Ten ICE agents, including one from the Dallas office, are suing ICE and Homeland Security in a Dallas federal court over a directive from President Barack Obama that would defer in some cases the deportation of undocumented immigrants brought here as children. Dallas enforcement and removal officer David A. Engle…
Last year, on a short block between Pearl and Olive, a few dozen groups hijacked some metered parking spaces downtown for a day. There was music, pop-up museums, a little bit of soccer, and a good deal of lounging. They were miniature parks, set up by volunteers for Dallas’ inaugural…
Yesterday, the Dallas City Council approved a new slate of municipal judges after months of contentious debate. The city’s court system was seen by some as too lenient and not generating as much revenue as it should. In shot, they were too damned fair. What had been a mostly arcane…
Lubbock County Judge Tom Head raised some eyebrows yesterday after he told a local TV station that the tax hike he was pushing for? Oh, it’s just so the county can be prepared for when Obama, upon reelection, orders UN tanks into town and sparks a second civil war. In…
This has nothing to do with Dallas, except that Dallas and Lubbock are both in Texas, but a Friend of Unfair Park passed along an article from a local TV station about a proposed tax increase in Lubbock County. More specifically, it’s about County Judge Tom Head’s reasons for asking…
Many people were not happy when the city unveiled its long-term solid waste management plan. It’s goal of achieving zero waste by 2040 was admirable enough, but the plan pushed consideration of such measures as a plastic bag ban, mandatory recycling and increased composting efforts out a decade or more…
Texas’ game of women’s health pingpong continues. A panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a preliminary injunction yesterday that had allowed Planned Parenthood to remain in the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. In other words, PP is out. Again. The nonprofit was booted from the…
In case you missed it last week, Glenn Beck invited oft-discredited historian David Barton onto his show to discuss his latest pantsing. Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson had recently announced that it would pull his latest work, The Jefferson Lies, from the shelves after it “lost confidence in the book’s…
For years, Julie Caramante was a leader the fight to shutter Dallas Crown, Kaufman’s infamous horse slaughterhouse. Dallas Crown closed in 2007, as did the Beltex slaughterhouse in Fort Worth, but Caramante, a lifelong equine welfare advocate, has continued to keep a close eye on the horse slaughter industry. That…
On January 23, 2009, at about lunchtime, narcotics detectives passing through the third floor of Dallas Police Department parking garage noticed a noose attached to the bed of a department truck assigned to Senior Corporal Tony Castleberg, who is white. “I stated, ‘Oh my god, they’re gonna hang us,'” a…
It’s a pretty basic equation: When the Obama administration does something, Governor Rick Perry’s against it. When at all possible, his administration will refuse to implement in Texas whatever policy change the feds have made. Expanding Medicaid? He’s not going to do it here, no matter how many millions of…
It looks like the epitaph of Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s political aspirations are written in a Sunday morning interview on a Fox affiliate in St. Louis. The staunchly anti-abortion, GOP Senate candidate said women rarely get pregnant from rape, a misconception repeatedly disproved in medical research. Instead of stopping there,…
Dallas has drawn national attention for its decision to blanket itself with pesticide to combat the ongoing outbreak of West Nile. Hence, Rawlings’ appearance this morning on CNN with Soledad O’Brien. “Nice to see you sir,” O’Brien said. “Thank you for talking with us. We appreciate it.” Rawlings nods. “Good…
The debate around permanent supportive housing for Dallas’ homeless has become incredibly bitter in the past several years , while regulation of private housing for the mentally ill will only really begin come October. But soon one group in dire need of housing will have a few more options: veterans,…
That girl you see above with the gun and dead antelope (or is it an oryx? Unfair Park is baffled by nature) blackbuck is Audrey Abbott. That guy you see in the Jeep, grinning, is her dad, Attorney General Greg Abbott. I don’t really have a lot to add, save…
Last night it most of the north and east parts of Dallas and the Park Cities; tonight it’s everywhere else. County Judge Clay Jenkins and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings held a press conference at the Dallas County Administration building this afternoon to lay out their plans to murder every single…
There have been 111 documented human cases of the West Nile Virus in the city of Dallas this year, a full quarter of cases nationwide. The county declared a state of emergency a couple of days ago and, this morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings followed suit this morning. That puts the…
Last June, Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs went to the Trinity River Overlook and gazed down at the empty floodplain below. Wouldn’t it be nice, they thought, if there was a network of trails down there that came up and over the levee and connected with all of Dallas’ other…
When zebra mussels found their way to Lake Ray Roberts last month, or, more precisely, when wildlife officials found that they had found their way there, Dallas let out a collective “Oh, crap.” The invasive bivalves were easy to ignore when they were the plague of the Great Lakes and…
Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Todd Staples sent a tweet to his followers Tuesday morning asking whether we’re “worried about the direction of our country.” Well, sure we’re worried about partisan gridlock in Congress, the widening chasm of income inequality and drought conditions that cover most of Texas and more of…
Karen Handel is back, and she’s bringing 304 pages with her. Susan G. Komen For The Cure’s ex-vice president of public policy, who resigned in February after an enormous flap over Komen’s attempt to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood, is writing a tell-all, to be published in September by…
Reading the descriptions of the three lakes included in 2003’s master plan for the Trinity River Corridor is a bit like browsing through a travel brochure. The lakes will help with flood control, create wetlands to restore a more natural habitat, provide ample opportunities for canoeing, be adorned with a…
