemed to notice, save for maybe the security guard standing at attention with…
