In recent years, when conservative activists have tried to slip creationism into science textbooks adopted by Texas’ State Board of Education, they have dressed it up as “intelligent design,” or explained the need to teach the “weaknesses” of the theory of evolution. A Trojan horse, perhaps, and one that’s been…
It’s the moment Dallas drivers have been waiting for. After months of being teased by computer-generated flyovers and the prospect of traveling on corridors that came this close to being Davy Crockett Rocket Lanes, the new LBJ Express debuts on at midnight Saturday. Not the whole $2.7 billion project, mind…
It was around 4 a.m. on Wednesday that Chauncey Taylor, a 35-year-old Dallas man, began chatting with an individual on Quest Chat, a phone-chat line that bills itself as a place to “meet sexy local singles.” The paramour’s gender isn’t specified by the police report filed that morning, but Quest…
It started as a Icemageddon mystery. Sometime between 6 and 9 p.m. on Friday night, a 10-month-old Greater Swiss Mountain Dog named Heidi went missing from her Fort Worth back yard. Her owners canvassed the neighborhood and put up fliers but to no avail. Finally, on day three, they turned…
You remember Anna Merlan, right? The Dallas Observer staff writer who specialized in writing about norm-bucking local subcultures (strippers, the leather scene, atheists, etc.) Well, she’s doing the same thing in New York and just published a feature on the ladies fighting to defend their legal right to go topless…
In September, on the heels of the landmark Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor, which entitled legally married gay and lesbian couples to the same federal perks as their heterosexual counterparts, the Obama administration declared that the opinion encompassed military veteran’s benefits. So that should mean that the Veterans…
It’s like clockwork. Each October, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum announces that Eric Nadel, the longtime voice of the Texas Rangers, is a finalist for the Ford C. Frick Award. And every year, the award goes to someone else. Not this time. This morning, the hall of…
There’s no doubt that Ethan Couch, 16, is guilty of drunkenly killing four people in a deadly car crash in Burleson. Last week, the teen pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter stemming from a June 15 wreck in which his Ford pickup, going 70 in a 40-mph zone,…
For a brief moment Tuesday evening, it seemed that the Dallas Police Department had learned something from the case of Bobby Gerald Bennett, in which an officer, unprovoked, shot a mentally ill man in a Rylie cul-de-sac. Rather than waiting for a damning video to emerge showing that Monday afternoon’s…
The way police told it, 76-year-old Chung Kim simply exploded. The couple who lived upstairs with their five children dumped dog poop on the back porch of his Abrams Road condo, so he pulled out a handgun and murdered them in cold blood. In a series of jailhouse interviews, Kim…
Those who could stay off the roads on Friday did so, but truckers, the grease that keeps American commerce humming, couldn’t rest. They had consumer goods to deliver, groceries to restock, gasoline stations to replenish. At around 3:30 p.m., police say Martin Barrera was transporting a particularly precious load of…
Representative Steve Stockman, the Houston-area congressman famous for bringing Ted Nugent to the State of the Union and wanting to arm fetuses, was not the Tea Party’s first choice to run in the GOP primary against Senator John Cornyn. That honor belongs to Representative Louie Gohmert. Next on their list…
If anyone deserves a public shaming, it’s the guy who allegedly abandoned his injured but still very much alive pit bull in the dumpster of his Vickery Meadow apartment complex on Monday night. For better or worse, that will have to wait. The man wasn’t home (or didn’t answer the…
Now that Dallas has officially made it through Icemageddon 2013, there are plenty of totally legitimate questions to ask about the storm and its response. Here are a few: -Did TxDOT do an adequate job of staving off carmageddon? -Can DART not shut down the entire light rail system next…
If you’re not familiar with Tenaha, Texas, go back and read this The New Yorker piece from August detailing how police and prosecutors in the tiny East Texas town used civil forfeiture laws and a phantom suspicion of drugs to seize cars, cash, jewelry and anything else they could find…
This weekend, all the prophecies were confirmed. Ice fell from the sky, vehicles careened into cars and trees and off bridges, children were loosed from their schools — all exactly as it had been written. WFAA weather oracle Pete Delkus watched with smug satisfaction as, one by one, his predictions…
No one expects Dallas City Councilman Sheffie Kadane to be an expert on drug culture. He comes across as a staunch teetotaler, someone who associates marijuana with Reefer Madness-style hysteria, who would turn off The Wire in shocked disgust. Yet his role as a municipal policymaker requires at least a…
Anyone visiting Klyde Warren Park over the the weekend — and judging by the crowd at 10 a.m. on Sunday, attendance bordered on nonexistent — would have been struck by how closely the unbroken white sheet resembled an ice rink. Ironic, given park officials’ promise of an actual ice rink,…
So far, none of the two dozen earthquakes recorded in North Texas since the start of November have caused any serious damage. The Eagle Mountain Lake Dam is fine. Homes and businesses are intact, save for the occasional hairline crack. No one has been hurt. There’s no guarantee that won’t…
Following up on the blockbuster success of the Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids and its masterful sequel, the Tea Party II: Why America Loves You “social-activist coloring book for kids” St. Louis-based Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. has come through with another sure-fire bestseller: Cruz to the Future, a…
As evangelicals continue to revel in their victory over the Christmas-hating PTA moms in Frisco, the folks at the American Humanist Association are proving that they don’t need God on their side to force a North Texas school district to capitulate. AHA announced today that Isaiah Smith, the Birdville High…
Texas Rangers outfielder Leonys Martin followed a risky but well-trodden path to the Major Leagues. Like many Cuban ballplayers before him, he defected in 2010 while in Japan for the World University Baseball Championship. He made his way to the United States several months later and signed a lucrative, $15.5…
