The State Fair of Texas, or, as I call it, Sigma Phi Tau, has always been an exclusive, secretive, good-old-boy fraternity, but it hasn’t always been easy to catch. Thank goodness Sigma-Phi has a certain penchant for showing its … let’s say its hand … as this recent example illustrates:…
Almost four months have passed since we tore down the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas, and I haven’t noticed any ominous rebel armies forming on the horizon, unless you count people with Dixie flag decals on the back windows of their pickup trucks. If that’s all it’s going to…
Homeless encampments are a goad, a stick in the eye, a disquieting reminder that misery and chaos are only a few quick steps from the land of comfort and safety. It would be nice if the sight always opened our hearts and made us weep, but sometimes it goes the…
The small government conservatives would have a decent point to make, if they only meant it. We can’t always count on distant, national, career government officials to wipe our chins for us. But the first time something does go seriously wrong — as things are wont to do in the…
Looks like former San Antonio mayor and HUD Secretary Julian Castro is really running for president in 2020. Great. Maybe now HUD will show me those documents it’s been promising for a year and a half. It’s simple. If he’s going to run for president under the Democratic flag, then Castro needs…
In the course of the Dallas dog bite hysterics of the last month, people have said a lot of totally crazy things about pets and people, but it’s important for you and me to remember one big thing about any dog we own. If that dog has ever bitten before…
This is exactly what happens. Two weeks ago, the city let itself get bamboozled out of killing a dog that had bitten a 13-year-old boy in the face. Now, another dog, a pit bull mix, has attacked and mauled a 2-year-old child in a downtown park, and the dog nuts,…
Dallas has three great shots at getting big things done in 2019, all of which will require us to take a hard turn away from Trumpism. Notice I didn’t say hard turn left or hard turn right. I don’t even know any more. We have to turn away from tribalism…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page took a truly bold step this week by announcing that one of the finalists for its annual Texan of the Year award is Richard Spencer. He’s the Dallas native and St. Mark’s School graduate who has become the public face of American white nationalism…
The season to be jolly is over now, right? At the end of this year, I had a big awakening, and, no, it was not from a nap. True, I’ve been at this an awfully long time to be having awakenings just now, but this has to do more with…
Oh, right, I’m so offended by all those terrible bike-share bikes showing up around town, polluting the landscape by their unaesthetic presence. No, I’m not. You know what does offend me? Cars. Trucks. Last time I checked, bikes weren’t giving kids leukemia. Check it out. The regional nonprofit clean-air advocacy…
This case was different. The murder conviction this week of off-duty Farmers Branch police Officer Ken Johnson only happened because fellow police officers worked hard to make it happen. The lead community activist, seeing that a conviction would depend on good police work, worked equally hard to make sure his…
Two stories in the local news cycle this week are significant for what they have to say about our city: One, the dog that bit a kid in the face won’t be exterminated but will be sent to Austin instead, and two, the new headquarters of The Dallas Morning News,…
When you read a story in the media and it’s got an odd twist at the top, the twist is a signal. It means the real message is between the lines. Five times in the last three weeks, somebody at The Dallas Morning News has reported that Mike Snyder, a…
Not my place, but would somebody else who knows what’s what please step forward and offer to give the new Dallas city manager and his top people a 45-minute seminar on recent city history? They seem to be good people, but they’re kind of traipsing out with a basket and…
When the president is on Twitter suggesting a U.S. senator is a whore and his fellow Republicans are on TV talking about how much they hate the FBI, guess who gets lost in the shuffle? Why, it’s our own Rick Perry, our former Gov. Oops. Where is that boy, anyway,…
There was a moment this year when The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, which serves between 8,000 and 9,000 homeless people a year, almost had to shut its doors because of a stupid software problem. Not its software. Somebody else’s. Although The Bridge had a sophisticated software system, it was paying…
People who watch this stuff closely for a living were not surprised at the end of last week when The Dallas Morning News got Marlon Rollins kicked off the Dallas park board. For one thing, it was a fair shoot. He was vulnerable. For another, it was inevitable because Rollins…
What good do you think it would do for Dallas to carry out the moral, political and social equivalent of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission process of the late ’90s? What if we took a deep dive into the specific decisions in our past that put us where…
Can a reporter become an elected official? I know it’s legally possible, but isn’t it some kind of crime against nature? When WFAA-TV (Channel 8) investigative reporter Brett Shipp announced his resignation last week to run for Congress, most of the immediate comments painted him as an ingénue, a guy…
To our regret or good fortune time only will tell, but Dallas is a great laboratory for viewing the forces roiling around American cities. We’ve got thunder overhead, rumblings in the basement and maybe a great day ahead. Nationally, the divide between cities and everybody else has been consuming ink…
A big picture isn’t necessarily good because it’s big. What if the picture misses the elephant? How does that help? During Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ state of the city address Tuesday, he announced he is launching an initiative he calls Goals for Dallas 2030, fashioned after a 1960s thing called…
