The old Rick Perry — back before he discovered the Tea Party — would have swept into Dallas on a white horse shootin’ his Ruger and kickin’ up dust to defend the embattled Medrano family, accused of faking a family member’s voter residency in a justice of the peace election…

OK, I do understand that we’re all primed now to string up the entire Medrano family for a massive vote fraud conspiracy bordering on terrorism, communism and cannibalism. All I want to do is toss out a couple modest words of caution. The Dallas Morning News has a lead editorial…

Ben Eine, the international street-art star and former graffiti fugitive, was out on Fort Worth Avenue this afternoon painting a mammoth graffiti-style mural based on his tag — EYN — on the side of a building. Listen: This is huge.Earlier this year Eine was given a big wall to paint…

I’ve been on Rick Perry Watch for several weeks, working on a feature story about him. I think I’m going to be able to break the news that he’s serious about running for president. Just kidding. I’ll try to do better than that. But, man, everybody in American journalism is…

I was waiting for Dallas’s new mayor, Mike Rawlings, to tell us what he has decided about building a new expressway out between the flood control levees along the Trinity River — where it floods — but instead today he has told us how he feels about SMU football. And…

Writer and radio journalist Julia Barton, a regular reader of Unfair Park, tipped me today to a really fascinating piece published September 1 by BusinessWeek, called “The God Clause and the Reinsurance Industry.” It’s about an arcane industry located in cities far from Dallas, but Barton spied that the story…

Oh, wouldn’t you know I’d wind up agreeing with my opponent? You know what’s wrong with me? I am just too damn much of a sweetheart, that’s my problem. Too nice, too smart, too good-lookin’. I’ve got to drop at least one just to make things fair. So this morning…

I was out running traps this morning on the ongoing FBI Dallas political corruption investigation, and guess whose path I crossed? My own. A lawyer I called said my call was fortuitous because he happened to be in the process at that very moment of writing a letter to the…

I was of little faith. I freely admit that. See, I thought Mike Rawlings, Dallas’ new mayor, was bailing on us. But he said no. We spoke last week, and he reiterated his commitment to banning lobbying by political consultants at City Hall. “The big issue is that we cannot…

When Rick Perry takes a shot at Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, you can kind of imagine him twirling that laser-sighted .380 Ruger coyote-killer of his on an index finger. When Richard Fisher does it — he’s the Harvard-grad president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank…

The idea of formal rules for the economic treatment of minorities originally had to do with employment, starting in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy with Executive Order 10925. The idea was really for the federal government to set an example. If you were a federal agency or contractor, you…

Even D Magazine, which for years operated as a kind of billboard for the Trinity River toll road project, has given up on it. The Dallas Morning News has admitted it got conned. But the thing doesn’t die. It’s the Dracula of local public works projects. Hammer a stake in…

Get your rubber boots out and put a clothespin on your nose. Large numbers of chickens will be coming home to roost in Dallas in the weeks ahead, as homeowners in Dallas come to grips with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new flood maps for most of Dallas. The maps…

When Dallas City Hall decides to compete with you in your business, watch out, because they don’t really have to compete. They just pass laws. The controversy over so-called “flow control” is a great example. Flow control is a move to force trash-haulers to stop taking trash to commercial landfills…

The current issue of Texas Monthly takes on the Dallas FBI corruption probe, sort of, in a “Behind the Lines” essay by deputy editor Brian D. Sweany. His central thesis is that we have a lot of corruption in Dallas, because “The old racist order presented few pathways to power…

I was of little faith. I freely admit. I thought Mike Rawlings was bailing on us. But he said no. We spoke yesterday, shortly before he released his list of council committee appointments, and our new mayor reiterated his commitment to a ban on City Hall lobbying by political consultants…

So, pretend I’m the jury pool consultant. Pretend ace white-collar criminal lawyer Billy Ravkind hired me to advise him on the mood and mindset of potential jurors in the eventual and inevitable federal corruption trial of his client, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, currently the target of a metastasizing…

What I like to say is I told you so. What I do not like to say is I’m full of it. I am not saying I am full of it. But I guess I might be at about a quarter tank. Possibly a third. Yesterday I talked about how…

The current issue of Texas Monthly takes on the Dallas FBI corruption investigation, sort of, in a “Behind the Lines” essay by deputy editor Brian D. Sweany. He invokes Dallas, the TV show, and another TV show, The Wire, to conclude that, “Like any good drama, it may take a…

Who else but Dallas City Hall could take a simple thing like kayaking and turn it into snaggle-clawed sulfurous lawsuit hell? But that’s what I smell ahead for the Dallas Wave, the fake whitewater thing the city has created in the Trinity River. For two weeks I have been trying…

I hate to say I told you so … no, wait, that’s a lie. I love to say I told you so. A week ago I said in column that we were about to see a lot of high opera in the John Wiley Price FBI corruption investigation. The season…