If I were a better sport, I’d laugh. Yesterday The Dallas Morning News, which has been carrying on an editorial crusade against a Dallas landlord family, published a story under the headline, “City of Dallas’ case against low-rent landlord faces setback.” A setback? Really? Makes me wish I could get my…

Fine, talk about Iowa all day, I don’t care, it’s a free country, but let me tell you something: All of that huge split they’re talking about today in the country’s presidential politics — I think of it as the gulf between the wacko, extremist, nut-ball, ignorant people and the…

I believe when you and I spoke recently about what needs to be done with Fair Park, the city’s sadly neglected 277-acre exposition park, I did make a clear distinction between the State Fair of Texas (big and wonderful) and the board that oversees it (small and stubborn). After an…

I don’t really recommend that you read anything by anyone else but me on a regular basis, and I can’t be responsible, of course, for what might happen to you if you insist on making a habit of it, but every once in a blue moon somebody out there writes…

For some horrible reason lost to history and wrapped in political voodoo, the State Fair of Texas, one of the single most beloved icons of Texas culture, operates under the iron-fisted domination of one of the single most despised ownerships in the state, by which I mean State Fair of…

Slowly but surely Dallas is turning the Trinity River into what should be re-named either The Rogue River or The Mad River — the one river in America not subject to the same laws that govern every other river, harbor and waterway in the country. In fact, maybe not even…

Dallas City Council members, closeted in a closed-door session last Wednesday with lawyers from the city attorney’s staff, couldn’t believe their ears. Without any warning or preparation beforehand, the lawyers told the council that the council was up against a legal deadline only a few hours off, and that, if…

Historic preservation goes on the muscle today in Dallas with the announcement (see below) of a war chest for buying up threatened properties. A new non-profit, called Dallas Endowment for Endangered Properties (DEEP), will seek ownership of anything its directors think is worth saving and in the way of harm…

Wait. Tell me again. Where do you get money? Do you get money from the mall? I thought the mall got money from you. Nothing against malls. I just don’t get how malls make the people around them richer. Last week the Dallas City Council gave investor Peter Brodsky $2.4…

I think we’ve actually reached the point where nothing, not one single thing that anyone, very much including myself, has to say about the so-called “Trinity toll road” can be understood by anyone, by which I mean any human being, living, dead or unborn. Yesterday Brandon Formby had what I…

I finally found Mary Suhm, and guess where. In a videotaped deposition. The former Dallas city manager sat down in front of recording equipment for five hours early last December and answered challenging questions in a lawsuit against the city brought by Trinity East Energy, LLC, an oil and gas…

The Dallas Morning News has been carrying out a tough-worded editorial campaign against a Dallas family the paper calls slumlords, describing their business practices as “despicable’ and dismissing the family’s own arguments as a “massively most absurd defense.” The paper wants a court to enforce a petition from the city that…

On the other hand, what if the affluenza judge was right? What if Ethan Couch was raised in a moral vacuum, in an ethical deprivation chamber so devoid of worthwhile moral guidance that he couldn’t even tell drunk from sober, let alone good from evil? Is that possible? If it…

Do you ever have the feeling you’d like to take the old year, put it on a little raft, set the raft on fire and push it out to sea? Nothing against the old year. Maybe it’s even a way of honoring the year just passed. But it would also…