A year ago, a Texas law was supposed to bring the raw ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing out of the shadows and into the sunlight. The process, which involves blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into shale formations a mile below the surface, isn’t subject to the…
At around midnight last night, neighbors in the Dallas Power & Light building called police to complain of loud music coming from Kamiel Moore’s apartment. Officers pounded on the door several times before Moore opened it. They told her that neighbors were complaining about the noise and asked to see…
Last February, animal rights activists in South Carolina launched a small drone equipped with a camera to monitor a pigeon hunt on a private shooting plantation. The hunters promptly shot it down. The activists’ use of the drone seems to have been perfectly legal, but it’s relatively uncharted territory. Lawmakers…
Sometime, just as a study of American photo journalism in print media today, go to the web site of the Dallas Morning News and take a good gander at the pictures they have published recently of anybody having anything at all to do with the Nasher Sculpture Center, and compare…
When last we heard from Southlake resident, event planner and patriotic pants designer Glenn Beck, he had just announced his plans for a $2 billion libertarian community, which he’s dubbed Independence, USA. Will Independence be located in Texas? Can a theme park designed by Beck and David Barton possibly be…
The debate over whether Boy Scouts of America should allow gay members and volunteers will come to a head this week, as the organization’s board of directors descends on Irving for its regular meeting. They will be greeted by a full-page Human Rights Campaign ad in the Dallas Morning New…
In November 2010, Dallas voters firmly rejected the city’s plan to offload Elgin B. Robertson Park. The idea of selling the park, which occupies 257 acres on the shore of Lake Ray Hubbard, had been but on the ballot partly as a way to boost the Parks Department’s capital budget…
According to statistics kept by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, there are several dozen licensed gun manufacturers in the state of Texas. Most of those are small-scale operations, individuals or mom-and-pop-style shops that produce one or two pistols or rifles in a year. A small handful –…
Last month, Jane Bryant finally lost her years-long fight with the city when demolition crews rolled in early one morning and made quick work of 604 Elsbeth S., better known as Lee Harvey Oswald’s old apartment. For a brief moment, the building, with its tangential connection to history, drew the…
The iPhone cases with crooked “Chanel” logos you see over at your local cellphone accessory store or mall kiosk could be evidence of an international criminal conspiracy, according to the feds. A Carrollton resident, Shiraz Sherali Odhwani, 54, has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison and ordered to…
As the story goes, Douglas Feldman was out in Plano for a night ride on his Harley in 1998 when a big rig piloted by Robert Everett blew past him and cut into his lane, missing him by inches. Feldman pulled his 9mm and put a few holes into the…
The only halfway house in Dallas County occupies the cabana area of the luxury hotel-turned-county lockup on Stemmons Freeway. At any given time, the Bill Decker Detention Center houses 225 former Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates, all sex offenders, trying to make the transition back to civilian life. Its…
In early hours last Saturday morning, police arrived at Club Extasis to find John Hargrove sprawled in the middle of the floor, unconscious. He had been badly beaten in a bar fight, struck with a chair and pool cues by several attackers. He was dead by the time his body…
Ricky Carr, the man who police say bilked Dallas’ elderly out of $100,000 by pretending to be a cop and asking to inspect their cash, remains in jail, leaving the title of most-shameless-exploitater-of-old-people up for grabs. We don’t yet know who they are, but a pair of new candidates are…
In July, reeling from state budget cuts, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department came up with a surefire way to make a bit of extra scratch: corporate sponsorships. The proposal didn’t include naming rights — no British Petroleum State Park at Galveston Island, for example — but companies who paid…
The board of Irving-based Boy Scouts of America won’t discuss a possible end to its longstanding ban on gays until next week, but the news that it’s up for discussion has been condemned as another step in the nation’s march toward moral ruin. The pronouncements, many of which have been…
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLellan didn’t mince words when he addressed reporters about the murder this morning of Mark Hasse, one of his prosecutors. “I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you, we’re going to pull you…
It wasn’t long ago — July, in fact — that First Baptist’s Robert Jeffress was comparing homosexuality to bestiality and incest. This wasn’t particularly surprising. Matter of fact, it was in line with his past pronouncements on the subject of homosexuality, which are summed up most succinctly in the title…
Last week, in an interview with the New Republic, President Obama said something about his love for skeet shooting, the subtle art of throwing a clay disk up in the air and shooting the hell out of it. “Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” the…
Just before 9 a.m., as a Kaufman County prosecutor got out of his car in a parking lot outside the county courthouse, he was ambushed by two gunmen who shot him five times. That’s according to a report from Fox 4. The prosecutor’s name has yet to be publicly released…
Texas, the Second Amendment bastion of sport shooters, concealed carriers and Stand-Your-Grounders, also favors a ban on assault weapons by a surprising margin — 49 percent to 41 percent, according to Public Policy Polling. Texans oppose arming school teachers (56 percent to 31 percent), but also strongly favor putting cops…
On Tuesday, the city of Houston went live with a 311 app for smartphones. Downloadable free from the iTunes store, the allows residents to submit complaints and track their progress on the go. “Say you see a pothole on your street. Before you even leave for work you can walk…
