Some good may come out of the Komen Foundation’s hard right turn on abortion this week. It was about time, anyway, for a fundamental re-examination of Komen by people committed to the cause of cancer research. You’ll find a good summary of reasons to be worried about giving to Komen,…
Let’s check back in, shall we, on our county’s “homeland security” program by which it is supposed to protect us from terrorist attack, massive flooding, tornado, pandemic, poison gas, things like that. I just want to see if we all understand what took place last week, and then I will…
May I offer one more word about Joseph Drake, the Dallas teacher put on suspension last week after sending an argumentative email to school board member Edwin (“Snidely Whiplash”) Flores? Fourth-grade teacher Joseph Drake, who told Flores that his depiction of teachers as lazy slug-a-beds was demeaning, has now been…
Dallas City Councilman Dwaine Caraway bushwacked his way through the forest along the Trinity River this morning to see for himself the place where pig blood from a packing plant turned the river red. “I am in no way trying to interfere with the city’s official investigation of this matter,”…
By now you’re probably aware that an unnamed DISD teacher is trying to organize a “Leap Day” sick-out protest by Dallas public school teachers. I hope it’s just the beginning. I want to suggest a bunch of other ways public school teachers can get around the state’s stupid “right to…
The back and forth between the city and Columbia Packing Pant on the January 19 river-of-pig-blood incident is fascinating on a bunch of levels. If nothing else, it would seem to raise urgent questions about the way industrial facilities all over Dallas pump waste into the city’s sanitary sewer system…
The worst thing that happens in this town, and it happens on a cyclical basis, is the official Scarlet Letter shunning of some person who did the right thing. It’s happening again. Two real estate outfits in Dallas, Odyssey Residential and Frazier Revitalization, are fighting for the same $20 million-plus…
Did anybody else feel less than homeland-secure after yesterday’s fandango with the Dallas County Homeland Security Advisory Committee? First, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price tried to re-appoint to the committee the founder of an international anti-Semitic hate group — a guy best known locally for threatening to bring rifles…
It looks like Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, long a puppet of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, finally has hit the Price wall. Jenkins has stopped action on the appointment of Price protégé Aaron McCarthy, aka Aaron Michaels, to the county’s “homeland security advisory committee,” whatever the hell that’s…
Two years ago I toured the area around Columbia Packing Company on East 11th Street in Oak Cliff with city council member Dwaine Caraway and his wife, state Representative Barbara Mallory Caraway. The Caraways told me shocking stories of guts from nearby meat-packing operations piled in steaming heaps in the…
Wait a minute. Forgive me, but I must misuse and abuse a bit of Dylan Thomas here to suggest we should not let Rick Perry go quite so gentle into that good night. I’m reading a lot of crap about how he bombed in his presidential campaign because he was…
Rick Perry wasn’t able to seize private property and build a Spanish toll road four football fields wide from Mexico to Oklahoma. He’s probably not going to get away with making academic research illegal. But his legacy may be even bigger. By the time he’s done being our governor, Perry…
Three weeks ago I wrote a column for the paper about a plan to pump drinking water from Lake Texoma even though the lake is contaminated by zebra mussels, an invasive species that can annihilate other animal life in a lake and promote blooms of toxic algae. We here in…
If Rick Perry still considers himself a candidate for president, then I get to consider him one too. I think I’m justified in remarking on the 180-degree turnabout Gov. Perry has made in his basic worldview since beginning this quest. You remember the original Perry line when it started, right?…
Stories in today’s Dallas Morning News and New York Times report that American Airlines could try to ditch some or all of its pension plans during its trip through bankruptcy court. We should all hate that. Every time we allow another business to slash the throats of its own retirees,…
Man, talk about whistling past the graveyard. At yesterday’s Dallas City Council meeting, council members Tennell Atkins and Delia Jasso asked good questions about the city’s flood control plans, and City Manager Mary Suhm and her assistant, Jill Jordan, gave good answers. But it was all deck chairs on the…
Everybody I talk to thinks the FBI Dallas County corruption investigation will produce indictments soon. The rumor is that the targeted alleged co-conspirators are tattling on each other so fast they’re giving new meaning to the phrase “rat race.” The investigation centers on Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, the…
In all of the hoopla over the impending opening of the new Calatrava bridge over the Trinity River, please remember what that bridge really stands for and why it’s there. It stands for the ruination of what could have been the world’s greatest urban park. Remember that in the run-up…
A very long time ago when I was a young police reporter, I asked a grizzled homicide cop why he thought someone had slashed the young woman lying dead before us into one big bowl of Frito pie. He thought about it, put a hand on my shoulder and said,…
Drive around Dallas — not the suburbs, Dallas — and what do you see? You see a nice kind of new well-kept Dallas toward the northern end of the city, with a few glitches here and there. But anywhere south of Mockingbird you’re likely to see a bunch of crapped-out…
Still can’t get past the lawyer for the owner of the boycotted Shamrock gas station I wrote about yesterday. Busy. Says he’ll call me back later. I called him this morning to say I still need to hear the owner’s side. Here’s my problem. Yesterday the lawyer wouldn’t or could…
Well, I think my hat-cam is going to change my life. Now I can take you along on my daily adventures. You don’t especially want to go? Come on. Try it. Be a sport. What I do every day may not be high drama, but it beats working. I go…
