Last week, as they City Council was being briefed on the still very incomplete effort to end chronic homelessness in Dallas, a frustrated Dwaine Caraway proposed a surefire solution: Why not round up the homeless people, stick them on a Greyhound bus, and send them back to where they came…
Joe Barton, the Republican Congressman representing Arlington and its environs, has never been shy about expressing his skepticism about global warming. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he launched an investigation into a pair of studies that documented a dramatic spike in global temperatures, sparred with Al…
Congratulations, Texas! After a lot of hard work and many long nights, we’re number one in the nation for repeat teen births. According to the Centers for Disease Control, which released a new report on April 2, in 2010, 22 percent of Texas teenagers aged 15-19 who gave birth were…
As they try to carve out a permanent niche in the ultra-competitive American car market, Tesla and billionaire founder Elon Musk have had to position themselves as sprightly Davids disrupting the lumbering Goliaths of Detroit and Japan. They have no other choice. They can’t afford the untold billions legacy automakers…
In February, a DART committee gave preliminary approval to a plan to extend employment benefits to employees’ domestic partners, both gay and straight, and their children. It was a welcome decision, and it gave hope that, after six month of debate over costs and morality, approval by the full DART…
In 2006, with the controversy over its ultimately successful bid to house the Bush Presidential Center very much brewing, SMU set to work establishing the Embrey Human Rights Program. It was a pioneering effort that aimed to raise awareness of global social justice issues and perhaps inspire students to pursue…
The community of maternal marijuana legalization activists was rocked this past weekend when a cannabis quilt, the product of two years and more than 70 pairs of hands, was stolen from atop a Ford Explorer parked at the CVS on Thornton Lane in Irving. The quilt, self consciously modeled on…
Subrina Brenham, the businesswoman challenging Tennell Atkins in the District 8 City Council race, was driving along Lancaster Road this morning when she noticed something odd: One of her campaign signs, the large rectangular variety you see plastered on the sides of buildings and fences, had been cast aside in…
There’s a robust debate, and a small handful of legislative proposals, aimed at reforming a school disciplinary system that charges hundreds of thousands of students each year with misdemeanors for things like chewing gum or wearing too much perfume. What happened today at DISD’s alternative school, formally known by the…
Around 5:30 this morning, 29-year-old Tomas Cavazos developed a serious beef with a pile of trash. A neighbor called police to report that the man appeared to be shooting the hell out of some debris in his front yard. Police arrived at a house in West Dallas to find the…
There are some large and generally predictable drawbacks to living a stone’s throw from Vickery Meadows’ Five Points intersection, which is a notorious hotbed of crime. Steve Parker learned as much soon after moving into his Hemlock Avenue condo in 2008. Things started innocuously enough when someone kicked a hole…
Sometimes the Internet is excessively dumb, like yesterday when half of Twitter was announcing #NowThatchersDead and the other half was heartbroken because they thought it was #NowThatChersDead. And other times the Internet can be pretty heartwarming. A good example of the heartwarming Internet is Thomas C. Marsh Middle School’s College…
Before term limits and elections change the complexion of the Dallas City Council in unknowable ways, Scott Griggs and Angela Hunt want an up-or-down vote on proposed natural gas wells along the Trinity River. Last month, the Dallas Plan Commission voted down the permits for drilling outfit Trinity East, which…
Have you ever been drunk? Have you ever wondered about how drunkenness affects your maze-completing ability? Have you ever wanted to test your drunken maze-completing ability using a taxpayer-funded smartphone app that constantly shames you about your drunkenness? If you answered yes to all those questions then you’re in luck…
A couple weeks back, we gave you an update on the unlucky Liberty County couple still trying to sue the self-proclaimed psychic who wrongly told police they had a huge mass grave filled with tiny dead children on their property. Presley “Rhonda” Gridley, who the couple alleges is the psychic…
It was Independence Day 2011 when the boy and his father went to the abandoned shell of a house in rural Ellis County. They hoped they might find the treasure that was rumored to be buried there, but came up empty handed. What they found instead was a refrigerator, which…
By most measures, the Stone Bridge at Bear Creek in Euless is a typical mid-priced suburban apartment complex. There’s covered parking and a couple of swimming pools. What little green space there is is well-manicured. The building facades are done in a bland but tasteful red brick. To spot the…
Ron Paul’s final speech in Congress, delivered on the eve of his November retirement from the House, was a libertarian call to arms. The American public has sunk into unconscionable complacency, he said, and allowed themselves to be entranced by material progress while their hard-won liberties were snatched away. The…
U.S. Representative Steve Stockman is not a subtle man. We could go so far as to say he has a flair for the dramatic. He is, after all, the man who brought Ted Nugent as his plus-one to the State of the Union address, and compared the Earth to a…
In recent years, as North Texas’ feral hog population has exploded, Arlington, Irving and other suburbs have taken to rounding up the swine and selling them for bacon. Now, it’s Dallas’ turn. Robert Wilonsky brings news this morning that the city is looking for someone to harvest its feral hogs…
A week ago Sunday, Justin Mark Stanert made a cameo on TheDirty.com, Nik Richie’s rather lurid crowd-sourced gossip site. By the standards of the site, the allegations against Stanert were tame. No nude photos, no rumors of liaisons with underage transexual prostitutes, just a report that he and his girlfriend…
Since news of Walmart’s plan to build a scaled-down supercenter at the corner of Arapaho and Coit Road in Far North Dallas, neighborhood opposition has been building. The outcry was covered this weekend by the Morning News and NBC 5, and the Change.org petition promising a boycott is at 2,300…
