In October, Walmart associates in Dallas and elsewhere walked off the job in protest. But that was merely a prelude. OUR Walmart, the group that organized the October strike, is planning another one on holiest of retail days: Black Friday. The labor action will actually begin on Thanksgiving night, since…
Sometimes the Dallas police have to deal with stupid shit. Often said shit’s not quite stupid enough to merit its own story, but at the same time seems a shame to not mention at all. That said, here are a few highlights from the beats of Dallas’ finest. 2 p.m.:…
Danielle Dawn Smalley was with her boyfriend at her Kaufman County home in August 1996 when a spark from her father’s truck ignited a cloud of butane escaping from a corroded pipeline. The explosion killed the 17-year-old couple instantaneously. Smalley’s death would ultimately lead a jury to order Koch Industries,…
The weirdness surrounding disgraced attorney Tom Corea has several levels. There’s the obvious one, in which he was sued by several former clients who said he’d stolen their settlement money; indicted for felony theft by the Dallas County District Attorney’s office; had disbarment proceedings initiated against him by the State…
Pablo Mora was last seen alive on September 30 as he was leaving his home in Oak Lawn. Two weeks later, his car was found at Ray Roberts State Park in Pilot Point. Dallas police sent out an alert around that time looking for information on the whereabouts.of Mora, a…
Donna Pulkrabek’s job with UT Southwestern Medical Center was to ensure that the dogs, goats, pigs, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, frogs, rats and mice researchers use for medical experiments were treated humanely and in compliance with federal guidelines. When she allegedly discovered that wasn’t happening, she complained. According to her…
Hostess went to a bankruptcy hearing in New York today for what, judging from the run on Twinkies and a general sense of mourning, would be the final blow to the struggling snack cake maker. The company filed a petition Friday asking for permission to liquidate, closing its manufacturing plant…
I had one of my newspaper moments yesterday. I have them every so often, usually when the Giants win the World Series and I get all trashed on nostalgia, looking up all the front pages of my hometown rags. Yesterday’s was different. Yesterday’s moment was of the Serious Journalism bent,…
It was one year and 10 days ago that Governor Rick Perry took the stage in a CNBC primary debate and promised to “do away with the Education, the, uh, Commerce, and, let’s see. I can’t. The third one I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” It made us embarrassed to be from…
This morning on my ride to work, I couldn’t help but notice that a portion of the new bike lane on Main Street is now green. This caught my attention both because of the hue — a loud, glowsticky neon — and the fact that this wasn’t the case when…
Early this morning an hour or so before rush hour, as the city was just beginning to rouse, a man wearing jeans and a dark blue jacket was buzzed through the front door of a nondescript storefront on Ferguson Road near its intersection with Shiloh Road. Inside, he pulled a…
Over the course of a season in the NFL, or in any sport, it seems that the general mission of a team is to improve upon its demonstrated weaknesses and sustain its strengths. The second half of the Philly game provided a tiny glimmer of hope that the Cowboys could…
When news broke Friday that Hostess is now effectively out of business, the prevailing narrative, amplified by the right-wing media, was that it was the intransigence of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, whose members went on strike to protest cuts in pay and benefit cuts, that…
Just after midnight on Saturday, an employee of an apartment complex off of Bonnie View Road, not far from Paul Quinn College, was sitting in his car when saw a man in a gray hoodie shooting in the direction of a nearby creek. The man was screaming: “That was my…
Here’s what you need to know. Ashland Inc. has a chemical plant off Jupiter Road in Garland. Something exploded there this afternoon. It is now on fire. Garland and Dallas fire crews are on the scene doing what they can to put the fire out. You them do so on…
We tried this morning to make it clear that the Twinkie is safe. Some private equity firm will swoop in and buy the brand at bankruptcy auction, along with Sno Balls, Ding Dongs and any other Hostess snack cake that carries with it a whiff of nostalgia. It’s inevitable. According…
In Texas, black widows are a fact of life. You don’t want one in your attic, but if you find one, it’s something you deal with. Across the pond in England, it’s apparently cause for freaking the fuck out. According to a breathless account in the Daily Mail (“Believed to…
Midlothian is not likely to make a list of places you want to move, even one of those made-up Forbes lists. If the hulking smokestacks and the fact that there is a Cement Valley there don’t scare you off, then the reports of abnormally high rates of cancer, stillbirths, respiratory…
In October 2011, a rogue spark ignited a cloud of flammable gas at Magnablend’s chemical processing facility in Waxahachie, setting off a massive fire that burned for several days. The company pledged to rebuild the destroyed plant at the site of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider. The EPA declared that…
Just after noon at Thurgood Marshall Elementary yesterday, Dallas police were called to Thurgood Marshall Elementary, which is in Dallas but part of Richardson ISD. A teacher had just cleared 20 students from her classroom after an 11-year-old boy threatened to cut the throat of a fellow classmate, then placed…
On Tuesday, Governor Rick Perry and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst announced their support for a bill filed by Flower Mound State Senator Jane Nelson, which would require people applying for Temporary Assistant for Need Families (TANF) funds to be drug tested. At the same press conference, they also announced that…
Now that one of the largest oil and natural gas producers in the world is behind the carbon tax, is it finally an idea whose time has come? For the record, White House spokesman Jay Carney says President Barack Obama has exactly zero interest in proposing one. But Irving-based ExxonMobil…
