U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who returned to Congress to represent his suburban Houston district last week after a 16-year absence, wasted no time courting controversy when he publicly called for John Boehner to be removed as House speaker. He’s made his second foray into the headlines with a call to…
The blood was starting to pool on the floor, forming interesting little patterns. To Steven Ray Milam, lying between his bunk and his locker, they looked like mesas, rising from the concrete as the blood began to clot. I’m still alive, Milam realized, opening his eyes and watching his cell…
The video entitled “Thank you, I will miss you guys” is barely more than a minute long — all one shaky handheld shot trained on the face of then-21-year-old Ben Vacas. Vacas, known online as Braindeadly, has big brown eyes, a fauxhawk, a stubbly goatee and a British accent, discernible…
It seemed a bit puzzling last week when Joe Alcantar, chair of the City Plan Commission, asked that the CPC reconsider Trinity East’s request to drill in the Trinity River floodplain, which the body had just gotten through denying. Perhaps Alcantar, who voted in favor of Trinity East’s proposal, had…
Jesus Ventura’s strange and very public criminal saga began back in March, when the 37-year-old firefighter and paramedic walked into a firehouse and started waving a pistol around. The gun went off, although no one was injured, and Ventura fled; he was arrested a week or so later at his…
On October 2 at 5 a.m., a delivery driver spotted a wrecked Chevrolet Silverado behind the Mayflower Place shopping center in Hurst. When police arrived to inspect the vehicle, they spotted two gun cases that contained a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a Hawk Industries 12-gauge shotgun. That didn’t…
Irving Independent School District is playing games with 2010 census numbers that should handily introduce a Hispanic voice into the all-white school board, a failed Latino school-board candidate claims in federal court. Manuel Benavidez, a retired American Airlines employee, who made unsuccessful runs for the school board in 2000 and…
Dallas police will soon be able to run your license plate through state and federal crime databases without ever lifting a finger. This morning, the City Council approved DPD’s $3.2 million plan to equip some of its squad cars with automated license plate scanners, which can check up to 1,800…
On New Years Day, listeners tuning their radio dial to 730 AM were treated not to the typical mix of old-school R&B and soul but a stream of unintelligible foreign syllables. Visiting the website informed them that KKDA, which had served southern Dallas for 42 years had, abruptly and unceremoniously,…
Update at 10:23 a.m.: Police have identified the suspected shooter as 41-year-old Ferdinand Glen Smith, who has been charged with murder. He’s being identified in media reports as Karen Smith’s husband. Update at 12:42 p.m.: The Morning News reports that the Ferdinand Smith has a history of abusing his wife…
On June 2, John Husband III was shot in the back by a Dallas police officer during a traffic stop at the Timber Oaks apartment complex in Central Oak Cliff. That much is clear. Exactly what precipitated the shooting remains in dispute. Witnesses who were in the car with Husband…
On Sunday afternoon, 74-year-old Dale Jordan was napping in his living room when he awoke to find a man dressed in all black creeping through his Red Bird apartment. When he ran to the kitchen to grab a knife, the man fled to the rear bedroom and back out the…
Trinity East intends to sink natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, but it isn’t the well pad itself that will consume most of that controversial real estate — it’s the natural gas processing plant they plan to set up right next to it. According to site plans for…
When Jason Roberts and his crew at the Oak Cliff Transit Authority first began trying to fund a streetcar line connect downtown with Oak Cliff, they asked the feds for around $48 million. They got only half of that. They’ve scraped together a bit more funding from various sources, but…
On New Year’s Eve, a state judge ruled that Texas can keep Planned Parenthood out of its new, state-run Women’s Health Program. On January 1, that program began; it’ll continue to be Planned Parenthood-less until at least January 11, when the next hearing in the case will be held, and…
Yesterday morning whoever handles the Dallas Cowboys official Twitter feed (probably Jerry Jones) let their feelings be known about the return of NHL hockey. They quickly deleted the Tweet, but not before it was captured by @D_LEED Whoops. This did not please the Stars, who responded in kind…
Maybe Jamie Elias and Adan Zermeno were stoked that their Dallas Stars would soon return and couldn’t wait to hit the ice to celebrate. Or maybe it was mere coincidence that their burglary spree came just as the NHL lockout was coming to an end. Either way, they found themselves…
A career in professional football does terrible things to the brain. Early-onset dementia; Alzheimer’s; memory loss; chronic pain — they’ve all been linked to the sport, which has prompted a few thousand former players and their family members are suing the NFL, saying it hid the dangers of the sport…
Alex Jones, the Austin-based right-wing agitator, conspiracy theorist, radio host, and founder of Infowars, has been among those raising the cry for the U.S. to deport CNN host Piers Morgan. He appeared on CNN last night for a tete-a-tete with Morgan and, as you can see from the video above,…
Julius Hill’s summer trip to Europe was miserable. The 13-year-old Greiner Middle School student was one of several students who signed up for a nine-day tour of Italy and Spain organized and led by his teacher Vicki Reed. While there, Reed reportedly singled him out, yelling and belittling him constantly,…
Last time the City Plan Commission voted to deny a request to frack the Trinity River floodplain, its rationale seemed pretty clear: For now, it runs contrary to a city law that says fracking land prone to flooding isn’t such a swell idea. The commissioners felt plum awkward on December…
College football’s first playoff championship game may be coming to the Cotton Bowl. No, not the old, art-deco Cotton Bowl in Fair Park but the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic, which has freed itself from the geographical shackles implied by its name and moved to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. ESPN, citing…
