Last week when the Dallas City Council was deciding whether to donate public land for a private golf course venture in southern Dallas, I listened hard to council member Tennell Atkins. It’s easy for me to get dismissive about what I hear from Atkins sometimes. Maybe I need to listen…

Los Angeles Times political columnist and cartoonist David Horsey, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, authored a column and cartoon yesterday arguing that, “… there are way too many oddballs among us with violence on their minds and guns within reach.” I get the second part, about the guns. I’m…

Alright, believe it or not, this is a question, not a diatribe. I really do want to know. What is the downside of a ban on high-capacity ammo clips? First I should ask: Do you think high-capacity clips are a significant factor in gun slaughters? It seems to me they…

I am not calling names. If anything, I feel a certain admiration. The sheer audacity impresses me. And I do not know that it’s an all-bad thing. I just wonder if this can really work. This morning The Dallas Morning News, our city’s only daily newspaper, has a piece on…

Time to read the tea leaves. Avi Selk at The Dallas Morning News is report-tweeting this morning that the Irving City Council has slapped its mayor by voting to pay transportation consultant David Dean all of the two hundred grand he billed the city after his contract with the city…

Damn. Now I’m all in a twist. There are three separate stories in The New York Times today dealing directly or indirectly with my people. White people. I think I need some kind of a do-over on that whole “my people” question. Let me explain. First there’s a story quoting…

The concept of the cargo cult was invented by white anthropologists to explain the behavior of black Pacific Islanders. We shouldn’t be surprised if the concept came out making rich Europeans seem smarter than indigenous islanders. To the anthropologist belong the spoils, you know. But cargo cults really exist. They’re…

Lots of people have nightmares. I do. So what? I’ve never covered that up. I told you about the one in which I work for The Dallas Morning News and I have to go in every day and write positive stories about the Perot family. See also: – OK, We…

The cops still aren’t counting the cash drawer. Unbelievable. A decade after Dallas Police got caught running a massive scam out of their cash accounts, deliberately framing innocent people on fake drug charges in order to manipulate payments to fake informants, the Dallas city auditor has reported that the narcotics…

Last Thursday, New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks said Republicans, smarting from Mitt Romney’s defeat, have learned their lesson and are undergoing what Brooks described as a “glasnost,” a term defined by Merriam-Webster as, “a Soviet policy permitting open discussion of political and social issues and freer dissemination of…

This is just between us libtards, OK? The rest of you, if you don’t mind, could we have the room for a minute? You might want to step outside, check on your Tea Party stuff, see if any immigrant babies are making dirty bombs in your vicinity, something like that…

Attention-span test: You do remember … please tell me you remember … that they sprayed pesticide on you from airplanes last August. I am trying to find out if they plan to spray stuff on us again next summer. Apparently that will be up to the U.S. Centers for Disease…

So what was it — really — that got everybody so fired up about Bob Costas’ timid little attempt at a gun control message on Sunday Night Football last Sunday? Was it less about gun violence than the intrusion of real life into the violent dreamscape of professional football? In…

Today’s story in The New York Times about Hollywood coming to Pontiac, Michigan, is one long sad letter from home for me. I could almost laugh if I could just get over the temptation to cry. I worked at Pontiac Motors as a young man, in the Fisher Body plant…

Eric has already noticed The New York Times piece this morning focused on Dallas’ own G. Brint Ryan as a sort of national go-to fixer for companies seeking generous tax breaks from state and local government. The Times piece reports the hard side of those tax breaks — the screws…

Had it again last night. The nightmare. The one where I work for The Dallas Morning News. Woke up with the sweats. It’s always the same. The story meeting. In my dream the editor leading the meeting is this huge dude named Bob-George in a baggy gray suit and wingtips…

Two experts from the Monterrey Institute of International Studies have an op-ed piece in The New York Times this morning advocating the abandonment of the National Flood Insurance Program, which is about to stick us taxpayers for $57 billion in rebuilding costs from Hurricane Sandy. If the experts want to…

On November 22 of next year, Dallas will observe The 50th. No, not Dallas’ 50th. Not your 50th. THE 50th. The 50th anniversary of mm-mm. We’re not supposed to say what mm-mm is. At a media event last week to announce plans for The 50th, Mayor Mike Rawlings said, “The…

Two things to start. 1) Don’t know much about architecture. 2) Tim Rogers and his wife probably are not cannibals. Or anything like that. You know what I mean. Rogers, the editor of D Magazine, and his wife, Christine, part owner of a public relations company that has done work…