When Mitt Romney spoke at the NAACP convention in Houston two weeks ago, he was roundly booed when he promised to repeal the signature law of the nation’s first black president. Some said Romney had cojones for speaking his mind to voters he had little chance of wooing. Some viewed…
Our Dearest Domingo: You’ve had a good run for Congress. You made it out of a crowded, 11-person scrum into a mano-a-mano face off with State Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth. You had the balls to call GM’s gas-guzzling SUVs “not good for America,” even though the plant that…
Friday morning’s horrific shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater moved a number of Texas politicians to tweet, Facebook and press-release their condolences. 1st District U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert got some extra attention — and is now claiming his remarks were taken “grossly out of context” — when he appeared…
Good news first: the kittens have their own room now. Bad news: most of those kittens are still going to die. Every few months, the Animal Shelter Commission gets together for a progress report from shelter manager Jody Jones and director of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin. It’s always a mixture…
Six months ago, Peter Stone was working for Apple in Manhattan when he decided, somewhat randomly, to move to Dallas. “He liked the idea that he could golf and play tennis year-round without the mounds of snow and icy winds of New York City. “I came here, and it is…
At right you see former First Lady Laura Bush, cheerily painting a door at a health clinic in Zambia. The photo was taken earlier this month by a staffer at the Bush Institute, part of the press surrounding the former first couple’s visit to Africa earlier this month. It’s also…
For months now, Domingo Garcia and Marc Veasey have been groveling before increasingly less significant public figures for endorsements in the race for the U.S. House seat stretching from Oak Cliff west to Ft. Worth. I thought that, with the July 31 runoff fast approaching, they had exhausted all endorsement…
You might remember FreedomWorks. In 2010, the nonprofit, established and funded by billionaire David Koch, helped shape a sprawling Tea Party movement into the force that swept a large number of very conservative Republicans into Congress. Call it grassroots, call it AstroTurf. For a hint, if one is needed, of…
President Barack Obama will be in Texas for approximately five minutes today, attending some fundraisers in San Antonio and Austin. An LGBT Leadership Council event in Austin costs anywhere from $250 to $7,500 to attend, while the Statesman claims another event at the Four Seasons there will cost $25,000 per…
Opposing counsel in a six-year legal battle over a proposed Farmers Branch immigration ordinance are trading letters to the judge, arguing, naturally, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law supports their side. Last month, the high court struck down the most controversial provisions of Arizona’s law save…
At the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m. today, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System board of trustees held their monthly meeting. We decided to join them, both due to our love of waking up in what was basically the middle of the night to sit in a conference room,…
Last December, with Texas in the midst of one of the worst droughts on record and with lake levels dropping to worrying lows, the city of Dallas implemented Stage 1 water restrictions, meaning residents and businesses could only drench their grass twice per week. Even as North Texas was emerging…
For the past decade, the city has been inching forward with plans for the Elm Fork Soccer Complex, a $40 million, 160-acre collection of athletic fields at Stemmons Freeway and Walnut Hill Lane that’s part of the non-tollway portion of the Trinity River Corridor Project. Last we checked, phase one…
What timing. Just as the trial of Texas’ voter ID law kicks off in D.C., a new analysis by the Associated Press has found that such laws in other states have led to hundreds of ballots being rejected, both in 2008’s general election and in the primaries this year. The…
Yesterday afternoon, Beau Chandler and Mark “Major” Jiminez went down to the Dallas County Records building to apply for a marriage license. They were refused, naturally. So they quietly handcuffed themselves together, sat down and refused to leave. When the building closed for the day, they were arrested and taken…
A week ago, code enforcement officials reported on progress plowing through that backlog of restaurant inspections. The backlog was taken care of with the help of an outside company, they told a City Council committee. From now on, with a few new hires, the department would be able to handle…
Friday’s Democratic primary run-off debate between Domingo Garcia and Marc Veasey for the 33rd wasn’t quite as bitchy as we had hoped, in that Garcia didn’t refer to his opponent, a grown-ass black man, as a “boy” this time, which is positive, right? At the beginning, hell, we even thought…
When video surfaced earlier this year of EPA’s regional administrator Al Armendariz comparing his strategy for regulating the oil and gas industry as the EPA’s regional head to crucifixion, Republicans gladly accepted the former SMU professor’s proffered head. Then, when they asked him to Washington to be pilloried in person,…
Fine. So the Toll Road Creature Who Comes in the Night paid a visit to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings bedroom recently, and now he’s a “Toll Road Guy.” Yesterday the Toll Road Guy handed out an utterly specious document — a near laughable and transparent fabric of lies and hoodoo…
Last month, Mayor Mike Rawlings asked the Texas Department of Transportation for figures showing the relative merits of building the Trinity toll road versus reviving the abandoned Project Pegasus, which would improve downtown’s current highways of hell. This was after numbers provided by toll road opponents prompted the mayor to…
We’ve known for a while now that the city will keep the the 2013 commemoration of John F. Kennedy’s assassination “classy,” we just haven’t known exactly how. We still don’t, but we now know that it will involve a fairly significant touch-up to Dealey Plaza. The architecture firm Good Fulton…
After only a minimal amount of mind-numbing bureaucratic discussion, Dallas City Council members voted Wednesday afternoon to approve a new ordinance regulating the city’s boarding homes. Set to take effect October 1, the rules apply to around 200 of the cities 300 boarding home facilities, where several thousand people with…
