Farmers Branch’s epic, seven-and-a-half year quest to ban people living in this country illegally came to a close on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s ruling that a city ordinance requiring tenants to prove legal residency before renting a home was unconstitutional. Whatever Mayor…
On the evening of July 13, 2010, a 36-year-old woman checked into the emergency room of Lake Pointe Medical Center in Rowlett. She was suffering from a painful infection on her left leg, the result of untreated poison ivy, but that was relatively low on her list of concerns. As…
There may have been a few Rangers fans who mourned when the club traded longtime second-baseman Ian Kinsler, but for most, his unreliable glove and mediocre performance at the plate far outweighed whatever goodwill his boyish good looks might inspire. Plus, we got Prince Fielder. But while Rangers fans may…
There are plenty of very good reasons to blow up Dallas ISD’s board of trustees. Its meetings are long, petty and often unproductive. In a district that’s more than two-thirds Hispanic, just one of its nine members is the same. Choosing trustees by geographic district discourages district-wide thinking and encourages…
Office Depot has earned a reputation in recent years for screwing over local governments. San Francisco got $4.25 million to settle claims that it overcharged for office supplies. Maricopa County claims $5.3 million in overbilling. Houston is demanding $6.6 million. All because a disgruntled corporate employee in Florida got himself…
It’s impossible to overstate the heinousness of the crimes Eric Lyle Williams is accused of. Prosecutors say the 45-year-old carried out a cold-blooded hit on Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse as he walked through a courthouse parking lot one morning last January. Two months later, on the day…
Whatever “dramatic ideas” Dallas’ new task force will propose to revitalize Fair Park now that the summer amusement park has gone belly up are still months, if not years, away. In the meantime, the city is moving forward with smaller initiatives aimed at attracting visitors to the park. Key among…
Here’s hoping you were able to avoid driving this morning. If you did have to get behind the wheel, here’s hoping your route didn’t include Interstate 45 through Corsicana, which tweets and media reports confirm is an ice-covered parking lot. This presents some rather obvious challenge. For first responders, it’s…
It’s been two decades since Congress killed the Superconducting Super Collider. Had the $11 billion project been completed, it would have become — and would still be — the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, and Waxahachie of all places would be the global epicenter of particle…
There’s a reason it’s illegal to fire a gun in city limits (Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a year in jail and a $4,000 fine). There’s no telling whose head those celebratory New Year’s rounds might fall upon, or which kitchen window might be breached during backyard target practice. On…
Tomorrow is the beginning of March, which means the winter that brought you such weather catastrophes as Ice Storm Cleon and ICE FORCE LEVEL TWO will be officially over, right? RIGHT? Sure, spring doesn’t officially begin until March 20, but this is Texas. This is supposed to be the time…
Last night, Spence Middle School hosted a parent meeting to talk suicide. If you don’t already know why, read Matthew Haag’s article in The Dallas Morning News over the weekend: one student dead, three others who tried to take their own lives. A few blocks away, Board President Eric Cowan…
Football is very important to the city of Allen. It’s a place where youth football coaches recruit 12-year-old players with Gatorade and Now and Laters, where anything less than a state championship is a disappointment. This passion is most fully expressed in Eagle Stadium, the state-of-the-art, $60 million football field…
Marijuana is still very much illegal in Texas, and, whatever Governor Rick Perry says about “decriminalization”, it will remain so for the immediate future. But the tide of public opinion is turning fast, and it’s not so hard to imagine a day when Texas relaxes its weed ban. It almost…
Anthony Granville didn’t set out to strike a blow for privacy rights on the fateful day in November 2010 when he snapped a cell-phone photo in a boy’s restroom at Huntsville High School. Quite the opposite, in fact. According to prosecutors, Granville’s photo, taken without the subject’s permission, showed another…
Last year, the Texas Legislature passed on the chance to ban cops and security guards from using Tasers and pepper spray on students in public school. With the state’s largest police group, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, lobbying against it (the bill “prohibits school district peace officers from…
The outcome of the federal investigation into Garland ISD’s H1-B program, which recruited dozens of bilingual teachers from foreign countries and is now sending many of them back, is uncertain. But if past federal H1-B cases involving school districts are any indication, it could cost the district. Big time. There…
At midday on Wednesday, Dallas police and firefighters broke down the front door of a small townhome in the 1800 block of Browder Street in the Cedars to perform a welfare check. Inside, they found the bodies of Nick and Vanessa Pitofsky, both dead of gunshot wounds. Police are describing…
In a wholly unexpected and incredibly bizarre turn of events, Republican lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick offered an endorsement of gay marriage so enthusiastic that he suggested doing away with heterosexual unions in the process. Patrick, heretofore the most conservative candidate in the race — a man who vociferously denies…
It’ll still be a while before gay couples are allowed to legally allowed to marry in Texas, but they took a big step today when a federal court ruled that the state’s same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Orlando wrote in an opinion on Wednesday that the constitutional…
The Trinity River lakes were never going to be humongous. Seventy-five or 80 acres each, according to the Balanced Vision Plan developed for the Trinity River Corridor Project in 2003. But now the plans have been reduced to something so small — a couple of 20-acre ponds reaching a depth…
If The Dallas Morning News’ brief account of the Monday morning robbery of Hometown Day Spa left you a bit confused, you’re forgiven. Two armed men walk in and credibly pass themselves off as customers for several minutes as they plot their heist? The answer, as always, can be found…
