I knew some people whose only kid went off to college. Tears, blubbering, World War II refugee-style moving day with boxes lashed to the top of the car, the whole nine yards. So now the kid’s gone. They don’t just clean up his room. They don’t just clean out his…

Damn. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings got me last night. I resisted, but he got me. Anyway, I finally found the answer to a question that has long nagged me. When he does that affable dumb jock routine? Yeah. He’s about to take you for a whirlwind visit to the cleaners…

Wow. I take it all back, Tea Party. You cool. In fact, I’m jealous. Targeted by the IRS. There was a time when that would have been my dream come true. I remember back in the day when my hippie friends started getting their FBI files under the Freedom of…

OK, I’ll bite. Now that my two favorite psycho-moral philosophers have offered their opinions of the long-haired viral Duncanville kid who told off his teacher, I guess I will, too. I can’t stay out of a debate where the word “cockeyed” has come into play. I can’t tell you why…

All I want is to connect the dots. You help me. Mayor Tommy Muska, whose town of West just suffered what has been called the worst industrial accident in the 15-year history of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, is on the front page of The New York Times today agreeing…

Working on a big story about school reform these days. (Note to editor: definitely see completion this year, possibly early next. Best way you can help — make sure I keep up my darned morale.) Speaking of morale, I wanted to go ahead and share a bit of the reporting…

Michael Vincent Moore, 57, arrested in the murder of his niece, 16-year-old Alicia Moore of Greenville, can still turn out to be utterly innocent, uninvolved in any way, when the wheels of justice slowly turn. But I have a smaller thing to talk about. The cupcakes. Last time I saw…

You know what’s wrong with the Bush Presidential Center at SMU? It’s not a terrible thing or place in and of itself, yet. But what’s wrong already is that it represents such a lay-down by the leadership of the university. The way the thing is set up is a betrayal…

The Texas House is about to pass a bill that would bar employers from forcing employees and job applicants to cough up their social media passwords. Proponents here and around the country claim social media should be protected under the Fourth Amendment. Last time I checked, the Fourth Amendment talked…

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is exactly right to support Zachary Thompson, the county’s embattled health director responsible for fighting West Nile disease. Zachary Thompson is exactly right to worry about the role of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency that aggressively promoted…

Last week the city’s only daily newspaper published a package of three opinion pieces about the new George W. Bush presidential library in Dallas and the effect it will or will not have on the city’s image. They all wound up saying it would put us on the map one…

Took a few days off to go canoeing on the Buffalo River in Arkansas — always a fine way to clear the mind and ease the soul — and came home to wonderful news: The Harvard Institute of Politics released its 23rd “Survey of Young Americans’ Attitude Toward Politics and…

Jill Abramson, executive editor of my favorite daily newspaper, The New York Times, will speak in town a week from tomorrow, 10 days later than originally planned. Her announced topic will be the same thing that delayed her: “The Boston Marathon Tragedy: ‘Quality Journalism’s Role in the Hyper Speed News…

Just so people won’t get caught unaware, I want to point out that the town of West has until a week from tomorrow to grieve. That will be two weeks from the time of the industrial accident that blew up their town, took the lives of loved ones and left…

So who exactly wants innocent people sent to prison for life? C’mon. You know this one. We all know the answer. It’s the same people who think we should toss out the Constitution and put American citizens on trial in military courts. They’re the arm-in-arm allies of terrorists everywhere, the…

Let’s be real, for a change, about the debate over building an eight-lane highway along the river at the western border of downtown. Sometimes we say it’s a question of traffic needs or flood control or parks. It’s not. This is about the one thing everything is about sooner or…

What does it mean that Republicans and independents joined Democrats yesterday to shut down Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s anti-gun reform filibuster? It means Cruz lost a lot more than his filibuster. At a certain point — Cruz’s point — the gun reform debate ceases to be about guns and becomes…

Story in The New York Times this morning about efforts in the Texas Legislature to cut back testing and course requirements for graduation from high school. If you sort through, most the alligator-tears for poor kids supposedly being pushed to learn too much stuff come from tea party types like…