Thanksgiving Day dinner is nowhere near the food fight it ought to be, if you ask me, and I’m not sure how to feel about it. I’m a little bit appalled. Before Thanksgiving, everyone who wrote about it was promising civil war. A certain amount of that genre may be…
It’s too soon to say for sure, but at least so far it doesn’t look as if impeachment will push the 2020 presidential vote tally very far in either direction. But impeachment still seems to push every other story off the table, including one, school reform, that may offer a…
Calm down. Of course Rick Perry told President Donald Trump he’s God’s chosen one. Perry’s from Texas. He’s doing what must be done to protect Big Awl, the oil bidness. Why do people think Perry’s even in D.C.? But I forget. Most people outside of Texas probably don’t remember for…
In a neighborhood with problems, the last thing anybody needed was a big, bad abandoned building. Something like that is a scary billboard warning people away. All the more appalling for the owner of it to have been the public school system, whose No. 1 priority ought to have been…
There’s a big brouhaha going on now within the journalism trade about an apology published a couple of weeks ago by editors of the student newspaper at Northwestern University. The editors of The Daily Northwestern said they regretted the way they had reported on a student protest. I really worry…
The Bryan Pergola at the top of the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza has always struck me as an ugly monument to everything depressing in the history of Dallas. Built in the “early commercial style” of the early 20th century, it looks like a public restroom. It’s named for a…
Last week on the worst night of the freeze, Dallas police arrested 11 people on outstanding warrants when they showed up among some 300 homeless seeking shelter in the city’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center downtown. Clergy who had helped transport people to the center said the arrests were a…
We must knock wood and throw salt over our shoulders. Don’t say anything to mess it up. But the Dallas public school system, already an unheralded center of innovation, may also be emerging as an unheralded beacon of stability. And the unheralded part — no New York Times stories, no 60 Minutes…
The main lawyer in an upcoming Dallas City Council corruption trial is also an important player in impeachment. And quid pro quo, by now the best known Latin phrase in Washington, meaning this for that or what for what, also is at the center of our local imbroglio. Washington A-Team…
The mainstream media analysis of Beto O’Rourke’s decision to kill his campaign is evidence that we now live in separate dimensions and speak different languages, defined mainly by generation. On the surface, it would be hard to poke even a pinprick into most of what was said by boomer analysts…
In a recent editorial, The Dallas Morning News praised Gov. Greg Abbott for ordering the state highway department to begin clearing out homeless encampments in the state capital. “True compassion isn’t turning a blind eye,” the paper said. “It’s demanding change and then providing the help to make that change…
A new term for me, a bit of an epithet I guess, was applied to me several times recently by a genial retired oil industry person sitting nearby at a wedding reception. Smart man, perfectly likeable. He suggested in the course of the evening that some people — I definitely…
The city of Fort Worth is interviewing six finalists for the job of diversity director. The city will pay whoever gets the job between $125,820 and $207,604 a year. I know how they can get this done for free. Find out why Joel Fitzgerald got fired. I’m serious. All the…
You know what else we can do about Saturday’s gun massacre related to a homecoming celebration at Texas A&M University-Commerce? Two young people died and six more were shot. I mean what we can do in addition to the terrible grieving we must bear for the dead, the injured and…
Something important in local education has happened over the last few days, a story that has already slipped beneath the wave of tornado news. It is worth noting as both a harbinger of progress and a very depressing reminder why progress comes hard. Dallas school Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has announced…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page took a blindfolded backward step off the diving board Monday in an editorial asserting that police have an “obligation of deference” to armed homeowners in terms of who may shoot first. As its predicate for this insane suggestion, the paper exploits the horrible case…
Help me keep track of The Dallas Morning News editorial page here. I guess I’m just confused. First, let’s look at murders. The paper’s editorial page last week said the killing of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in her own home by a Fort Worth police officer was one of those important…
The mayor of Fort Worth says there is no relevance or importance in the fact that Atatiana Jefferson, killed by a Fort Worth police officer Saturday, had a gun. The mayor is wrong. According to the murder warrant for the former police officer who killed her, Jefferson, 28, pointed her…
The same questions being asked now of the Fort Worth Police Department, mayor and city manager in the shooting death of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson were asked last June in a lawsuit against the city filed by former Fort Worth Chief Joel Fitzgerald, who is demanding reinstatement after being fired last…
Oh, my God. Liberals. Please. I speak as one of you. What do you want to do, just hand Donald Trump a jewel-encrusted crown and let him skip the election? I thought we wanted to defeat him. Did I have it wrong? Do we just want to get on TV?…
Through the dark clouds brooding over the Amber Guyger trial, sunlight actually broke through in a few wonderful moments, some now internationally publicized, some you may have missed. Let me give you an example of one that may have gotten by you. Right after the sentencing, Dallas Police Chief U…
The death of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old accountant and innocent man, and the trial of his killer, former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, have challenged Dallas as no event since the 2016 murders of five police officers in one terrible night downtown. Now as then, a big part of this…
