With North Texas’ population exploding and near-perennial drought seeming more and more like a certainty rather than a fluke, state water planners have been scrambling to secure new supplies, going further and further afield in search of waterways that haven’t been tapped out. Several years ago, that quest took the…
Ever since prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit last May asking to seize nearly $500,000 of County Commissioner John Wiley Price’s allegedly ill-gotten gains, political observers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. An indictment was a month or two away, tops, it was predicted at the time. Any…
Last summer, Texas, Big Oil interests, the automotive industry and other assorted industrial polluters were dealt an unambiguous defeat in a legal challenge to dismantle greenhouse gas regulations. The Feds, a federal appeals court panel ruled, were “unambiguously correct” for setting limits on carbon dioxide and other pollutants — an…
Officer Jennifer Bell and Corporal D.J. Lusty remember the night of April 9, 2011 quite clearly. The Fort Worth cops were working off-duty traffic jobs at Texas Motor Speedway following the Samsung Mobile 500 when Bell spotted a golf cart driving on the grass. She watched as the cart laden…
The blog 5 days in Connecticut is a rambling, navel-gazing tell-all about a man’s struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. There’s little to distinguish it from the reams of self-published addiction stories that populate certain corners of the Internet. It would be an entirely unremarkable piece of work were it…
Police were on their toes last Memorial Day weekend, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2011 when a group of stunt motorcyclists succeeded in shutting down Central Expressway. Bikers did descend on Dallas that weekend — the Calatrava was a rumored target — but the havoc they wreaked was minimal…
A former student of Rick Halperin says she isn’t buying accusations outlined in a federal lawsuit that he slept with students or secretly loved Hitler. SMU student Moumita Rahman, who graduated in 2004 and now runs her own law practice in New York focusing on immigration and political asylum, had…
Shortly after being sued last September by a neighbor for registering melissakingston.com and using it to email anti-Walmart screeds, inveterate Lower Greenville shit-stirrer Avi Adelman did something rather unprecedented: he agreed to cut it out. The temporary injunction he signed barred him from sending emails from the domain, redirecting traffic…
In 2006, with the controversy over its ultimately successful bid to house the Bush Presidential Center very much brewing, SMU set to work establishing the Embrey Human Rights Program. It was a pioneering effort that aimed to raise awareness of global social justice issues and perhaps inspire students to pursue…
By most measures, the Stone Bridge at Bear Creek in Euless is a typical mid-priced suburban apartment complex. There’s covered parking and a couple of swimming pools. What little green space there is is well-manicured. The building facades are done in a bland but tasteful red brick. To spot the…
Daren Marcus Bell was visiting his cousin in Arlington on January 17, 2012, when he found a stray pit bull. He was looking for a dog and decided to keep it, a fact he didn’t mention to his girlfriend until she arrived to pick him up. She was not quite…
Jaime Moreno-Gutierrez and Roberto Moreno-Gutierrez just wanted to reduce their carbon footprint. Or maybe they just wanted to save on gas costs. Either way, they sold their gas-guzzling 2004 GMC Envoy and set off from their home in Killeen on March 31, 2011, and headed for Plano, where a dealership…
Sometime last month, Domingo Garcia launched his bid to become the next president of LULAC, the nationwide Latino civil rights advocacy organization. He started a campaign page on Facebook on March 8 and sent an open letter to the group’s members at about the same time. “Today LULAC is at…
The ongoing legal war of many fronts among Dallas-based Luminant, the state of Texas, the EPA and environmentalists is mostly a war of incremental victories.This week, EPA arose victorious. Next month or year? Anybody’s guess. Just know that this time, nobody (except the EPA) is totally happy with the ruling…
From time to time, we’ve been bringing you updates on the single greatest lawsuit ever filed in Dallas County: the Liberty County couple suing “Angel,” a self-proclaimed psychic (as if there’s any other kind) and a host of media outlets over reports they had a bunch of bodies buried at…
Halid Amer played a small but significant role in the collapse of the housing market late last decade. He had help, to be sure, from slews of unqualified borrowers, overleveraged banks, absurdly loose credit and free-handed monetary policy, but it was the actions of Amer and people like him that…
During six years with Tom Thumb, Shaun Garcia says he worked hard, rose up the ranks and earned a reputation as someone who could turn struggling, theft-plagued stores around. He started as a stocker at the Lewisville store then quickly earned a series of promotions, first to assistant night manager,…
Maybe you’re not a Yiddish speaker, but you need a handy illustration of the concept of “chutzpah.” In Spanish: cojones. Or in English, if you insist: king-sized brass balls. If you need a real-world demonstration of this cross-cultural concept, you have only to look at how your state-level bureaucrats have…
Over the past several years, in shopping malls and storefronts across the country, entrepreneurs have begun operating what are called sweepstakes parlors. They look and smell like miniature casinos, and they’re lined with terminals featuring electronic games that bear an uncanny resemblance to slot machines, video poker and other games…
Russell Weinstein was waiting on a train at Arapaho Center DART station one afternoon last February, en route to the first day of a new job, when he was caught in the middle of a shootout between police and and a gun-wielding bus passenger. Weinstein was relatively lucky. Another bystander…
The future of affirmative action in American universities could be decided within weeks, in a Supreme Court case with Texas roots. But a new report from the investigative journalists at ProPublica suggests that the story of Abigail Noel Fisher’s fight against the University of Texas ultimately has very little to…
Back in January, a grand jury declined to indict 19-year-old Ryan Romo, the former Highland Park High School student accused of rape by a younger classmate. The girl alleged that Romo raped her in the back seat of his car following an October Ghostland Observatory concert at the Palladium Ballroom…
