Yesterday morning, things seemed grim for Texas’ gay and transgendered college students, particularly those fortunate to call themselves Aggies. They faced an assault from two fronts. On the one hand, you had the A&M student senate passing a bill allowing students to opt out of funding the school’s GLBT Resource…
Last year, nine years after the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed, the federal government laid out final rules aimed at stamping out sexual abuse in America’s criminal justice system, with specific provisions for juvenile lockups. Dallas County’s Juvenile Department applied for and was recently awarded a federal grant of…
Yesterday the State House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1, a new state budget of $193.8 billion, by a lop-sided vote of 135-12. One of the more surprising parts of the bill’s passage is the approval of an anti-private school voucher amendment, passed by a vote of 103-43. The amendment,…
Vickery Meadow sits just across Central Expressway from Preston Hollow, but it’s a world away. One is home to multi-million dollar houses owned by the city’s business and civil elite. The other is a mind-blowingly diverse pocket of 25,000 people living in low-rent, crime-plagued apartments. Both places are wrapped into…
In tiny Wortham, just a ways northwest of Mexia, the fire ladders on two engines from the Teague and Fairfield fire departments were crossed over 3rd and Main street. A flag hung from between them, to honor a hometown son on the way to his final rest. Slain Kaufman County…
In 2011, as we just cannot seem to stop mentioning, your state legislators cut $73 million from the state’s family planning budget, instituted a tiered funding system designed to give family planning clinics any federal dollars dead last, and launched a weird war on the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. All…
Update at 1:19 p.m.: No, the peacocks are not being removed. That’s the word from city spokesman Frank Librio, whose full explanation follows after the jump. Original post: Last weekend, someone called 911 to report “loose fowl of various kinds running freely in the street in an area very close…
A half hour after sunset on Thursday evening, a young couple was walking along the White Rock Lake Trail. They were passing through the small wooded area by the spillway at the southern tip of the lake, headed toward the water, when a man passed headed in the opposite direction…
Inside First Baptist of Sunnyvale, Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland lay in a flag-draped coffin alongside the ashes of his wife, Cynthia. That was fitting in a sad way, their friends said, because they knew one wouldn’t want to go on without the other. Hundreds of friends, colleagues and…
This afternoon, Josh Hamilton and his luxuriant, flake-free hair will take the field in Arlington for the first time since dashing the Rangers’ playoff hopes by badly muffing routine fly ball then bolting for Anaheim. And no one really needs to be reminded of last season’s summer-long slump, his absurd…
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…
Apparently, Head & Shoulders and Old Spice have teamed up to create a deodorizing shampoo. And Proctor & Gamble has apparently apparently picked C.J. Wilson and Josh Hamilton to pitch it. They co-star in the commercial above, with a cameo from Hamilton’s wife. Troy Polamalu and Old Spice Guy they…
Emilie Parker, a tow-headed and ever-smiling 6-year-old, was gunned down on December 14 along with 19 of her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Her parents, Robbie and Alyssa Parker, have coped with her death by sharing their memories of her in the media and on Facebook. She was a…
The last time I set foot in Valley View Center three or four years ago, it was eerily reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic zombie flick, and not the old-school kind with the undead lurching forward with laughable slowness. The zombies that come to mind are the type that are puma-quick and…
This week, we’ve given you a little background on the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and some reasons why two experts familiar with the gang are skeptical that they could be behind the murders of Kaufman County DA Mark McLelland, his wife Cynthia, and ADA Mark Hasse. In short: because while…
Watch Emmanual Mudiay on the court and it’s not hard to see how the junior point guard came to be ESPN’s No. 3 recruit in the country, or why University of Kentucky head coach John Calipari would take such a keen interest. He’s big, for one, 6-foot-4 and almost 200…
When I read a story in The Dallas Morning News this morning about a contest for ideas to link the Trinity River to downtown and saw that the contestants were required to include the city’s stupid underwater proposed toll road on top of the river in their submissions, my first…
Every day, Dallas police respond to a disheartening number of domestic violence calls, too many to note. In 2011, there were 13,000 instances of family violence, most of them assaults. Last year, 26 women were murdered by their partners. Yesterday’s alleged thuggery took police to Great Trinity Forest Boulevard, where…
With the mammoth six-year, $108 million deal he signed last week, Tony Romo became the most richly rewarded player in Cowboys history. That put him fifth on the list of current NFL players, ahead of Eli Manning and Tom Brady but well behind Ravens QB Joe Flacco’s $20.1 million per…
From a purely aesthetic point of view, Ori Raphael is dominating the District 11 City Council yard sign war. His opponent, former park board member Lee Kleinman, went with blocky, mustard-colored letters superimposed on a blue background, his enormous first name partially obscured by a silhouette of the Dallas skyline…
Nick Morale, a 56-year-old man from Terrell, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of making “terroristic threats” against the life of an unnamed county official. Lieutenant Justin Lewis of the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office told reporters Wednesday that the threat was left on a Crime Stoppers tip line Monday afternoon, warning…
The chic St. Tropez Nail Spa in Fairview offers the standard array of of waxes, facials and manis and pedis you expect from a strip center nail salon but with a special twist. Because not only will the ladies there turn your toenails plaid and your fingernails a tasteful sparkling…
