Texas electricity regulators voted today to raise the price cap on wholesale electricity from $3,000 to $4,500 per megawatt hour — the equivalent of powering roughly 330 homes for one hour — by Aug. 1. It’s only June and already the electrical grid is being tested by record peak demand,…
Last month, Mayor Mike Rawlings asked the Texas Department of Transportation for figures showing the relative merits of building the Trinity toll road versus reviving the abandoned Project Pegasus, which would improve downtown’s current highways of hell. This was after numbers provided by toll road opponents prompted the mayor to…
We’ve known for a while now that the city will keep the the 2013 commemoration of John F. Kennedy’s assassination “classy,” we just haven’t known exactly how. We still don’t, but we now know that it will involve a fairly significant touch-up to Dealey Plaza. The architecture firm Good Fulton…
We at Unfair Park will never, ever tire of hearing Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Irving-based ExxonMobil, the largest private oil and gas company in the world, admit that the product he peddles has in fact caused the earth’s climate to change. This is the corporation that has for decades…
Update at 9:40 a.m.: Check out the full decision below. Original post: We were planning to try to localize the Supreme Court’s decision this morning on the Affordable Care Act, do some sort of informed, level-headed analysis like the DMN’s Michael Lindenberger prepared last night. But that would require a…
After only a minimal amount of mind-numbing bureaucratic discussion, Dallas City Council members voted Wednesday afternoon to approve a new ordinance regulating the city’s boarding homes. Set to take effect October 1, the rules apply to around 200 of the cities 300 boarding home facilities, where several thousand people with…
Skip the throat-clearing and jump right to the People Issue. If you hang around in the Observer’s orbit in the coming days, or if you happen to glance at the newsstand in your favorite bar, you’ll notice we’re offering something a little different this week: our first-annual People Issue. Given…
Every year, when temperatures in Texas inevitably hit triple digits, the inside of the state’s prison cells heat up like an ovens. Only 21 of 111 units in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system are fully air conditioned; the rest have some AC but mostly not in the inmates’…
So the Mavs have a very legitimate shot at landing the NBA’s top free agent, current New Jersey Net Deron Williams. This is his hometown. His mother lives here. The entire city would go apeshit if he took his talents to Victory Park. That hasn’t yet definitively tipped the scales…
Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, a 22-year-old Saudi national and former Texas Tech student, was convicted in federal court today of plotting to acquire a weapon of mass destruction and blow up home of former President George W. Bush, among other targets. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office,…
The 2004 summer night when David Cunniff took his two teen daughters to an Old 97’s show at the Gypsy Tea Room rattled Deep Ellum to the core. How it all went down depends who you ask, but the end result left Cuniff bloodied and beaten to the point that…
When it was announced last week that CLEAR, “the nation’s pre-eminent biometric secure ID program,” was setting up shop at DFW Airport’s Terminal E, it struck me as odd. Seemed that TSA was abdicating some of its responsibility to a private company, which of course it was, but I had…
A lot of things have changed in Dallas in the past 40 years — just look at the skyline or Uptown or the exploding suburbs — but not everything. I was reminded of that this morning by the city’s Facebook page. There, spokesman Frank Librio posted a brief history of…
The Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor, will someday stretch some 60-plus miles from Wylie to southwest Fort Worth. If, of course, DART and its partner agencies can find the money for the $2 billion project, envisioned as a public-private partnership. DART spokesman Morgan Lyons points me to the North Central…
In April 2009, assistant Denton County District Attorney Cary Piel walked into the office of his colleague, assistant DA Nadiya Williams-Boldware, to discuss a case he was preparing for trial. He had just watched video of the crime that showed a black woman drive drunkenly through a cemetery, then fought…
News has been trickling out as DISD Superintendent Mike Miles has filled out his leadership team. Thursday, it was Seattle Public Schools’ Aurora Lora as assistant superintendent. Friday it was Ft. Worth ISD’s Sylvia Reyna as school leadership chief and the fifth and penultimate member of Miles’ cabinet. The burning…
Perhaps you’ve heard by now: the Morning News reports that negotiations “have all but broken down” between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, who own the neighboring Museum Tower, which its critics say is really lighting up the neighborhood. But a statement sent to…
Dana Allen, a Lakewood parent, is thrilled with the education her 5-year-old receives at Lindsley Park charter school, but is displeased that the school has no gym, no cafeteria, no library and no computer lab. She attributes the absence of such basic niceties to the school’s lack of state funding…
Update at 2:41 p.m.: I just heard back from Garcia. It was his personal account that was targeted, and it’s still down. “They changed the email to the account and changed the password, and they unfriended everybody,” he told me. Why someone would do that, he wasn’t sure, but he…
Six Republican members of the U.S. Senate — including Texas’ Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn — have requested an investigation of the EPA’s decision to accuse a natural gas producer of contaminating a North Texas water well. In a letter sent last week, the senators asked the EPA inspector…
Back in April, the DMN, noted that John Kirtland had snapped up both the Tower Petroleum Building and Corrigan Tower downtown. There weren’t many details then, just that Kirtland planned to do something with the two vacant art deco structures, but now we know exactly what. Kirtland, who in addition…
Dallas Fire-Rescue has not, judging by the lawsuits, always been the best place to work if you’re a woman. A for instance: way back, oh, three years ago, one might have found semen in one’s coffee cup. But the department’s working to change that, making considerable progress, in fact, DFR’s…
