The $750,000 Ross Perot-funded survey of what’s good and bad about the Dallas Independent School District has become a giant Rorschach test. Every conceivable group has found something about it that offends them. The PTA governing board and two teachers’ unions voted recently not to support the survey. Then last…
What a difference a week makes. Seven days ago, as the Dallas Observer went to press, Paula Jones’ legal team was worrying about how to pick a sympathetic jury; this week, they’re worrying about whether their client has the stamina for a last-ditch appeal. On April Fools’ Day, federal District…
April fools We’d like to say it was a deliberate April Fools’ joke, but even Buzz, with our sometimes–ah–imaginative interpretation of the facts, can’t carry that one with a straight face. We’re referring to last week’s Dallas Observer cover story, “The Jones Boys,” about Paula Jones’ Dallas lawyers, who, we…
Oops When I read Christine Biederman’s piece “The Jones Boys,” I thought to myself, “This is something I’d expect to see in The Dallas Morning News. The Observer is really slipping.” Then I remembered: April Fools! Mitchell Crenshaw Via e-mail How ironic. You published Christine Biederman’s laudatory story on Rader,…
In TV soundbites, he is taut-faced and frenetic as he sputters and raves about the evils of the U.S. government. But late last week, from a cubicle at the Dallas County jail, Richard McLaren, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republic of Texas separatist movement, seemed surprisingly docile, relaxed, even convivial…
There were a couple of reasons why Hoover vs. Cain wasn’t your typical probate-court lawsuit. First was the case itself. Oh, sure, from the way 33-year-old Dallas lawyer Wes Holmes described the dispute to a panel of prospective jurors, it sounded ordinary: 28-year-old Melissa Rene McReynolds and her sister, 36-year-old…
A loose alliance of computer experts, dubbed the “Geek Garrison” by their leader, has descended on the Dallas Independent School District, demanding all of the district’s financial records for the last two decades. When they get it, the geeks plan to post all of the information on the World Wide…
Life doing a bad imitation of art When Buzz ran across the name Delvin J. Diles as one of two suspects charged in the abduction and murder of Plano stockbroker Frank Meziere, we did a double take. Delvin J. Diles. Where had we heard that name before? As it turns…
What began as an old-fashioned family feud in JP court culminated last week in U.S. District Court when jurors found that controversial Oak Cliff Justice of the Peace Thomas G. Jones conspired with Oak Cliff funeral operator Sandra Clark to arrest Inez Clark without probable cause. Although the jury only…
Goat massacre Re: “The goatslayers” [March 26]. It’s enough to make you sick! What an arrogant son of a bitch, this Jerry Jones. Of course, with a name like that, who’d-a thunk it! Anonymous Via e-mail When all other avenues of relocation have been been tried and exhausted, there may…
Head south out of Dallas, drive about an hour down I-35, and take a right once you get to Hillsboro. About 14 miles out of town on the pristine shores of Lake Whitney at the edge of the Hill Country sits the White Bluff Resort, a sanctuary of sorts for…
He is cute, almost cuddly, with a harmless smirk and a sandy mop that maintains its state of calculated dishevelment as he scampers about the soundstage, grabbing props, dropping jokes, chattering continuously like a rapper without a beat. He wears a tight, grass-green V-neck sweater, several braided string bracelets–the kind…
Vance Miller lies. So says a federal judge in ruling that the real estate magnate cannot keep his membership at pricey Preston Trail Golf Club while owing U.S. taxpayers $26 million. The scion of the Henry S. Miller real estate dynasty refuses to pay a whopping debt he owes on…
If there’s one lesson Alice Britt says she learned during her short tenure as the head of the city’s oldest job training and placement agency, it’s that doing a good job doesn’t pay. On March 16, Britt was stunned to learn that she was fired from her position as executive…
Look for the slavery label Congress has scheduled its first hearing on Saipan’s sweatshops, those bastions of free-market economics and indentured servitude so strongly endorsed by House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [“Our man in Saipan,” February 19]. On March 31, the Senate Energy and Resources Committee will hear the Clinton…
Family man I read with great interest your article titled “Rambo justice” [March 19]. Like dozens of other lawyers in this town, I, too, put in my time at Bickel & Brewer as an associate. During that time, I worked closely with Bill Brewer for nearly two years and got…
Dr. Dennis Birenbaum looks a little like a runaway chuck wagon as he rumbles down the hall of his Farmers Branch office. Short and wide, he clear-cuts a path through the lavender corridor, at once quizzing his office assistants, scanning a file, and filibustering an interviewer who has been hard-pressed…
This is where the plot was hatched–or so the story goes. Not in some smoke-filled room at City Hall where politicos broker deals that placate rather than please, not on the top floor of some downtown bank building where law firms send buttoned-down lawyers to fight for the status quo,…
When tenant organizer Dina Levy ventured out to Regis Square Apartments to inform residents that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development might cancel the complex’s federal rental-assistance contract, she expected some resistance from management. After all, Regis Square made the August 8 list of 450 properties targeted nationwide…
Run, Jesse, run? If things have been a bit too quiet lately on Dallas’ racial front, here’s a piece of news that promises to warm things up: Jesse Diaz is planning to run against County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Diaz, an activist with the League of United Latin American Citizens,…
Dallas Observer editor Julie Lyons has won the Unity Award in editorial writing for a series of four columns published in 1997 on problems in the Dallas Independent School District. The Unity Awards in Media, sponsored by Lincoln University of Missouri, honor outstanding coverage of minority issues. Lyons’ column “Bully…
Dah-veed’s cojones It’s ironic that after recently celebrating the local Rock en Espanol scene, your magazine would print a feature that criticizes David Garza for insisting “that his first name be pronounced Dah-veed in honor of his Mexican heritage” [“Deifying Dah-veed,” March 12]. It’s even more ironic that such a…
