Does public housing, including Section 8 vouchers that help poor people pay rent, and other “dispersal” programs, cause crime? A reader commenting on an item posted here at the end of last week cited an article published in The Atlantic magazine in 2008, called “American Murder Mystery,” saying pretty much…

Who’s a liberal these days, and who are the conservatives? I look in the mirror, I don’t even know. I look in The New York Times this morning, I’m even more confused. The Times has a story out of Miami about major cuts in federal housing subsidies. The story calls…

This Texas Republican primary for United States Senate is very compelling in a totally sick twisted way. The opponents are attacking our former mayor Tom Leppert for his few good qualities. Very few. Needles in a haystack of bad. But his opponents have found those rare needles of good in…

How much is 20 million bucks? Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced last week he is putting together a $20 million private investment fund to spur economic activity in the city’s beleaguered southern half. So, how much is that? What does 20 million bucks buy for you these days? I have…

So the city council is actually going to put itself through another ethics reform debate. They do this every year. It keeps coming around again on a regular cycle like some kind of unpleasant bodily function. Ask me. I know why. It keeps coming up again because it’s absolutely lipstick-on-a-pig…

Drug arrests at Texas Christian University certainly have seized everybody’s attention around the country. But surely it’s not because people are shocked, shocked to find drugs on a college campus. Probably has more to do with the close juxtaposition of the words “drug raid” and “Christian.” But who cares why…

Sad Philadelphia story in the morning papers: The company that publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com is negotiating to sell all three entities to a cabal of rich, powerful politicians. In a heart-rending op-ed piece in The New York Times, veteran Philadelphia reporter Buzz Bissinger says…

I need to talk about Kenya, but the larger conversation is about Dallas and especially poor minority Dallas. So I see in advance that some people will think I must be a racist idiot. What kind of racist idiot would draw parallels between Africa and southern Dallas? The short answer,…

Connecting some dots in today’s newspapers: Apparently the real story in America today is that we despise the poor and consider them to be less than human pieces of shit, while we absolutely worship money and are crack-addicted to personal luxury. Maybe the day’s worst story anywhere in America about…

I don’t want to suggest that my wife is a sharp stick in the eye, but from time to time she does like to “point things out.” To me. So this morning when I reached for the place on the bedstead where I had neatly and carefully laid out my…

Let me role-play this thing. I’m Daddy Jimbucks, sitting on a pile of dough. Maybe I’m looking for an investment. Maybe not. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is in my office pitching a major initiative to create prosperity in southern Dallas on terrain that has been racially segregated, bitterly poor and…

Ah, wait a minute, hold up one second. I spy a small but significant, history-bending, rug-sweeping moment occurring on this morning’s editorial page of our city’s daily newspaper. Let me take one minute to remind us what’s under that rug. The Dallas Morning News has the whole trumpet section, the…

Talk about mixed feelings. I’m trying hard to be honest with myself about the big blow-up over the Dallas school system spending $57,000 yesterday to take 5,000 fifth-grade boys to a war movie while the fifth-grade girls had to stay back at school to watch a movie about a spelling…

State Rep. Eric Johnson, Democrat of southern Dallas and Mesquite, has an essay on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News today describing Fair Park as a “powerful economic engine” and a “jewel of our city” whose economic power should be harnessed to improve life in surrounding poor neighborhoods…

This is how far behind the curve I am. The Dallas City Council is tied up in knots debating how to develop a successful horse park in a poor part of the city. I’m asking myself, “What the hell is a horse park?” Is it like a dog park? People…

We still have to read between the lines to glimpse the bottom line on the Komen Foundation’s attack on Planned Parenthood, but the slowly emerging truth of the matter doesn’t bode well. Karen Handel, the Komen executive who resigned yesterday, has a weird talent for letting the cat out of…

Oh, boy. Another chance to say something good about Detroit. Nothing gets a bigger rise out of a certain element among you loyal Lawners than when I utter anything even faintly complimentary about my hometown. For reasons I may never fully understand, I would incite less mouth-foaming if I sang…

Wait, wait. We haven’t finished the conversation yet about whether Rick Perry has embarrassed Texas so badly we can never again show our faces outside the state. Are you telling me now we’ve got to have the same conversation already about Nancy Brinker? What if people start connecting the dots?…