There ought to be a way to solve the problem of the Robert E. Lee statue. Since the big, bronze two-horse statue of the Confederate general and a soldier was yanked from a Dallas park a week and a half ago, the city has been fussing about what to do…
Post-Harvey, Houston already wants to carry out a truth and reconciliation process about flood safety. The lesson from Harvey was clear: No matter what the official public line may have been on flood safety before Harvey, Houston was not safe. Dallas is in the same boat, but our boat may…
Hate to tell you — and I know this will make people mad on both sides, and I’m really only talking about Dallas — but this debate we’ve been having about the Confederate statues is absolutely the best thing we’ve done in Dallas in the 100 or so years I…
Two huge forces are bearing down on Dallas right now — climate change and Amazon — and either one could be the boost the city needs to leap ahead. Or land in the ditch. See what Hurricane Harvey did to Houston, Irma to Florida. People can nibble around the edges…
Under normal circumstances when a Republican member of the Congress from Texas calls you “unconscionable,” you probably should just report to the nearest convent and ask them to lock you up in the laundry for the rest of your life. Your moral struggles have come to an end. U.S. Rep…
Here’s a little number the Dallas mayor and the City Council won’t want you to see. During the State Fair of Texas’ 24-day run this year, it will suck an average of 10 percent of the Dallas police force out of the rest of the city. At a time when…
First thing you probably will have to do, if you even hope to understand what’s going on these days in the Dallas public school district, is turn most of your assumptions upside down. On Aug. 17, the three African-American members on the Dallas school board voted to kill two tax…
After a week-long melodrama of false starts, pratfalls and tragedy, the city finally succeeded Thursday night in evicting Confederate General Robert E. Lee from his place of prominence atop a hill over Turtle Creek two miles north of City Hall. Spurred by the threat of an armed rally in defense…
When I realized my nephew Chris was stranded in another part of the world and could not get home to Catherine and the kids, Nicole and Paul, in Sarasota, Florida, my first thought was to jump in my truck, drive there and somehow get them out of Florida by myself…
All this online nattering about how much money the Dallas mayor and City Council are wasting on taking down the Robert E. Lee memorial is just insipid. True, the takedown, estimated to cost about $500,000, is taking too long. But the delays have been unavoidable, and the penny-pinching argument is…
On Sept. 6, when the Dallas City Council sat to consider bringing down the city’s 81-year-old equestrian monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, slavery and the American Civil War flowed into the moment as if yesterday and today were one. A packed council chamber was alternately raucous and respectful…
The city’s star-crossed efforts to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee took a tragic turn Sunday night when a crane on its way from Houston was struck by an 18-wheeler, killing the driver of the truck and badly damaging the crane. Before the accident a small crowd…
Hiram Patterson, whose name is on the federal complaint that stopped the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas Wednesday, is a Confederate history buff who has very little idea what his own complaint is about. In fact, at the end of the day Wednesday, even after a…
Even as work crews began dismantling the Robert E Lee statue, it seems a court has intervened. Councilman Scott Griggs posted on Facebook that a Temporary Restraining Order has been granted in federal court preventing the statue of Robert E. Lee from coming down. “Case filed by Hiram Patterson against…
After an hour spent listening to the public and another hour stating their own positions, the Dallas City Council voted 13-1 today to pull down an equestrian statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in an upscale neighborhood near downtown. Within hours of the vote a crane appeared at the…
Today Dallas comes to a wonderful and terrible crossroad. All indications are that the City Council will vote, probably 14-1, to pull down the city’s many Confederate monuments to white racial privilege. If we have only one council member still in favor of white racial privilege, that will be just…
At some point in the weeks ahead, Congress will commit the nation to an immense investment in Houston and Beaumont/Port Arthur. The opening bid from the White House last week was almost $8 billion in federal funds, probably a mere fraction of the ultimate disbursement. The country should view this…
Oh, no. Guess who’s back? Uncle Bob. Can somebody tell him we can’t see him now because we just got run over by a bus? No, I know. Probably not. Bob knows that one by heart. We discussed Uncle Bob in this space not quite one year ago. Bob is my…
New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie is accusing Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of hypocrisy over disaster relief, which does make for a certain kind of show. But here in Dallas we could tell people a thing or two about that show. Forget mere hypocrisy. The real show is way…
Like you, I woke to more news of Hurricane Harvey and the thousands of people whose lives have been ripped apart in Houston. It’s almost more than the heart can bear. But just when I was about to start feeling sorry for my heart, I read my email and saw…
Whenever Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been asked questions about the state’s lack of preparedness for the catastrophe now eating Houston, he has deflected to expressions of gushing admiration for the bravery of all Texans. And he’s not wrong about Texans. Particularly among rural Texans, there is a powerful all-hands-on-deck…
Let’s not get fooled on the Confederate memorials question in Dallas. It’s easy to do. It’s worse than a who’s-on-first routine. This one is more like where-is-first? What may camouflage the real controversy more than anything else, especially for people who are outside the city looking in, is the recruitment…
