Anybody can claim anything in any lawsuit, but the suit filed last week accusing Dallas City Council Member Dwaine Caraway of corruption is not just any lawsuit. If Caraway can’t quickly pony up some persuasive public responses to these charges, he can forget about running for mayor in 2019 —…
In the last couple of months I have been reporting here that the city still cannot open the new Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River because, a year after completion, the supervising engineer will not certify its safety. A number of readers have contacted me to say there are…
The first thing to say about the announcement of a deal to privatize Fair Park, the city’s 277-acre Art Deco albatross in South Dallas, is that everybody on every side of this endless bloody debate is utterly stunned. The deal, which would turn over Fair Park to a private operator…
Dear Whoever It Is: Face it. The South lost the war. It was about slavery. American slavery was a monumental evil, and it will remain a monumental evil for all of time. That damned Robert E. Lee statue we tore out last year is never coming back, never ever, just…
The new $115 million bridge upon which no person may safely set foot is not going without notice or attention at City Hall. According to good sources who speak to me regularly in return for my promise of confidentiality, the city department that brought us the bad bridge is about…
The 2019 mayoral race will have the potential to make Dallas a new kind of city because it will be the first time for a whole new generational wave of voters to have a shot at anointing the city’s only citywide elected official, effectively putting their stamp on the city…
Facebook announced last week it will begin expurgating from its pages types of speech that the site believes may lead to actual violence, as opposed to just offending the hell out of people. I’m thinking thanks, Mr. Zuckerberg. I get it. I see why you’re doing it, but I wish…
My editor has been encouraging me to ride one of the new motorized versions of a child’s kick-scooter being offered for rent all over the city, so that I can write a story about it. (Editor’s note: No I haven’t. Much.) Some years ago, the same editor sent me to…
This is coming from me, a local columnist in Dallas, Texas, so basically I bring no authority, expertise or gravitas to the subject and shouldn’t even be opening my mouth. My excuse is a column I read on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News this morning, but between…
Dallas Park Board member Jesse Moreno believes the way for the city to achieve a better tomorrow is by facing up bravely to some very bad yesterdays. In particular, he wants the city to remember and understand July 24, 1973, the day 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez was murdered by Dallas police…
I’m not going to get all kumbaya on you, and this is not the scene at the end of the horrible 1970s movie with the slow-mo and the violins and the running through the field of poppies and the big smooch-o-rama at the end. But I need to tell you…
I told you Monday about the possibility — probably remote — that the new Margaret McDermott (Santiago Calatrava) Bridge over the Trinity River downtown might wind up being demolished before it can open for its first day of traffic. In some of the responses I got, I think I was…
The moment has arrived when we must expand our thinking about the new and troubled Margaret McDermott Bridge designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava on the Trinity River downtown. We’ve got to add at least one extreme outcome to the far end of the spectrum of possibilities. It may have…
I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but sometimes I find myself writing about a topic for a long time, and then all of a sudden I wonder what in the world I’m even talking about. Yeah, I know. You can’t believe that. Shocked and amazed. But it happens…
Scot Miller is a nationally renowned nature photographer who happens to live in Dallas. His books of photography depict world-famous places like Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and Yosemite National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. His illustrated 100th anniversary edition of John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra,…
The Garland City Council voted this week to close Windsurf Bay Park on Lake Ray Hubbard for the Fourth of July because Garland police were afraid too many people would show up for holiday picnics. That’s one approach. Of course, another strategy would be to make it a better park…
Are these strange times? Yes. These are very strange times. Here’s an example: Rick Perry is now a genius. No, in fact, it’s more than that. Our former leader, the one and only Governor Oops, is not only being called the smartest man in the White House, but people also…
Dallas school trustee Joyce Foreman urged the Dallas City Council last week to begin using its power over real estate zoning as a sword to chop off new charter schools at the knees by denying zoning for new campuses. She accused the charters of bleeding the public school system of…
Alone in the kitchen over my first coffee, I finally got what the border story was about. This was before President Donald Trump backed down on separating children from their parents. I had been thinking it was about everything else. Call me a slow learner. The dog-walking helped. And the…
My visit Tuesday to the great Dallas Whitewater Feature on the Trinity River confirmed an impression I have been developing for some time — a grand connecting theme in all of the architectural wonders brought to us by the city’s old guard leadership, from woodland trails to the great Margaret…
Here’s a hobby. Spend some time finding out how many places in the United States you can’t live. Well, places where you can’t live if you also want to eat. Then here’s a thought. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and find out hard it is for people to live and…
To snatch or not to snatch? That is the question that has been keeping me awake nights. The only thing that can put me back to sleep is rereading my own stuff. A week ago, I wrote a column here about West Dallas landlord Khraish Khraish, whom two legal aid…
