Clint Eastwood’s last name ought to be Sheen or at least Estevez. Before Charlie’s Platoon, before Martin’s Apocalypse Now, there was Clint’s Kelly’s Heroes. This film is just as smart as any subversive war film ever made, but in a decidedly unfunny genre it’s also hilarious. Three Kings may have…
Iraq today is a lot like Spain after its fascist dictatorship ended in 1978. Spain had mutually hostile provinces and well-armed terrorist groups. So what kept Spain from bloody anarchy? Clearly not the legions of U.S. troops stationed there. No, it was the fabulous food (it’s hard to fight in…
It was still dark on Tuesday morning when Lawrence Crader got on the bus and settled in for 20-plus hours on the road. He was eager to get started, though the destination wasn’t the one he’d prefer. The two buses leaving from East Dallas, loaded with around 80 Hurricane Katrina…
Room 115 in Stearns Hall on the campus of Dallas Theological Seminary could be a classroom at any American college. The long, pale blue countertops dotted with laptop-friendly outlets are arranged in tiers rising away from the lectern at the front of the room. Most of the 70 padded seats…
The idea of leotard-clad Francophones forming a mystical circus troupe is so good it bears repeating. At least, that’s what the Cirque Éloize folks thought when they styled their show after the venerable Cirque du Soleil 12 years ago. In fact, they don’t even mind copying themselves on their press…
It has become a pattern: Fail in Iraq, write a book. Bush, the commander-in-chief, had Bob Woodward do it for him. Janice Karpinsky, the Abu Ghraib commander, did it. Judy Miller, the WMD cheerleader, is doing it. Now comes Paul Bremer’s entry. Under Bremer’s leadership, the post-invasion government of Iraq,…
It has become a pattern: Fail in Iraq, write a book. Bush, the commander-in-chief, had Bob Woodward do it for him. Janice Karpinsky, the Abu Ghraib commander, did it. Judy Miller, the WMD cheerleader, is doing it. Now comes Paul Bremer’s entry. Under Bremer’s leadership, the post-invasion government of Iraq,…
In the 17 months that Susana Loera worked at the Mexican Consulate in Dallas, she was horrified by what she saw. She and others at the diplomatic mission say that her boss, Mexican Vice Consul Luis Lara, regularly advised his compatriots charged with crimes in the United States to flee…
If Benjamin Franklin were alive on his 300th birthday, it’s not entirely clear what kind of reception he would get in Fort Worth. Yankee, Francophile, left-wing journalist, avowed secularist and legendary womanizer—OK, we know exactly what kind of reception he’d get. Luckily, Franklin’s dead, and his place on the $100…
Let’s face it–the main attraction of the film Groundhog Day isn’t Bill Murray. Sure, his trademark phlegmatic delivery, patronizing and pathetic at the same time, is a perfect fit, but the real lure is the concept of the do-over. Murray’s character lives a scenario we all dream about: to redo…
Susana Loera remembers the first time she heard her boss tell somebody to break the law. It was in early 2004, and the parents of a Mexican man arrested in Dallas had come to the consulate seeking advice. Luis Lara, Mexican vice consul for protection, found out that U.S. immigration…
For most, last month’s decision in Washington to exempt Missouri from the Wright Amendment was good news. Southwest Airlines was suddenly allowed to fly nonstop to Missouri, and overnight, the bottom dropped out of fares. For American Airlines, however, the move placed the company in the uncomfortable position of both…
The relationship between Dr. Rebecca Bridges and the woman known as Jane Doe is by all accounts a troubled one. Describing it any further becomes a challenge, not because of a lack of apt labels, but because of an overabundance of them. Depending on whom you ask, the duo could…
Katie Neason sat with her sisters Helen, Dorothy and Pat in the dining room at the Quality Inn, her expression grave. The day before, the four sisters had watched in horror as their native New Orleans was consumed by the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Now, on an incongruously sunny Tuesday…
Ashok Padmanabahn is nobody’s fool. He’s a computer engineer, working on the next generation of display technology at the large Texas Instruments campus off of Forest Lane. He owned his own technology company in India before he signed a two-year contract to come to the United States in 2004, and…
Truth be told: When U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers takes the oath to tell the whole truth to the Senate Judiciary Committee next month, you might see former Texas Lottery Executive Director Lawrence Littwin in the gallery, smiling. He tried to get Miers to testify under oath six years…
The first thing that catches your eye when you walk into Bajito Onda is the prison art. A four-panel screen near the front entrance is covered in it, as are most of the nearby walls. More boards and canvases lean against the baseboard, stacked three deep. The painstakingly crafted images…
Mario Torres doesn’t look like a publicity stunt. With unruly, spiky hair, a crooked grin and freckles, he doesn’t come off as a role model, either. In fact, the 23-year-old’s wiry frame hardly seems sturdy enough to support his own dreams, let alone those of Dallas’ Hispanic community and its…
“Let me set up a, what do you call it, a hypothetical for you,” Dawn Nettles says in her Texas drawl, her voice roughened around the edges by her daily pack of Misty menthols. “Let’s say you’re the boss of a company, and you give one of your employees a…
We squeeze through a hole cut in the chain-link fence and crunch across a gravel yard, using the moonlight to avoid the crates and pipes scattered among the weeds. The factory complex is enormous, with cavernous white metal buildings two or three stories high in some places. On one roof…
PALESTINE–They don’t actually roll up the sidewalks in Palestine on Sundays, but it’s fair to say that if they did, no one would be bothered much. The Rockwellian downtown of this East Texas town of 18,000 lies deserted under the noonday sun on March 20, the stillness broken only by…
For banana growers, the pesticide DBCP seemed like a godsend when it came on the market in the 1960s. The chemical has no equal for killing parasites that can devastate a banana crop. But DBCP proved to be uniquely effective for another purpose as well: sterilizing the men who worked…
