What, no lawsuit?: Civil rights lawyer Mike Daniel didn’t even wait for us to ask a question when he answered the phone. So, he said laughing, the Observer wants to know where’s the lawsuit in the fight over Cliff Manor, the Dallas Housing Authority apartment building at the center of…
English spoken here: This week, as part of a series on illegal immigration by the Observer and our sister papers at Village Voice Media, we bring you our cover story, “Seized,” by Phoenix New Times reporter Monica Alonzo. It’s a brutal read about the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of…
“I stereotype. It’s faster.” —George Clooney in Up in the Air Meet your neighbors: The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has joined a nationwide hunt for information about the FBI’s effort “to collect information about and map so-called ‘ethnic-oriented’ businesses, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with…
Is this thing on?: Last week, Buzz revealed our brilliant plan for a compromise on the fight over Love Field concessions contracts. Our scheme involved the city council bargaining with the companies selling food, drink and retail goods at the airport to get the companies to pay their workers better…
Show some Love: Buzz is so proud. All on our own, we’ve come up with a compromise in a battle that has split our beloved city council and reopened racial divides, tearing a hole in our civic-minded heart. In case you’ve forgotten: The council is divided over whether to give…
Over here on that other Dallas Observer blog, Unfair Park, sometime City of Ater Andrea Grimes has the latest word on Taste of Dallas, which begins tonight on continues through Sunday at Fair Park. Don’t feel like clicking over to read the news about Andrea’s appearance as a judge for…
Sorry: Buzz was hoping to bring you our usual 425 words of thoughtful, impactful reportage on Issues of Major Importance, but it turns out that all the people involved in IMIs are on vacation or out of town for the July 4 holiday. Now, deadline approaches, and we’re left scraping…
Ah, Independence Day. Nothing quite says “celebrate America” like the combination of barbecue, explosives, martial music and getting wasted. So here’s a list…(riiiiiip sound of needle being dragged across vinyl record). OK, wait right there. Earlier this week City of Ater Alice Laussade was invited to move her pinko butt…
In a bit of tangentially related-to-food news, the Texas Department of Transportation is reporting that the state’s motorists are doing much better at keeping food-related trash off Texas roadways. Smokers, however, are pigs. TxDOT reported this week that food-related trash items, “which for years have been nearly tied with tobacco…
Insane in the membrane: It’s gotta be a brain tumor. What else can explain the words our tree-hugging fingers are about to type? To wit: U.S. Representative Joe Barton might have had a (garbled) point when he apologized last week to BP chief Tony Hayward. His first apology, we mean,…
Over on our news blog, Unfair Park, Robert “Fingers of Fury” Wilonsky has the latest word on the debate over how exactly City Hall will regulate the growing number of small farmers markets sprouting up around town. Fresh food fans should check out Wilonsky’s post. If you’re too busy, however,…
Damned if you do: Short of handing his testicles to Republican County Commissioner Ken Mayfield to wear as cufflinks, what exactly could District Attorney Craig Watkins do to please those—like the local GOP and Morning News—who criticize his handling of the investigation into allegations of corruption by Constable Jaime Cortes?…
Thought police: As a proud libtard, Buzz is appalled by anything the Texas State Board of Education does (including breathing). So, we shook our libtard head last month when the conservative-dominated SBOE passed its revised social studies curriculum. It took a last-minute reprieve to keep Thomas Jefferson on the list…
Campaign dish: In the interest of fairness, Buzz offers you the following information: Republican County Commissioner Maurine Dickey often uses campaign funds to purchase food from Dickey’s Barbecue Pit. Her campaign spent more than $14,000 between 2007 and 2009 at the restaurant chain she and her husband own, all to…
Forgive and forget: Man, them Dallas County Republicans are coldhearted. Four local Democratic officeholders have atoned for their transgressions, got right with their higher powers, made searching and fearless moral inventories, humbly asked God to remove their shortcomings and followed the hallowed 12 steps into recovery. Any decent person would…
And the wiener is: Let’s send a big horseshoe-shaped wreath of flowers to state Representative Debbie Riddle, winner of the demagogue sweepstakes to be the first Texas legislator to propose introducing a Texas version of Arizona’s recently enacted SB 1070, also known as the Roust the Brown People Act. Buzz…
America needs consumers to get this country’s economy humming–not just today but in the future, when hordes of us will be old and counting on those government checks. So, if you’re a parent, do your part for Uncle Sam and haul your tykes to the Dallas Kids Expo, Saturday and…
Back in the DSSR: We hate to say it, but what if the Tea Party people are right? Sure, they may look like wacky gun-loving, government-hating, thin-lipped, bigoted, paranoid loons. Completely deranged, ignorant…wait, we’ve lost our point here. Oh, yeah. What if they’re correct? What if there is a subtle…
Picky: This is the trouble with Dallas: nitpickers. Whenever the city begins to make some progress, out they come with the complaints. Take the city’s decision to go ahead with plans to build a whitewater kayaking facility on the Trinity River. “Hey, that sounds fun,” right-thinking people say, but then…
A district attorney in Wisconsin has threatened to prosecute teachers who follow a new state law that bans abstinence-only sex education and requires sex-education classes to provide age-appropriate information. That’s not exactly surprising coming from a people who call themselves cheeseheads, but then, Texans have nothing to brag about when…
Whatever happened to good ol’ cheerful propaganda? You know, like in the ’30s when the world was in the shit, and theater gave us dancing gold diggers happily singing, “We’re in the money.” Sure, it was whistling past a graveyard, but that’s better than staring into the graveyard. We say…
Salud!: Because Buzz figures anyone who reads us is drunk, this week we take another look at Progress Dallas’ effort to secure a vote to change the dry laws in the city. The group—led by retailers and restaurateurs—wants to allow beer and wine sales in grocery stores and eliminate rules…
