Far be it from me, at this holiest period in the Christian calendar, to defend slumlords or, heaven forfend, Mr. Scrooge himself, as The Dallas Morning News has now formally characterized low-rent landlord Dennis Topletz on its editorial page. But I do have a few small questions to ask about…
The 84th session of the Texas Legislature was weird, man. The most conservative body of representatives ever elected by the people of Texas killed the two-thirds rule — the way the minority party had retained a small amount of power in the Texas Senate for almost a century — cut…
To the court of public opinion: In the matter of City Council member Scott Griggs, who is also member of the board of trustees of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Board, on the question of whether a lawyer representing Griggs as a member of said pension board ever hired…
Yesterday when WFAA was live-feeding a press conference about undocumented immigrant children to be housed in a church camp south of Dallas, I could swear I heard Ellis County Sheriff Johnny Brown say he intended to keep the camp surrounded and make sure his officers keep track of everybody who…
When Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez changed the way her office handled some detention requests from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), charges arose that she created a sanctuary county. On Thursday, she returned to the Texas Capitol to answer charges. It seems increasingly likely that there is going…
More than a year after worker’s rights advocates and members of the Dallas City Council began pushing for it, the city of Dallas has guaranteed a 10-minute rest break every four hours for construction workers. Throughout the winding process that led to the rest break ordinance being passed, proponents have…
Come and Take It Texas and Don’tComply.com are going to hold an open carry walk near the University of Texas at Austin campus on Saturday. Then they’re going to have a mock mass shooting, complete with fake blood, victims, vigilantes and gunshot reports coming from bullhorns. The festivities are the…
The chance is still alive that casual pot smokers caught by the Dallas Police Department would not get hauled straight to county jail. The Dallas City Council’s Public Safety Committee, after hearing testimony from Chief David Brown, yesterday voted to move “cite and release” policy proposal to the full council…
Hopefully, this story won’t matter. Hopefully, figuring out who’s on the hook should Dallas’ massively underfunded Police and Firefighters Pension Fund go broke won’t matter because the fund never goes broke. It’s something that would be good to know though, considering the fund is currently sitting on an unfunded liability…
I was sitting in the gallery at a City Council session last week where they were talking about the city’s deteriorating credit rating, and I felt kind of like Widda Shoots, like a little old white-haired, black-dressed, sensibly shod lady on her cane-bottomed chair with her Social Security check folded…
It’s taken some time — either a little over a year or a little over eight years, depending on how you count it — but the city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department finally appear ready to arrest fewer people for marijuana possession. Since 2007, Texas law has allowed…
Everybody not familiar with efforts to resolve chronic homelessness, myself included, is shocked to learn what it costs to do anything effective. Part of what I have been learning this week is that it just does. Like it or lump it. Or we can do nothing, which would make us…
Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez wasn’t kidding around when she announced a change in the way her office deals with requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold some undocumented immigrants in jail until ICE can come collect them. Those charged with certain minor offenses could make bond and…
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was very upset about the New York Daily News’ Thursday cover. Released after the shooting deaths of 14 people in San Bernadino, California, the cover took issue with the claims of prominent Republicans, including Texas’ Ted Cruz, who said they were praying for the victims…
The Dallas Police and Fire Pension system is in bad shape, really bad shape. So bad, in fact, that it has affected the city’s bond rating, with both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s bumping the city’s creditworthiness down one notch in recent months. It isn’t hopeless, though, and changes are…
This should not be hard. There is no reason the city of Dallas shouldn’t or can’t pass an ordinance that would ensure construction workers in the city get to take a break. Ten minutes every four hours, that’s all that advocates have pushed for, and that’s all that’s been in…
Gazing south from the upper floors of City Hall, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the shell of the old Plaza Hotel rising 12 stories just across Interstate 30. The second thing you notice is how ugly it is. The beige monolith was charmless when it opened as a…
We spoke here yesterday about really big really tough issues – education, mostly — and whether anybody has the stomach or the stamina to keep working on them. My own personal fallback position usually is to hope somebody else does. So today another one: the chronically homeless mentally ill. Between…
The biggest problem facing the city of Dallas isn’t Tony Romo’s left clavicle. It’s not the Trinity toll road. It might not even be, despite a compelling case that can be made for it, the city’s crumbling infrastructure. The biggest problem facing the city is a massive looming shortfall in…
For the briefest of moments over the weekend, it seemed that Ted Cruz might show a little humanity when it came to assessing the shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead. “We don’t know … what those motives were, but whatever they were, it’s unacceptable,…
The hardest thing about talking to Roger Stone about his latest book, The Clintons’ War on Women, is figuring out how to write about anything that’s in the book. The stuff that the ex-Richard Nixon aide and all purpose Republican campaign operative has come up with is so inflammatory and insubstantially…
Oops. Caught myself again. Hate that. Just yesterday I wrote about brave people who face down mobs, reaching all the way back to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for a case study (Colonel Sherburn, Chapter 22.) But then I’m sitting at my desk counting dust motes, and I think, “Wait, before…
