The Associated Press has news for the people who live above the shale formations experts say have transformed America’s energy terrain: Critics of the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing are as guilty of hyperbole, or downright dishonesty, as the industry’s most ardent defenders. To wit: Josh Fox, director…
I wouldn’t have known it by watching two over-muscled and under-clothed men pummel each other senseless, in a cage no less, but mixed martial arts has rules. Surprising, too, that one of the rules is that you can’t have too much testosterone in your system. I learned these things from…
Updated to include an additional interview. A Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial published this weekend concludes that Tarrant County has not exonerated nearly as many innocent prisoners as Dallas County simply because it did not wrongfully incarcerate them in the first place. This black-and-white view is too simple for what’s become…
Our Dearest Domingo: You’ve had a good run for Congress. You made it out of a crowded, 11-person scrum into a mano-a-mano face off with State Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth. You had the balls to call GM’s gas-guzzling SUVs “not good for America,” even though the plant that…
Friday morning’s horrific shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater moved a number of Texas politicians to tweet, Facebook and press-release their condolences. 1st District U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert got some extra attention — and is now claiming his remarks were taken “grossly out of context” — when he appeared…
We’re still not certain what Glenn Beck means when he says he’ll be “Restoring Love” at Cowboys Stadium on July 28. Truth be told, we’re a bit terrified to find out, which is yet another reasons Unfair Park will steer well clear of Arlington on Saturday. (Editor’s note: Actually, Eric,…
While Texas awaits a panel of judges’ decision as to whether a voter I.D. requirement would disenfranchise minorities, Pennsylvania provides a peek into the issues that arise after such a law is put in place. In the lawsuit filed against the Department of Justice by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,…
You might have already figured this out given the perennial threat of rolling blackouts and grid operator ERCOT’s own admission that, come 2013, there won’t be sufficient wattage to cover peak demand, but the state’s electrical grid isn’t the best. In fact, as the Texas Tribune reports today, it’s the…
Like a good neighbor, State Farm wants to insure Johnson County homeowners against fracking-related earthquake damage. Cleburne, aka Lil’ San Andreas, has experienced a string of quakes this summer. Which is weird because, before 2008, the area had absolutely zero history of seismic activity. State Farm reps have reportedly been…
By most measures, LG Pinkston High School is failing. The school, which neighbors Fish Trap Lake in a poor area of West Dallas, has higher dropout rates, lower graduation rates, and lower test scores than the rest of Dallas ISD. It is considered academically unacceptable by the state and has…
Good news first: the kittens have their own room now. Bad news: most of those kittens are still going to die. Every few months, the Animal Shelter Commission gets together for a progress report from shelter manager Jody Jones and director of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin. It’s always a mixture…
Update at 2:34 p.m.:Okay, now we know. DPD’s statement hit my inbox a few minutes ago: In response to the shooting that occurred in Aurora, Colorado, the Dallas Police Department has instructed patrol officers to provide extra visibility and to be extra vigilant at public locations where large numbers of…
Six months ago, Peter Stone was working for Apple in Manhattan when he decided, somewhat randomly, to move to Dallas. “He liked the idea that he could golf and play tennis year-round without the mounds of snow and icy winds of New York City. “I came here, and it is…
Slugging, aka commuting to work in random strangers’ cars, has long been a thing in Houston and a handful of other cities across the country but never in Dallas. Maybe it’s that use of our HOV lanes requires only two people per vehicle or that Dallas doesn’t have enough pockets…
And no, it’s not Facebook, so don’t worry your pretty little anonymous head. You will still be able to fire-hose the general populous from the cave of privacy afforded by your clever screen name. You will just be able to do it faster, and hopefully with fewer quirks. The new…
Yesterday, Texas Secretary of State Esperanza “Hope” Andrade requested access to a federal database of immigration records as a way to ensure that voters are here legally. It’s a little like putting border patrol agents at polling stations — but without the threat of deportation, at least for now. This…
It’s Saturday night, and you and the lady have just finished a romantic, candlelit dinner. You’re on your third glass of wine, and you move to the bedroom, where she tells you she’s going to slip into something a little more comfortable. She disappears into the closet and emerges wearing…
Back in April, Ryan Walker Grant had agreed to close Flashdancer, his Arlington strip club, for a year to settle a lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General. Walker could apparently live with that but, when Arlington officials began taking steps to put him out of business for good by…
With all the hullabaloo surrounding the completion of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, not to mention what must have been a righteous party, it was easy to forget that world-renowned architect Santiago Calatrava was supposed to design two more of his signature (e.g. big, white, and arch-y) bridges across the…
One evening during the summer of 1994, Karl Pratt was wrapping up a day at Lake Lewisville. It had been a satisfying outing but, as he backed his truck to the water’s edge to pick up his boat, he realized his trailer had been stolen. Someone had cut the lock…
Zebra mussels, the innocuously named but virulent mollusk, were first discovered domestically in the Great Lakes back in the late 1980’s, having spread westward from their native Eastern Europe and hitched a ride in the ballast of U.S.-bound ships. Since then, they have spread through the nation’s waterways. They were…
Dallas-based Luminant, the electricity generation arm of Energy Future Holdings, got hit with a violation notice from the EPA Friday, accusing it of completing major modifications to its northeast Texas coal-fired plants, Big Brown and Martin Lake, without installing modern pollution control devices. The notice of violation says the modifications…
