While some in Congress have raised concerns about Facebook’s privacy policies and others are already grousing about the company driving the “biggest Mack truck ever driven through the stock option loophole” with a $16 billion tax deduction, a pair of local congressmen are liking Facebook very much. Representatives Pete Sessions…
The Dallas Independent School District elections were held last weekend, and as we maybe should have known all along, Elizabeth Jones, Dan Micciche and Bernadette Nutall — the candidates with tens of thousands of PAC dollars and personal endorsements from the Citizen — blew out their competition. The most interesting…
You don’t shoot the goose that laid the golden egg. You just don’t — not unless you really, really have to or the goose stops pooping out gold. Which is why SMU’s firing of athletic director Steve Orsini yesterday was so perplexing, and why the non-explanation offered by school President…
As Matthew Haag noted yesterday over at the Morning News’ education blog, DISD’s Citizen Budget Review Commission made several recommendations at last week’s board briefing for how the district might cut costs. The most eye-catching: consider getting rid of metal detectors in middle and high schools. The commission’s report calls…
Michelle Flores finished her bartending shift at a Dallas nightclub and was driving home to Fort Worth late Sunday night when someone pulled alongside her car, mouthing ‘Your tire, your tire … pull over.’ The 35-year-old mother of three would have normally ignored such a warning, but this time pulled…
Every kindergartener with a sense of self-preservation knows not to trust the stop signs that jut out from the sides of school buses, because even though they are the same reflective red octagons as those planted in concrete and the word “STOP” is written in the same white font, people…
Super PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability, a bipartisan political organization that claims to have its barrels loaded for both parties, just fired its opening fusillade. It aims to oust two long-serving congressmen in what would otherwise be shoe-in primaries. The targets: One El Paso Democrat and U.S. Representative Ralph Hall…
Much has been written about the now-certain $25 million renovation and expansion of the Cotton Bowl and the subsequent announcement that the stadium will host the annual cross-border skirmish between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma (and their football teams) through at least 2020.But who cares about…
An exhaustive new study has found alarming conditions for Texas teenagers housed in adult jails while awaiting trial, a practice that Dallas and Harris counties use more than anywhere else in the state. In essence, the study found that there’s really no good way to keep teens and adults safely…
As we told you recently, the Texas Public Utility Commission is looking at raising the maximum amount that electricity generators can charge for power during times of high demand, when prices typically spike. Right now, the cap — the state’s gesture to keep us from getting gouged every July –…
Update: We wussed out and used a random-number generator to choose a winner from the most creative responses. Your winner? Sarah: My boss is crazy. My husband is crazy. My home is regularly festooned with dog diarrhea. I recently broke my iPhone and my pinkie toe. Unrelated, I fell down…
There are 11 candidates in the crowded Democratic primary for the new congressional district spanning from Oak Cliff to Fort Worth, but the race is quickly sinking into a political pissing match involving just two as the May 29 primary approaches. Marc Veasey, a state representative from Fort Worth, and…
Update at 4:55 p.m.Turns out, the powder was harmless. Tests, presumably by someone who has crushed anti-depressants into powder, showed that the substance was similar to “an anti-depressant medication that had been crushed into a powder.” In the case at the Arbors shopping center in far North Dallas, a clerk…
It’s always unsettling when envelopes containing white powder start showing up in mailboxes, because even though it’s probably baking soda, it could always be good ol’ anthrax. The 20-plus powder-filled letters that showed up at schools, childhood development centers and aerospace-related businesses last week were apparently harmless, but the FBI…
It was Dallas city council member Tennell Atkins who, during yesterday’s discussion of the city’s still-far-off gas-drilling regulations, posed the million-dollar question. “Do you think that it’s safe to drill in the city of Dallas?” he asked task force chair Lois Finkelman. Finkelman was noncommittal. That left others to speak…
By the time the missing girl emerges from her best friend’s bathroom, the sun is up and the coffee’s cold. The pale 16-year-old is skinnier than in the photos, and her long, blonde-dyed-brown hair is now bright purple and tied in pigtails that fall over the shaved sides of her…
It’s been three years, almost to the day, since 12 people were injured — one of them permanently paralyzed — after the Dallas Cowboys’ 88,000-square-foot, steel-and-fabric practice facility collapsed under high winds. Since then there have been lawsuits, federal investigations and detailed engineering explanations. Today, we’re reminded that it wasn’t…
Take a look outside your window. You’ve probably gotten used to that omnipresent, smoky haze that hangs over the Metroplex like a pall of economic viability — upwind power plants a’chugging; cars snaking down tangles of toll roads and highways; shale gas production amid the cities and ‘burbs slowed but…
You knew it was coming. Incoming DISD chief Mike Miles laid it out pretty clearly during his first presentation to the DISD school board last week, to say nothing of his reformist track record in Colorado Springs. But a month and a half before Miles’ official July 1 start date,…
The Dallas Police Department is continuing to explain away — and maybe overcompensate for — their initial silence concerning the armed robberies on the Katy Trail and the dozen-or-so incidents police believe they’re linked to.A pair of press releases from police hit the inbox yesterday evening, one an unusually discursive…
If you’re high right now, you may want to tune in. Try not to giggle. A University Texas at Dallas professor was awarded nearly $2 million dollars to study marijuana addiction for the next five years. We’re talking pot, the addiction suffered in silence — or in inappropriate laughter at…
In addition to sports team ownership and a sideline in media impresario-ness, Mark Cuban is quite the blogger: dishing out advice to the Occupy movement, fulminating about patent law, apologizing for some casual homophobia. And a few days ago, he aired his views on the small matter of student loan…
