The payday lending industry in Texas has managed to wrap its tentacles around just about every level of government there is, repeatedly killing any move toward meaningful regulation on the part of the state Legislature, skirting rules set up by municipalities, Dallas included, aimed at curbing its worst abuses, and,…
At first, the official story of what happened in the early morning hours of August 31, 2012, was that 25-year-old Michael Vincent Allen had led police on a high-speed chase through Garland and Mesquite before being herded into a cul de sac. In a last-ditch attempt to escape, he rammed…
Somewhere along the way, the purifying imperatives of evolution decided to dial back our bodies’ ability to rapidly regenerate tissue. Nobody knows exactly why. It could be because cancer in mammals would grow like wildfire if it didn’t. But this ancient property remains in fetuses and infants and diminishes significantly…
Open Carry Texas has two main reasons for existing. One is to advocate for the open carry of firearms, which it does primarily by marching around in public wielding rifles and shotguns. The other is to troll liberals, which it does by marching around in public wielding rifles and shotguns…
At this point, it’s probably wise, even if you can’t bring yourself to forego shady workout supplements completely, to at least steer clear of stuff produced by Dallas-based USP Labs. Over the summer, the Food and Drug Administration forced the company to destroy $8 million worth of product containing dimethlyamylamine,…
At the beginning of the year, Lance Armstrong sat down for an exclusive, one-on-one interview with Oprah in which he tearfully copped to doping. At that point, it was little more than a formality, seeing as a mountain of evidence had already proved as much, but it was supposed to…
Flexing the new muscle given to it by the Legislature last session, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission enacted sweeping new rules Thursday to halt the seemingly inexorable takeover of Texas lakes by zebra mussels. Since the Eurasian bivalves incursion into Lake Texoma in 2009, they’ve spread steadily southward, to…
By most accounts, local Anonymous hacktivist Barrett Brown has a loving mother. In its detailed profile of Brown from a few years ago, D Magazine reported that Karen McCutchin had paid to get the carpet in his messy Uptown apartment shampooed before reporters visited. And before FBI agents raided McCutchin’s…
It’s not every man who could do what Paul Green did. Last year, first in a lawsuit and then on the local news, he came forward and admitted that he’d peed his pants. Granted, Green had a perfectly legit medical condition the precipitated the episode, but still. It’s not a…
Here’s another reason why Texas should secede: We’ll avoid getting in trouble for repeatedly violating the Clean Air Act. New data shows that North Texas is continuing its 16-year-streak of failing to be in compliance with the federal law. The Clean Air Act stipulates that ozone pollution doesn’t exceed 75…
Last week, Fort Worth unveiled the new, improved Sundance Square. Where once there were a couple of parking lots, now there is a pedestrian plaza complete with dancing fountains and a juggler. It’s a good thing. Now for the bad thing: Sundance Square’s 17-year-old Barnes & Noble is shutting its…
The City of Red Oak, about 15 minutes due south of Dallas, never really explained why Police Chief Craig Rudolph abruptly resigned this summer after six years on the job. Officials did, however, immediately appoint a special committee to review potential cases of racial profiling and race relations within the…
This weekend, heavily armored police, SWAT teams, bomb squads, and paramedics will descend upon 20 sites in North Texas–Irving’s Stipes Elementary, Tarrant County College’s Northwest Campus, Baylor hospital in Dallas, and some barns in Duncanville among them–for the region’s inaugural Urban Shield training exercise. It’s funded by the Department of…
Last night in Oak Cliff, at about 8 p.m., two Dallas police officers watched a dark-colored Cadillac speed through a red light. The car did stop at the next red light, at Hampton Road and Illinois Avenue, which is where the cops caught up with it. At first, it seemed…
Mireya Villareal burst onto the local media scene this past spring with a CBS 11 I-team story revealing that people, some of whom live right here in North Texas, are doing naughty things on the Internet. It was a high bar for Villareal to set for herself, almost recklessly so,…
For the stars of viral animal videos, fame can be a cruel mistress. One day, you’re the darling of Buzzfeed. The next, you’re snorting lines of cat nip from a rolled-up eviction notice. Teddy Bear, the talking porcupine, has managed to avoid that fate. Two years after his star first…
This spring, Mike Bishop, an irascible former chemical engineer, filed a pro se lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the permit it issued for the Oklahoma/Texas leg of the Keystone oil pipeline. On Wednesday, at Bishop’s request, a federal clerk issued an entry of default against the…
At the outset of the most recent meeting of the Dallas City Council, Councilman Sheffie Kadane stepped to the dais and delivered the following prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gorgeous day You’ve given us today. Guide us year-round to serve the Lord, let us glorify You in…
Thanks in large part to a series of freak snow-and-ice storms leading up to the game, North Texas made a shambles of its first ever Super Bowl-hosting opportunity in February 2011. Canceled flights, snarled traffic, an overbooked stadium, sheets of ice falling from the roof of Cowboys Stadium — it…
President Barack Obama was on the ground in Dallas for all of four hours on Wednesday. It would have been closer to five, but his departure from D.C. was delayed by an hour after bomb-sniffing dog reacted to what turned out to be anti-freeze in a vehicle parked near the…
Almost a year ago, I drove out to the East Texas pine country, where young men and women were fastening themselves to heavy excavation equipment, enduring scalding blasts of pepper spray from chuckling local sheriff’s deputies. Being there, you could almost believe that these kids were slowing the Keystone pipeline’s…
In its first few weeks of existence, the Burleson chapter of Abolish Human Abortion focused its energies on the time-honored technique of standing outside abortion clinics holding disturbingly graphic signs. The results, as founder Jered Ragon recounts in a series of YouTube dispatches, were less than encouraging. Their first outing,…
