Kathy Colvin at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas would not confirm or deny the veracity of Kevin Krause’s post up now on the Morning News saying the feds have invited Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price in for “a meeting” next week. Price, whose offices…
The time escapes me. At least 20 years ago. I am seated outside the office of a prominent African-American clergyman in South Dallas waiting for an appointment that was to begin 45 minutes ago. The waiting is the South Dallas white man’s tax. I knew all that before I showed…
Mark Lamster, architecture critic for The Dallas Morning News, is still new in the job, but he’s got a sharp analytical eye. Over the years I have developed my own mental gauge for how long it takes newcomers to figure out Dallas, and I have to say this guy’s sort…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. Twelve years ago, Mariana Griggs was one of those people whose parachutes got messed up. Instead of…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. Bonnie Jacobs studies plant fossils found in ancient rocks and deeply cored soil samples — bits of…
It’s really sort of embarrassing — all this gushing from The Dallas Morning News and the mayor, not to mention Wick Allison at D Magazine, going on about their conversion therapy and how they now believe in the new walkable city. Especially when they’ve put hearts on their sleeves this…
Good piece yesterday by Matt Haag on The Dallas Morning News education blog reporting that fewer public school seniors received at least a 990 score — that’s the number that means a student is “college ready” — on the SAT exam, reflecting school Superintendent Mike Miles’ push to have more…
Scott Goldstein, who’s still new at covering City Hall for The Dallas Morning News, had a piece in the paper a week ago that expressed the longstanding Morning News strategy for new beat reporters, which is pretty much the opposite of the strategy at places where I have worked. He…
On the Opinion Blog of The Dallas Morning News today, editorial writer Rudy Bush identifies one Dave Neumann as “a clearly unqualified former council member” in reference to Neumann’s recent brief engagement as a public relations consultant to the city’s police and fire pension fund. Unfair? Could be. The fund,…
Apparently my destiny is to spend the rest of my life writing about Tod Robberson, an editorial writer for the The Dallas Morning News with whom I disagree about every single thing on the face of the Earth. In my column in the print edition this week, I disagree with…
Last week I got into a flame war on the blogs with Rudy Bush and Tod Robberson. They are editorial writers for The Dallas Morning News. We were arguing about the very controversial Jim’s Car Wash in South Dallas, target of legislative investigations, police mobilizations and endless City Hall politics…
I’ve got a column in the print edition this week on the car wash on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard about which I have written so much over the years, and I want to call your attention to it because I believe it zeroes in on a central issue too…
Former Dallas Observer journalist and current Dallas Morning News digitalist Robert Wilonsky was on Channel 5 just now talking about a new report ranking Dallas in the bottom five of 30 American metro areas for “walkability.” The problem is that we still have a lot of people here who will…
Ninety-nine point nine percent of what urban planner Larry Beasley says is brilliant, and usually when I do think I’ve got him being wrong on some point, it’s because I’m not being brilliant. It always turns out to be something I misinterpreted. That said, I think he may be one…
Rudy Bush and Tod Robberson, writers on The Dallas Morning News editorial board, think it’s a great thing that police are barricading a car wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to force the owner out of business. Yesterday to buttress their case against the owner and rebut my own…
Yesterday in a blog item Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson stated as fact that the controversial car wash on MLK Boulevard — topic of many Dallas Observer stories over many years — is “a major drug emporium for South Dallas.” The strong suggestion of the piece and an…
Sunday I witnessed first-hand the Dallas Police Department’s new technique to force the owners of that troubled car wash in South Dallas to sell or go out of business. You may know which car wash. The one City Hall hates. See also: Dallas City Hall versus The Car Wash Normally…
The thing I felt when I read of Rick Finlan’s recent death was simple sadness. He was a hero. A jerk. So smart, so funny. A great source for reporters. Friend of mine. A jerk. For the better part of two decades Finlan marched against local government chicanery arm in…
Whoa. Wait up. Take five. Let’s take another look at that Wallace Hall narrative. He’s the University of Texas regent from Dallas who is supposed to be a crazy, nuts, Tea Party, Rick-Perry-buddy, off-the-wall, Neanderthal education-hater who needs to be impeached, criminally prosecuted and generally expunged. OK. But what if…
Maybe you saw the 2011 movie Bernie by Richard Linklater, starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, or maybe you remember the story. Bernie Tiede was the real-life funeral home worker who befriended widows of Carthage, an East Texas town of some 7,000 persons about 140 miles southeast of…
Real estate writer Steve Brown has a story in today’s Dallas Morning News about massive apartment projects springing up around the site of the new Toyota headquarters in Plano. Apparently these will be part of an even bigger sea of apartments not far from the J.C. Penney headquarters up there…
I was on vacation in an especially beautiful corner of New England — a place darkened at the time by some typically wet, chilly, early spring New England weather — when I saw the piece on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News by Larry Good. Wow. One of…
