File this one under things we aren’t smart enough to understand. Sunday, the photo of first-term Texas Senator Ted Cruz you see in the embedded tweet made the social media rounds. It is an Associated Press photo, taken at a Cruz campaign event at a gun range. Many Cruz supporters…
One of the funniest not-at-all-funny things Dallas City Hall has done in recent years is the MLK “façade improvement program,” intended to “spruce up” (in the words of the city’s only daily newspaper) Martin Luther King Boulevard, an arrow through the heart of abject poverty in southern Dallas. We have…
Surely, Raquel Hultquist knows now who Tennell Atkins is, but that’s not really the point. What was an issue Thursday, at Atkins’ long-awaited trial for his December alleged assault on Hultquist, was whether she knew who he was then. Hultquist, a 911 operator conscripted into temporary security duty at one of…
Philip Kingston is the City Council representative for Dallas’ District 14, the architect of the oh-so-close attempt to elect a progressive (read: anti-Trinity toll road) majority to the council. Gary Fitzsimmons is Dallas County’s outspoken former district clerk. Both men share an obsessive commitment to local politics. Both men sometimes…
Maybe it’s a busy day for you, but every once in a while if you get a minute you need to stop and think about what you want the city to be. If you don’t, somebody else will. “This is social engineering,” Elizabeth Julian said to me recently. “The question…
In the far northeastern corner of Flag Pole Hill Park, just shy of where the open space surrounding White Rock Lake gives way to the ranch-style homes of Lake Highland, a dirt footpath snakes for about three-quarters of a mile along a thicket of trees. Ken Coutant, a tax accountant…
Rick Perry officially announced his renewed presidential aspirations Thursday at Addison Airport. Flanked by veterans and Taya Kyle, the window of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle, Perry said he would return American exceptionalism, lambasted President Obama and told a cheering throng that “rights come from God, not the government.” “It’s time…
A couple of weeks ago, former Texas Governor Rick Perry’s wife, Anita, announced that her husband had something very important to tell all of us on June 4 in Dallas: He’s going to run for president, again. (It was a pre-announcement announcement, not an announcement-announcement. Just try to act surprised…
At what Dwaine Caraway said would be his last City Council meeting, the term-limited council member put on a vintage performance, fighting against what’s become the bane of his existence: single-use plastic bags. He lost. Single-use plastic bags will be free again on Monday, but he lost fighting the good…
Dallas City Council will vote Wednesday whether to replace the nickel charge for disposable grocery bags, which became effective January 1, with an outright ban. “It’s an environmental issue. These bags, because of the physical nature of the bags, they are going to be a permanent litter problem. It doesn’t…
Hey, wouldn’t it be great to be able to walk from your apartment to Klyde Warren Park, the hugely successful new deck over a downtown freeway named for a rich kid? You can. Really. Just be rich. But what about this? What if you could get a really nice pretty…
(This story replaces a version published this morning.) This just in: What the city has said for 20 years about flood safety and a proposed toll road along the Trinity River very possibly is not true. In a major flood that road may be underwater and threatened. Yesterday after I filed…
Two weeks ago, Eric Williams and Subrina Brenham, two losing candidates who got less than 200 votes each in running for the Dallas City Council District 8 seat soon to be vacated by Tennell Atkins, filed a lawsuit. Williams and Brenham alleged that Dianne Gibson and Erik Williams, the two…
This was bound to happen, Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston says. Kingston has described the runoff for the council’s District 10 seat as a twist on the prisoner’s dilemma — a well worn example of game theory about how people decide whether to cooperate or screw one another over. In fact,…
Throughout the regular legislative session, which will finally end this weekend, Texas lawmakers have dreamed up all sorts of creative ways to stop women from getting abortions. Following the abortion bills in Texas is like playing a game of choose-your-own-adventure. What kind of pregnancy would you least want to go…
Slowly but surely, the Dallas Police Department is developing a comprehensive policy for the 1,000 body cameras it intends to introduce into the field in the next five years. Tuesday morning, the Dallas City Council Public Safety committee will get its latest peek at new department standards before the full…
Maybe you shouldn’t read this. I could be off. You know how they say a watched pot never boils? I have been staring at the pot of Dallas politics for so damn long, it may have affected my thinking. I have even had moments of doubting the existence of the…
Something is going to happen to Dallas’ plastic bag fee, one way or another. The minimum 5 cent charge for a carryout plastic bag has already led to the city getting sued, it might be illegal and, at least to certain people in Dallas, is not even close to being an…
Much to the delight of rabidly conservative faux-hipsters, Anita Perry, erstwhile Texas Governor Rick Perry’s wife, took to Twitter Friday morning to announce that her husband will be announcing that he’s running for president during a June 4 event in Dallas…
Already, in the four days or so since Saturday’s Dallas municipal election, a narrative has sprung up. Mike Rawlings, the thinking goes, was given a decisive mandate by Dallas voters, reflected in his 46-point win over attorney Marcos Ronquillo. The mayoral election was a blowout, but trying to draw any…
In December 2012, the Dallas City Council approved the condemnation of the Trinity Park & Club, a 23-acre complex of soccer fields and cross-country trails near the Trinity River in Pleasant Grove. The owner, a wiry, Dominican-born ex-high school coach named Rhadames Solano, had spent the past 15 years turning…
Assuming the City Council approves, the Dallas Police Department intends to have a body camera at almost every crime scene within five years, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Monday. About half of the city’s 2,200 patrol officers would be equipped with the cameras, 200 at a time, each year…
