As former boss of the famed Texas Rangers, Henry “Hank” Whitman surely will know where to start as Gov. Greg Abbott’s recently appointed commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services: throw a whole bunch of people, including most of the Texas Legislature, the governor and the lieutenant…

Weird. The whole phenomenon of young people supporting Bernie is dispiriting when I look at it nationally. But when I look at it in terms of what I have witnessed on the ground in my own hometown over the last 10 or 15 years, it’s enormously encouraging. When I try…

After a very bad night’s sleep, I felt I owed it to you, the reader, to revisit the pothole in my alley yesterday morning. The day before I had posted here what I now realize was an alarmist and poorly reported piece suggesting there might be people living in it…

I think someone may be living in a pothole near my house. Usually I eschew using this space to pursue private matters, but today I think this particular problem may rise to the level of general public interest. If you are reading it, that means my editors must have agreed…

On the surface everything always looks so sober and important at City Hall, following a solemn script as if every subcommittee meeting were a medical school graduation ceremony or the funeral of an important person. And then you get these bizarre little windows on what’s really going on. Yesterday I…

Neil Emmons, Dallas’ District 2 plan commissioner who died last week, was way deep in the woods on some big development deal many years ago, on the side of the neighborhood and giving the developer grief, of course, when a guy I knew who worked for the developer gave me…

It’s almost enough to make you think we had racial segregation in this town. First, three years ago, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a finding that Dallas was violating federal law by using desegregation money to promote segregation. The city denied it, of course, but…

The Dallas Police/Fire Pension Fund, still trying to dig itself out of the billion-dollar financial hole it dug for itself by making stupid investments, is going to meet Friday to consider “censuring” board member Philip Kingston for speaking candidly and intelligently to the public about the pension fund’s problems. And,…

All through last week’s City Council briefing on the city’s ancient and unresolved Trinity toll road controversy, I kept thinking I sniffed the unpleasant scent of burning human hair that you get when someone is being thrown under a bus. Kept looking around the council chamber, sniffing. Couldn’t find it…

Coming soon to a city near you (very near you): the prize fight of the century. In the one corner, with a left fist loaded with lawyers and a right glove packed with money, we have the Big Contender, Dallas City Hall, determined never to admit that the “whitewater feature,”…

At the end of last week, the Dallas City Auditor issued a report (copy below) saying the city handed out $29.9 million to housing contractors in a three-year period and forgot to keep any records to show whether any of the housing got built. Oh, and they also forgot to…

There was a day when the three men who sat in front of me in the Dallas City Council chamber for Monday’s Trinity toll road meeting could have said jump, and the entire Dallas City Council would have fainted from embarrassment for not having thought of it themselves. But this…

OK, Dallas City Council, this is between us and please don’t tell our readers about it here at the Dallas Observer, in fact please don’t tell the Observer about it, either. I wish you would go into a smoke-filled room, shut me out totally, draw the blinds, refuse to comment,…

Mr. Trump, this is from me, an old middle class white guy watching from the sidelines here in Dallas. You said if they took the nomination away from you at the convention, “I think you’d have riots. I’m representing many, many millions of people.”  I’m looking at your people, Mr…

President Obama came to a good place last weekend to tell people what this election is about. Dallas may not be the only bull’s eye in America for a discussion of ethnicity politics and voting rights, but it’ll do. In our own backyard and in the nation, some white people…

Just because Dallas doesn’t have a plan for dealing with the inhabitants of the homeless tent cities it plans to bulldoze on May 1, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a plan. That’s the plan. No plan. That’s always Dallas’ plan: no plan, no people. How many times does the…

Finally the land-play at the southwest corner of downtown Dallas has been rendered semi-public and a known fact, with last week’s admission by The Dallas Morning News that the property on which the paper sits may be sort of somewhat on the market. And by the way, land can be…