Back in July, the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America reiterated that it won’t be having any openly gay folks in its organization. Now, they’ve lost another corporate sponsor as a result of that policy, the American Independent reports. The Merck Foundation issued a press release on December 5, saying it…
Perhaps you were hoping that the upcoming legislative session wouldn’t be yet another round of conservative lawmakers vying with one another to show just how deeply and sincerely anti-abortion they are. Or maybe that’s exactly what you look for in a lawmaker: an eagle eye and a vise grip on…
It’s safe to say that Museum Tower is losing its public relations battle against the Nasher Sculpture Center. The Nasher has marshaled support from the city’s business and civic elite, successfully casting its neighbor as some hyper-phallic monstrosity bent on scorching anything in its path, while Museum Tower has a…
Nacogdoches County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz issued a temporary restraining order against TransCanada Tuesday, preventing the company from continuing construction of the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline crossing Mike Bishop’s land. I met Bishop a few weeks ago at his place in Douglass, a tiny…
In 2002, Arlington voters considered a proposal to establish a public transit system. The system would have been funded through a modest quarter-cent sales-tax increase that had the support of the City Council and every major business group in town but not, as the News reported at the time, the…
Plotting a new course for Dallas ISD was never going to be a quick or easy thing. It’s a huge bureaucracy and one that’s laden with problems, some that are common to all large, diverse urban school districts, some that are DISD-specific, a legacy of administrations passed. So Superintendent MIke…
In the fall of 2009, attorney Patrick Robert Simon was approached by a man who needed some financial planning advice. The man was making a healthy living, by trafficking illegal drugs, but was prepping for an extended stay in prison, for trafficking illegal drugs. Call it an occupational hazard. The…
Confirmed: #Cowboys’ receiver Dez Bryant has torn ligaments in his finger and will have season-ending surgery, be placed on IR.— Richie Whitt (@richiewhitt) December 10, 2012 Our old pal Richie Whitt is among those reporting that the Cowboys’ star receiver is out for the season, which would be “devastating” news…
Seven months ago, the influential anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life released its annual report, Defending Life 2012, featuring an enthusiastic blurb from Governor Rick Perry, who called the report “ammunition in a fight that is far from over.” In return, AUL was full of praise for Texas, saying…
Late Friday night, Kevin Koudelka arrived home to discover that one of the windows of his Lake Highlands house had been shattered by a brick, and that whoever had thrown the brick had stepped through the broken window, and had done so numerous times en route from the car to…
The West Nile outbreak of 2012 isn’t officially over, at least not according to Dallas County health officials, but it may as well be. There hasn’t been a death reported in more than six weeks, the number of new cases is basically nil, and for most of us, the scenes…
You might have noticed that there was a marathon this weekend, and that two Cowboys were caught up in a deadly car accident before an emotional win on Sunday. You may also have heard that it snowed. There’s probably a reason you didn’t hear about the stuff below, culled from…
Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the unions-killed-the-Twinkie trope is still very much alive. Never mind that Hostess completely failed to adapt to changing tastes or update its brand, that it went through seven CEOs in a decade, that it had already obtained deep concessions from workers while its top…
It’s impossible to understand what happens behind the scenes in the NFL. Sure, there are NFL films and Hard Knocks, but even those get filtered down and provide a minute glimpse into the heart of an NFL team. Knowing how a group of athletes handle the death of one teammate…
In May, the Texas Observer profiled Josh Gravens, a 25-year-old Plano man struggling to find a job and otherwise coping with life on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s sex offender registry. His crime? Molesting his 8-year-old sister — when he was 12. Gravens’s case illustrates a flaw in the…
In April, Jabin Bogan was transporting 268,000 rounds of ammunition from Tennessee to a gun shop in Arizona when he took a wrong turn. “He told me he was coming from the warehouse, missed a turn, and was stuck one-way going south,” Bogan’s manager at Demco Express, Dennis Mekenye, told…
The last time the City Council’s Public Safety Committee met, members squabbled over the details of a proposed measure aimed at protecting cyclists. The ordinance — we’ll call it the don’t-be-a-dick-to-cyclists rule — would require motorists to pass bikes at a safe distance and not make right turns into their…
Update at 4:59 p.m.: An initial investigation by Dallas Animal Services indicates the dog’s injuries likely came from a “non-human predator,” according to NBC 5. Original post:DFW Rescue Me is the organization that tried to save Justice, the four-month-old lab terrier found in Pleasant Grove, covered in third-degree burns. Justice…
This time a year ago, the Fort Worth Cats, the city’s minor league baseball team, was on death’s doorstep. Team owner Carl Bell had racked up considerable debt that come the economic downturn, he was unable to repay, prompting the American Association to boot the Cats from the league and…
Last we heard from Barrett Brown was the rambling, mournful letter he wrote from Mansfield Federal Detention Center, where he was taken after his dramatic arrest at his girlfriend’s apartment in Dallas. The feds are making doubly sure he stays there, having filed additional charges today against Brown, who might…
Last legislative session, your lawmakers in the Texas Legislature cut $73.6 million from the state’s family planning budget, a move which, impressively, has somehow resulted in far fewer patients being served, for more money per patient. Don’t ask us how they managed that one. As Emily Ramshaw writes this morning…
An independent review of the University of Texas study that famously declared fracking could not be tied to groundwater contamination has recommended that the school retract it. The well-publicized report released earlier this year by the Energy Institute, “Fact-based Regulation for Environmental Protection in Shale Gas Development,” purported to bring…
