Story by Rudy Bush in today’s Dallas Morning Pravda about plans to refurbish Dealey Plaza, the place where Dallas killed Kennedy. Typical straight-up just-the-facts news objective reporting, don’t you know. Except the story ends with a fund-raising appeal: “Those interested in providing assistance can donate to the Dealey Plaza Restoration…
Looks like the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission may have written the last sordid act in the ugly saga of Thomas Pak and the Shamrock Kwik Stop on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Records released yesterday reveal a settlement last August between Pak and the state alcohol agency by which Pak…
Education historian Jonathan Zimmerman has a provocative piece on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News today proposing that people in general and liberals in particular should support the right of cheerleaders in Kountze, Texas, to display religious banners at public school football games. Zimmerman, author of Small Wonder:…
The one thing they say about federal time: You do have to do it. The feds won’t give you a get-out-of-jail-free card. But in 1998 when notorious Dallas real estate swindler Danny Faulkner talked his way out of the pen after serving only four years of a 20-year sentence, nobody…
Oh, boy. We all get to go see the Chihuly fake flower show at the Dallas Arboretum for free! I just saw the press release. The Arboretum is throwing open its doors and letting us all in to see the fake flower show as a holiday gift to the City of…
Is it just me, or is there a great big hole in the Lance Armstrong story? When do we start talking about him as the one of the world’s biggest dope pushers? When does Lance Armstrong’s name get tied to child drug addiction? See also: Lance Armstrong Will Step Down…
Yesterday the Dallas Park Board approved plans for a new rowing club boathouse on White Rock Lake. It’s going to be right in the way of my yacht when I’m trying to get in and out of there, and I’m worried about spilling my Champagne. See also: – Now We…
The lead editorial on The Dallas Morning News editorial page today is standard fare from the powers-that-be reminding all of us little people to vote in favor of the city’s $642 million bond program on the ballot November 6. The editorial ticks off all the stuff in the bond proposal…
OK, they’re finally getting down to the part of the last presidential debate I care about, accents and manners. So I have questions. The New York Times has a piece on its local page today about how New Yorky and Jewish the last debate was, because most of the people…
Last year, D Magazine Editor Tim Rogers wrote a portrait of Barrett Brown, who claims to be a spokesman for the hacktivist group Anonymous. Rogers won a much-deserved National Magazine Award for the piece, from which emerged a bright, alternately charming and irritating, always interesting, profoundly screwed-up young man. My…
A federal judge has ruled that the City of Dallas pretty much lied about every single aspect of its so-called “flow-control” trash program. Judge Reed O’Connor granted a permanent injunction against a new city ordinance that would have forced commercial haulers to take their trash to the city-owned dump instead…
Houston Republican Dan Patrick — a conservative radio shock jock and founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the Texas Senate — is vowing to lead the charge in the next session of the Texas Legislature for a school voucher system that would give away tax money to private and…
OK. Now I get why the FBI is taking so long with the investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. They actually have to figure out all the stuff I can just paint as colorful drama. And they’re doing it. I haven’t been keeping up with my John Wiley…
Lead editorial in The New York Times this morning — “If Roe v Wade Goes” — got me thinking: Let’s say the Romney/Ryan ticket wins. How long will it take for Texas to make abortion illegal? See also: Rambo Romney Should Call for Restarting the Draft Romney used to support…
There’s a briefing for council today on whether or not our public library system sucks. Looks like the verdict will be that it does not totally suck, but it should, because we do. The briefing is based on a nationwide bench-marking system Dallas participates in with most other second-tier cities…
Let’s say Abigail Noel Fisher wins her appeal now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s say a more conservative court backtracks on earlier opinions supporting the use of race as an admissions criterion at the University of Texas and tells the university to stop considering race altogether. So, what…
There’s a danger in getting too invested in presidential debates and the whole national political saga, gripping as it may be. By turning our faces to bright lights far away, we risk forgetting just how dark things could get here at home in November. The Tea Party is poised to…
Hey, by any chance did you catch Dale Hansen last night on Channel 8 talking about that poor kid at TCU who got kicked off the football team for misbehavior? Man, I’m telling you: sometimes Hansen is my mullah. He was talking about somebody who had written him saying we…
Do you have to be from Michigan to get what Mitt Romney’s really all about? He repeats that stand-up-to-China line over and over again on the campaign trail to make himself look tough, but meanwhile Bain Capital, his own company, makes hundreds of millions in profits buying up American car-parts…
As Eric noted earlier, there’s a hilarious kind of stand-off going on these days between Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who says petty theft rates in the city have fallen because of his own tough police work, and Dallas Morning News reporters Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer, who proved in…
OK, we start with a cartoon on the web site of the McKinney Tea Party, depicting President Obama as a high-stepping, vaguely simian character dressed as a trumpeter in a marching band. The headline is “McKinney Sustainability Plan.” A label over the president identifies him as, “Dear Leader Obama.” According…
Latest twist in the great imaginary vote fraud epidemic of 2012: Now Republicans are nabbed doing exactly the same stuff they have accused Democrats of doing. In a piece in this morning’s New York Times we get a peek at voter hanky-panky, GOP-style. An operative named Nathan Sproul, who has…
