As the start of 2015 approaches, so does our state’s biennial circus, the regular session of the Texas Legislature. This session, the 84th, will feature the usual bickering over just how far social services can be slashed without turning Texas into an anarcho-libertarian hellscape and the inevitable crushing of any…
Let’s set aside for a moment the niceties of due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty and take Dallas police at their word. We’ll take without further cross-examination the claim that they conducted a five-month investigation of Eternal Eden, a regular, all-night rave at Northwest Dallas’ Jaguars strip club, and that undercover officers…
Mike Rawlings is going to finish the job he set out to do after his 2011 election whether the nattering nabobs of negativity like it or not. That’s the message set out in the mayor’s end of year address, posted on his office’s Vimeo channel over the brief Christmas respite…
The news just keeps rolling on, and not every story has a neat ending. Sometimes it pays to stop and take a look back to see what’s happened with stories we reported during the year. That time is the day after Christmas, when all the new newsmakers are sneaking in…
One thing is clear from Dallas attorney Marcos Ronquillo’s first mayoral campaign press release: He’s looking to make his May 2015 contest with incumbent Mike Rawlings a single-issue showdown, a third referendum on the Trinity toll road. “The proposed Trinity River toll road project has been controversial from day one,”…
Last Friday, the day Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins was ticketed for shaking a 61-year-old city employee while screaming, “Do you know who I am” in her face, the security camera that should have recorded the incident wasn’t working. The city of Dallas says it had been out of order…
A bill filed Monday in advance of the upcoming session of the Texas Legislature would make the maximum penalty for the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana a $100 fine. The fine would not count as a criminal conviction and could not considered as such by anyone performing…
Update: 12:54 p.m.: Atkins has issued a statement about the incident. He admits that he was “a little upset” but denies touching Hultquist. “I regret that the two ladies feel I was too aggressive in my comments and that I ‘shook’ one of them,” he says. (You can check out…
Get ready for Round 3 in the ongoing — and possibly never-ending — bout between Laura Miller and would-be Preston Road/Northwest Highway developers. A few months after helping neighbors kill two proposed apartment developments near the intersection, Miller is limbering up to fight Crow Holdings’ plan to build a pedestrian…
In his first term as North Dallas’ state representative, Jason Villalba established himself as a serious, policy-minded lawmaker focused on finding common-sense solutions to important problems, like freeing Mavs fans from stupid and outdated liquor laws. Unapologetically conservative, to be sure, but in a reasonable, non-pandering way that has won…
On paper — and video — firing Jesus Martinez was a straightforward call for Dallas Police Chief David Brown. Martinez was filmed “using his right knee to pin the pedestrian’s right elbow down while raising the pedestrian’s left elbow and hand upward causing him severe pain,” according to the police…
Bringing an end to almost an eight-year legal battle, the Dallas City Council will vote Wednesday on whether to pay two charity groups $250,000. Big Heart Ministries and Rip Parker Memorial Homeless Ministry sued the city in March 2007, challenging a city ordinance that restricted the ways groups could provide…
For the past few years, the Dallas City Council says it’s been trying to develop a vacant lot on Simpson Stuart and Bonnie View roads, in a section of Dallas south of Loop 12 that is 22.5 square miles but home to just 27,500 people. What the relatively low-population area…
Just over a week ago, on November 24, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the “odds were in favor” of the state suing the federal government to stop President Obama’s executive action on immigration. Wednesday afternoon, the governor-elect cashed that bet, announcing that he’d been joined by 16 other states…
Of the just more than $155,000 the city of Dallas spent responding to Ebola, almost $27,000 — just more than 17 percent of the total — went to caring for Bentley, Nina Pham’s King Charles Spaniel. The majority of the Bentley cash, $17,057.46, was spent on getting Grand Prairie Armed…
Sana Syed had a baptism by fire. Just after she took the city of Dallas’ public information officer job, Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola. Syed did an admirable job filtering and distributing the torrent of information that would come out over the succeeding weeks. She would also show…
Put aside any thoughts you had about the 2015 Dallas mayoral election being competitive. Mike Rawlings is running again. Just before his annual “State of the City” speech Tuesday, Rawlings formally revealed to The Dallas Morning News the poorly kept secret that he’ll be on the ballot in May. He…
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, soon to make his home in the governor’s mansion, says the “odds are in favor” of Texas suing the federal government to prevent the implementation of President Obama’s proposed executive or to stop the deportation of certain undocumented immigrant who have been in the country…
Back in February of 2013, Schutze shook loose a secret memo showing that City Manager Mary Suhm had struck a secret deal with Trinity East Energy to allow gas drilling on city parkland while, at the same time, promising the City Council that there would be no gas drilling on…
The Dallas City Council’s decision last week to repeal its anti-protest ordinance — the one that has irked both the far left and far right, from the peaceniks railing against the Bush Presidential Library to the Obama-hating patriots — was a tacit admission that banning people from protesting next to…
One thing is clear after Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ 15-minute speech Wednesday at a Trinity Groves breakfast: It can’t possibly be about what he said it was about. There is no way that after all the time, all the “balloon juice,” that’s been expelled over the issue, that he can…
The results are in from state Representative Rafael Anchia’s survey of Dallas residents’ feelings about the Trinity toll road. They are exactly what you’d expect. Of 1,014 respondents who reported Dallas ZIP codes, only 42 said they supported the toll road, and 955 were against the toll road and. Somewhat…
