By 2008, the high price of natural gas, coupled with the novel combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, touched off a modern-day gold rush in the Barnett Shale. Regulators were caught on their heels. “They moved forward very rapidly, and state regulatory programs had a difficult time catching up,”…
Late last night, police say, four strangers broke into the home of a southern Dallas man looking to rob the house. They wound up killing him — in front of the man’s daughter. Jesse Barragan, 54, was in his bedroom when the men — three of them black, one Latino…
All this arguing we’re doing about contraception is getting a little tiresome, isn’t it? Sure, we get to use the word “sluts” repeatedly in a national conversation, and we’ve watched several elderly male politicians state their understanding of how birth control works, explanations which often deserve bonus points for creativity…
Back in February, when the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade on was still on alleged life support, one of the rising costs cited by cash-strapped organizers was the police presence. A growing parade meant a growing need for cops on the streets, and that meant a parade budget that…
Just got back from a food run to Royal Thai, my first voyage into humanity all day, and I can happily report that it’s safe to leave your home again. It’s still going, this year’s ode to binge drinking and dyed plastic and collapsing economies, but it’s definitely dying down…
We realize you’re probably too busy side-stepping puddles of green puke to give much of a shit about what’s going on in Austin. Nonetheless, we feel obliged to note that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit late yesterday against the federal government over its decision to withdraw federal…
You know that the St. Patty’s Day festivities are happening this weekend along Greenville Avenue, but exactly when do the leprechaun keg stands start? And when is it Irish Car Bomb-thirty? Angela Hunt provided this handy guide to the St. Patrick’s Day fun, and the police offered up a list…
Still deciding who to favor among the Republican candidates vying for nomination to the U.S. Senate? Might as well play eenie, meenie, miney, mo, or choose based on favorite color or music preference, because politically, they’re practically the same. Tom Leppert, Senate candidate and former Dallas mayor, even noted at…
To his credit, Joe Crafton didn’t sigh, or mutter, or hang up the phone when Unfair Park hit him with The Big Dumb Question. Instead, the chairman and co-founder of Park Cities Quail — a group of well-heeled quail hunters who recently announced success in their campaign to raise money…
What prompted Governor Rick Perry’s frenzied bout of outraged tweeting about the Women’s Health Program yesterday? As much as we’d like to speculate that it was a bad batch of PCP (and will continue to do so privately, purely for our own amusement, not because it’s at all true), it…
Left-wing activists have taken aim at a man whose name you’ve probably never heard: Edward DeMarco. He’s the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and he oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The presidential appointee has become a villainous figure to those who believe lenders should write…
Those lucky Dallasites who tuned in to KDFW Fox 4’s 9 p.m. news last night got a little something extra, but it wasn’t the exclusive — and entirely banal — footage of Dallas police arresting a Dallas firefighter at his home. It was the tap-dance routine that followed (and which…
It started an hour ago, and it’s continuing as we shudder, with Tweets like the ones above. And he’s right: There are other providers from which poor women can get health care. It’s just that, thanks to him, there’s no money to pay for it. See the whole Twihad below…
As long as we’re on the general theme of “unpleasant events that are somehow related to the Medicaid Women’s Health Program,” let’s throw this one in there too: Abby Johnson, who was until a couple of years ago the director of a clinic that was part of Planned Parenthood of…
Some 10 years ago, commodities and energy company Enron led a successful lobbying effort to deregulate Texas electricity markets. A free-market, we were told, would foster competition, keep power prices low and improve customer service. Yet over the last decade, none of these promises have been kept. That’s the subject…
Surprise! And by that we mean in a development that’s no surprise at all to anyone, DPD just sent out a news release announcing that they’ll be conducting another No Refusal DWI Initiative this weekend: This initiative will begin at 6:00 P.M., Friday, March 16, 2012 and will end at…
Kerry Max Cook, a former Texas death row inmate who was released in 1999, resumed his quest to be declared innocent when he filed motions in Smith County District Court at the end of February. Tuesday, the criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast published a letter by Cook in which…
Who’s judging the guys who judge the judges? Well, nobody, really. That’s because the legislative agency charged with evaluating other state agencies’ functionality and raison d’être, the Sunset Advisory Commission, got shut out of their meetings and denied access to confidential documents. Now, it’s easy to understand the juggling act…
The first few months after her husband died, Heather Boulware was fine. She didn’t feel fine, of course, but she managed to keep taking the medications she’d been prescribed five years before to treat her bipolar disorder and continued to care for the couple’s three children. “I was doing what…
Around 2 a.m. yesterday morning, two men were walking near the corner of Audelia Road and Forest Lane in northeast Dallas when, according to police, a dark four-door car, adorned with tinted windows and 24-inch rims, approached them slowly. There were five or six black men inside, all thought to…
In this week’s cover story, we wrote about Dallas’ boarding houses, which are home to thousands of the city’s mentally ill, elderly, and disabled, as well as people recovering from alcohol and drug abuse. The homes aren’t regulated by any state agency, and despite a law passed some three years…
So Kevin Dixon, principal of West Middle School in DeSoto ISD, is apologizing for emailing “a video of dancing chimpanzees to his staff last week that a school board trustee found racist,” the Morning News’ Matthew Haag writes in today’s Metro section. For some reason, the News didn’t see fit…
