Imagine you’re Tom Pauken. You’re running a long-shot gubernatorial primary campaign against Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is better known, better funded and has already been christened “The Gov” by Texas Monthly. How can you possibly elbow your way into the narrow space to Abbott’s right? You do it the…
State Senator Troy Fraser had clearly been spoiling to tee off on Texas’ electric regulators. At a committee hearing Monday, Fraser excoriated Texas Public Utility commissioners Donna Nelson and Brandy Marty for proposing changes to the state’s electric marketplace that could cost Texans billions of dollars. In a series of…
Placing tough new rules on abortion clinics is just common sense, according to common sense fanatic Rick Perry. He says that House Bill 2–the new law requiring all abortions to be performed in surgical centers, by a doctor with admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles — will ensure…
Update at 3:32 p.m.Allow us to tip our hats to the hard-nosed reporters at NBC 5 who refused to give up on the trapped-puppy story. They braved several hours of near-freezing temps and were ultimately on hand to witness the dog’s rescue. City spokesman Frank Librio sends an email explaining…
If high-speed rail is to exist in Texas over the next several decades, it won’t be the work of the federal or the state government. Though the state has been exploring the idea for close to three decades, there’s no money on the table and little political will to put…
Shortly after former Senator Rick Santorum took the reins as CEO of Dallas’ EchoLight Studios, he began pimping “The Christmas Candle,” a holiday parable about the residents of a quaint English village protecting traditional values (a miracle-producing candle) against the forces of modernity (electricity). The film “hearkens back to the…
Legend has it that the slaves who once labored in the fields of the LeBeau Plantation never entirely left. Cruelly mistreated, some to their death, their restless spirits wandered through their master’s sprawling mansion, taking revenge upon its occupants. One by one, the LeBeau family was driven mad, two of…
As light rain fell from a dull gray sky onto the crowd bracing against the Arctic blast just down Main from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza Friday, I became depressed at the caliber of craven I’d encountered so far on the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Apart from a…
Update at 1:22 p.m.: John Wright reports that the Human Rights Campaign has lowered Dallas’ score from 85 to 81 after realizing the city doesn’t have an “equal benefits ordinance.” We’ve included HRC’s full explanation for Dallas increased score at the end of the post. Original post Good news everyone!…
It’s been two years to the day since a group of kids, aged 12-15, shoved 19-year-old Octavius Lanier into a moving DART train while trying to rob him of his cell phone at MLK Station. Lanier, who was on his way home from a doctor’s appointment, was dragged for about…
Governor Rick Perry’s newest appointee may have broken the deadlock at the Public Utility Commission of Texas, but rigging the electricity marketplace to benefit large generators won’t happen without drawing blood. At a PUC meeting late last month, Commissioners Donna Nelson and Brandy Marty each signaled their intention to set…
If you’re planning a weekend getaway to University Park and hope to capture the authentic Park Cities experience of living in an overpriced home on an absurdly expensive postage stamp of land, you’d better act fast. The City Council there is mulling a crackdown on short-term leases of single-family homes…
Visibility was limited as Alexander Ryan Jones, 19, rode his bike across Weldon Street at 9:35 p.m. It was dark and rainy, and there was a wall in the median where a ramp descends into the Cityplace parking garage. According to police, neither he nor the person he was riding…
In last year’s cover story on Deion Sanders’ Prime Prep Academy, we described D.L. Wallace as little more than a snake-oil salesman. Last month, just before Sanders was briefly fired, he called his business partner a “snake.” Whatever the preferred moniker, the Prime Prep co-founder and CEO is gone. He…
Behold, the George W. Bush Presidential Center 2013 Christmas Ornament, the perfect way to fill that bare spot on your Christmas tree and the only holiday decoration, probably ever, to be painted by a former leader of the free world. Dubya first painted the cardinal as a gift for former…
Dallas police officer Christopher Watson didn’t pull the trigger on Bobby Gerald Bennett, the mentally ill man shot in Rylie last month. That was his partner Carden Spencer, who was fired and may face criminal charges. What Watson did was tell investigators, on two separate occasions, that when the officers…
In the real world, jewelry store heists don’t typically play out like they do in Hollywood. Sunday morning’s holdup of a jewelry store in Irving was an exception. Irving police have released surveillance footage of the robbery showing seven masked individuals, several carrying handguns, smashing through a locked a glass…
Years from now, Americans will look back on the events at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 2013 as a turning point in the fight for liberty. They will remember how Dallas police rolled through downtown on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, punishing any deviation from the officially…
Surely you recall James Dondero, the high-powered Dallas hedge fund manager who spends his leisure time dining on giraffe, jamming to Steve Winwood, and becoming embroiled in ridiculously messy legal feuds. Last we checked some 17 months ago, Dondero was legal-feuding with two people. One was his wife, whom he…
According to the natural gas industry, states are doing a really, really great job of keeping a tough eye on the natural gas industry. “State regulators have done an awfully good job,” says the CEO of one energy company. “States are doing a good job of regulating hydraulic fracturing,” adds…
It wasn’t that long ago that Frisco’s embrace of Christ’s birth was so suffocatingly full-bodied that the Washington Post’s Hank Stuever embedded himself there for three holiday seasons for Tinsel, his book exploring the gaudy excess of the modern American Christmas celebration. How quickly things change. This year, just five…
Jeremy Varnell’s family didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when the Flower Mound police sergeant left town to run in Sunday’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon in San Antonio. The friends he dined with after the race didn’t either. The first hint that something might be wrong came the next…
