Update on April 30: The Star-Telegram spoke to veterinarian Lou Tierce, who called the allegations “all a bunch of hooey.” “The lady wanted me to euthanize their dog, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it,” he told the paper. He denies the allegations that he mistreated the animals…
Faithful America — think Change.org for progressive Christians — has spent the past several days promoting a petition on the site that calls on the United Methodist Church to go easy on the Reverend Bill McElvaney. McElvaney, 85, a retired pastor and professor emeritus at SMU, last month presided over…
Dallas has a funny way of easing neighbors’ concerns about the Dallas Executive Airport. Just as nearby homeowners have worked themselves up into a minor frenzy because City Hall has kept them in the dark about a runway extension to accommodate heavier and louder aircraft, the city surprises them with…
The Dallas City Council may soon decide that requiring adults to wear bike helmets is a stupid idea — and if the city is indeed serious about starting a bike-share program, it probably is. But the helmet law is at least aimed at achieving a legitimate public policy goal (i.e…
Turns out, Dallas and TxDOT didn’t need the Trinity Parkway in order reconstruct the Mixmaster or S.M. Wright or to build the lakes and parks packaged with it when voters twice approved the project. Nor, people now seem to be realizing, is the completed road going to look anything like…
Dallas-based Kimberly-Clark, the conglomerate behind Kleenex, Huggies and a host of other brand-name personal care items, is blazing a new trail in the market for adult incontinence products. With its new Poise Microliners, the company is targeting young women suffering from “light bladder leakage” (Kimberly-Clark’s phrase) — customers who probably…
On the Wednesday in May 1996 when the Dallas City Council passed a law requiring bicyclists of all ages to wear a helmet, dozens of helmet-clad kids from Kramer Elementary burst into applause, according to The Dallas Morning News report the next day. They apparently hadn’t heard of bike share…
In 1997, back when major metropolitan dailies apparently had enough cash lying around to send staff writers to Israel, The Dallas Morning News profiled the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group of expat African-Americans claiming to be descendents of the tribe of Judah and, therefore, Jews. It was an unexpected mashup…
There was an odd little dance on Friday between the city of Dallas and Virgin America after the carrier announced that it had struck a deal with American Airlines and would begin flying out of Love Field on October 13. Company executives predicted city approval would come swiftly and was…
Three airlines — Delta, Southwest, and Virgin America — have been battling for the final two gates at Dallas Love Field since American Airlines was forced to give them up to settle an antitrust suit brought by the federal government last August. Virgin is declaring victory. At a Friday morning…
For the second time in three weeks, the SMU student body has shot down a proposal to add an LGBT student senate seat. Students voted on the measure on Wednesday and Thursday — a re-vote after an initial attempt fell a few hundred votes shy of the two-thirds majority required…
Forty-one years ago, Dallas police officer Darrell Cain was charged with murder for killing 12-year-old Santos Rodriquez as he sat in the back of a squad car. Though there have been scores of police shootings since, that was the last time a Dallas cop was indicted for shooting a suspect…
Eight months after nearly regulating Uber out of existence to protect Yellow Cab’s near-monopoly in the city, Dallas is set to propose new taxi rules that sorta kinda resemble a free market. A draft of proposed “transportation for hire” regulations, crafted over several months by a committee led by City…
Pro tip: Don’t mess with the people of White Rock Lake. No matter how good your plans for providing parking for patrons of that fancy new children’s garden or offering high-quality food and drink with a pristine view of the lake may sound in your head, you will lose. For…
Now that the bogeyman of home rule has transformed some of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles’ fiercest outside critics into his ardent supporters, the time seems ripe to formally mend fences with the school board. Easier said than done. Though things have calmed in recent months, Miles’ relationship with his…
Texas has much to recommend it. Friendly people, a robust economy, no state income tax, etc. It’s easy to see why someone would want to settle down here. That goes for ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and it goes for cold-case murder suspects from Pennsylvania. Twice in the past six months (and…
When the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality took air samples from near Bob and Lisa Parr’s Wise County ranch on several occasions in 2010, their conclusions varied little. The levels of possibly harmful volatile organic compounds were too low to cause “adverse health effects” Such chemicals “were either not detected…
The Observer hasn’t written about Dave Neumann since he lost his Oak Cliff City Council seat to Scott Griggs. That was three years ago. Since then, Neumann has kept a low profile, running a consulting firm (somehow, it manages to have virtually zero online presence outside his own LinkedIn account),…
For the past six years, apparently, El Centro College has been planning a rooftop wind farm for its Downtown Dallas campus. On Tuesday afternoon — Earth Day — the project went live as students watched on a student union video feed. It’s a relatively modest effort as far as wind…
The Washington Post’s Wonk Blog yesterday published a county-by-county map of what a worker needs to make to afford a decent one-bedroom apartment. In Dallas (and Collin, and Denton County) the figure is $13.88 per hour, assuming 40-hour weeks and a full 52 weeks of pay. Annually, that comes out…
This post has been updated with additional comments from Wylie PD spokeswoman Donna Valdapena. Wylie is, according to the city’s official website, an idyllic place to live. “Why Wylie?” it asks before answering its own question with a series of exclamations: “Historic Downtown!” “Woodbridge Golf Club!” “Community Events!” “Summer Fun!”…
The best part of Scott Goldstein’s Dallas Morning News piece about the Charter Review Commission’s proposal to hike Dallas City Council salaries by 32 percent, to $49,530, comes at the very end: “Fifty-thousand dollars a year, that’s not bad,” said [former City Attorney Tom] Perkins, whose city salary was $258,343…
