Eric Dickerson, the Pro Football Hall of Fame running back and better half of SMU’s Pony Express, has joined the growing list of former NFL players suing the league for failing to protect athletes from permanent neurological damage stemming from brain trauma. Dickerson, along with 14 other players ranging in…
Have you ever wanted to be a monk but are turned off by the inconveniences of monastic life? Maybe said to yourself, “Gee, I’d love to devote my whole life to God, but that’s so hard. How about just four days? And that life-of-celibacy thing is a deal breaker.” If…
Every week writers for Dallas Observer and our parent company, Village Voice Media, produce elegant magazine-style feature writing — a gritty portion of which comes in the form of true-crime stories. Now VVM has collected some of its best recent true-crime yarns into an ebook: Seven Sins: A True Crime…
With the race for the 33rd Congressional District by all accounts a two-man race that is growing pettier by the day, it’s easy to forget that nine other Democrats are jostling for third place in the May 29 primary. Unless, of course, you happen to glance up from the bumper…
Teach for America, the teacher pipeline founded by Highland Parker Wendy Kopp, is often tossed into the bucket with the rest of the tools in the reform movement’s toolbox, from charter schools to performance-based pay and the like. For that, and for its place outside the labor movement, it’s often…
Billy Frederick Allen served 26 years in prison for two drug-related murders in University Park. In February 2009, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin freed him, citing ineffective lawyering and “newly discovered evidence” that gave them “no confidence in the outcome of the trial.” In March 2010, Allen filed…
Darius Ewing, the 18-year-old black man who surrendered to Dallas Police after the death of the stray lab-terrier puppy Justice, saw his bail dropped from $100,000 to $50,000 at a hearing last week. Justice died on April 13, a little more than a week after the puppy was unsuccessfully hanged…
Ever since Ted Cruz announced that Sarah Palin is endorsing him in his bid for Senate, we’ve been clustered around the office phone (we only have one), waiting patiently to hear a robo-call from ex-Alaska Governor Palin. It never came. That’s because, as it turns out, Palin’s calls may have…
As most people who follow the news know by now, since Craig Watkins became Dallas County district attorney in 2007, 33 local men have been exonerated of crimes they didn’t commit. But what does this number mean in the context of the rest of the nation, and what are the…
If you appreciate the signs of life that have sprouted downtown in recent years — and anyone who loves this city does — Jeff West is at least partly to thank. The 54-year-old, who died Monday, was a tireless advocate for downtown and the city. He headed the Sixth Floor…
Dallas has a knack for self-regard. Self-promotion? Not so much. The city’s efforts at branding itself (“Live Large. Think Big.”) are, well, embarrassing. We’ve had nothing with the catchiness, not to mention production values, of Las Vegas’ “What happens here, stays here.” But Vegas has a slush fund of $95.5…
The practice of law is a subtle art, one which requires finesse, tact, and skill. Sometimes too, we’ve learned, it necessitates calling the other guy’s lawyer a pansy, an asshole, an ignorant slut, and threatening, not very subtly, to sodomize him. (What’s with lawyers and threatening to sodomize people?) Martin…
What is the single most embarrassing thing that could happen to a college? Accidentally writing ‘pubic’ in the school’s title in the graduation program, of course. Hands down. No, not down there, gosh. And with the tagline ‘Unlimited Possibilities’ … you just cannot make this stuff up. To the graduates…
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the race for the 33rd Congressional District is still a pissing match likely to end up in a runoff between between Domingo Garcia and Marc Veasey for the Democratic nomination. A quick recap: Garcia called big SUVs un-American, which led Veasey to proclaim…
My 3-year-old son is crushed. Yesterday, his dad was about $1,052,480 shy of purchasing a 75 percent complete fossil skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Or at least I would have been had I put in a bid. It’s just as well, though, because whoever purchased…
Cases of pertussis, widely known as whooping cough, are on a “modest” uptick in Dallas County, county health officials say. So far this year, the number of cases is higher than in 2010 and 2011. And with the death of one infant this year, health officials say it’s “very important…
It wasn’t without some pride that I saw last week that my alma mater, the University of Texas at Dallas, had earned what may be its first superlative. (OK, maybe its second, but the most-hideous-architecture label was unofficial.) The Texas Tribune has helpfully compiled a list of average tuition and…
Word came early Saturday afternoon that the Dallas Police Department had identified veteran shit disturber Dominique Trevun Thornton as one of the suspects in a string of armed robberies along the Katy Trail. And it wasn’t 24 hours later before they announced that 23-year-old Thornton was in custody — reportedly…
On Friday, Dallas police reported that they were investigating the apparent overdose deaths of two students from Thomas Jefferson High School in March and April: 14-year-old Jaime Morales, who was found dead at his home in Northwest Dallas, and an unnamed 17-year-old, found dead in an apartment on Ferguson Road…
“Cheese,” the cheap-as-hell mixture of cold medicine and black tar heroin, is again rearing its head at DISD’s Thomas Jefferson High School. The school, which was known by students as the Cheesehead Factory, had reportedly done a pretty good job of ridding if from their hallways.Now, another student has died…
Rick Halperin, head of SMU’s human rights program, has been saying for years what became nationally recognized this week: “Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man,” to borrow a headline from the Atlantic. Halperin has spent his career doing the academic equivalent of banging his head against the wall…
Beleaguered is how you might describe efforts to clean Texas air. Emissions reduction plans — leaning primarily on cutting vehicle exhaust — have been gutted by the state Legislature. But one provision, passed in the last legislative session and sponsored by Woodlands Republican Senator Tommy Williams, promises a seeming panacea…
