A key battle was won this morning in what cable-news commenters might call the War on Sprinklers: The Dallas City Council just voted 13-2 to permanently limit sprinkler use, either by hose or by automatic system, to two days per week, in what can only be seen as a huge…
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Seems like only six months ago (because it was) that First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress was still casually referring to Mormonism as a “cult.” Back then, that word choice earned him a round of appearances on various TV news shows to explain himself…
For years, Dallas has struggled to regulate the city’s boarding houses, the places that many low-income mentally ill, disabled and elderly people call home. As we discussed in a recent cover story, right now, the city knows where about 330 of these homes are, and they’re inspected regularly for code…
In this last legislative session, the one that turned out to be pretty terrible for both abortion providers and family planning clinics, Arlington state Representative Bill Zedler had a dream. That dream, as we told you about at the time, was to require women and their doctors fill out and…
In the spirit of a Republican primary season marked by gleeful kneecapping, Grant Stinchfield, a former NBC 5 investigative reporter running for Congress, has discovered that his opponent, incumbent Kenny Marchant, claimed some endorsements from politicos who aren’t actually behind him in the race for the largely conservative, suburban 24th…
So often we think of undocumented immigrants as young, rootless men scaling border fences with plastic bags and gallon jugs of water slung over their shoulders. Truth is, people come here, set down roots and have kids. And when they get picked up by authorities, whether for a felony or…
The backdrop, the pageantry, the Fried Everything: There are plenty of reasons the folks at Texas and Oklahoma wouldn’t mind keeping the schools’ annual rivalry at the Cotton Bowl. But these are college football guys we’re talking about, so you can’t underestimate the Big R. The schools split $10 million…
Last week we told you about Cat Lafitte, the police officer fired for getting into a brawl with a Plano hospital orderly and bragging about it on Facebook. Lafitte filed a complaint with the city’s Ethics Advisory Commission, alleging that her superiors had created a hostile work environment and then…
As we mentioned Saturday, there’s a deal in the works to keep the annual Texas-OU orgy at Fair Park, but it hinges on the city’s willingness to raise $25 million to upgrade the Cotton Bowl. It feels like chump change, considering the history and economic impact of the event. But…
Before he left for the Land of a Thousand Blogs, Robert Wilonsky had a few stories about city officials’ desire — they would call it a need — to spend another $25 million or so sprucing up the Cotton Bowl, just four years after taxpayers coughed up $57 million for…
We keep hammering away at this same general point, but really: It’s been a terrible year for family planning providers in Texas. First the Legislature moved $73.6 million out of the state family-planning budget for the next two years . At the same time, they changed to a tiered funding…
“That’s right,” Cat Lafitte wrote in an email to the Observer about a month ago. “I’m the idiot Facebook cop.” If you don’t remember Cat Lafitte’s name, you may remember her actions: She was one of three police officers fired in June 2011 for violating department policy. Lafitte’s offenses, according…
Wait. This is awesome. We just stumbled across Craig James’ new U.S. Senate campaign ad. His campaign manager, who also moonlights as his daughter, is interviewing him, asking if people in West Texas will hate him for his role in the Texas Tech football fiasco that led to head coach…
Like him or not, I’m sure we can all agree: Damarcus Offord, the 20-year-old Lincoln High grad who’s challenging Bernadette Nutall for her southern Dallas seat on the Dallas ISD school board, is making the typical snoozefest that are school board politics a lot more fun. Last week, Greg showed…
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Rick Perry dropped by Fox News early this morning to let Steve Doocy know just how happy he is to be your governor. In less than five minutes, he also managed to find the time to diss the feds and defend the voter ID…
A while back, for reasons I happily can’t recall, I took the step of following the staunchly anti-gay pastor Lou Engle on Twitter. Engle is the founder of TheCall, a traveling circus of politically focused intolerance, and he makes his living (as much as $90,000 in a year, tax records…
Over at the Morning News’ Trail Blazers Blog, Christy Hoppe pointed out late yesterday that Rick Perry’s Facebook page has been “inundated by angry women” unhappy about the end of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. Perry’s Facebook bomb is actually part of a larger effort to “sarcasm-flood” the pages of…
America is in a pissy, irascible, throw-the-bums-out, anti-incumbent kinda mood. Even, apparently, if it means unseating a longtime congressman with some serious seniority and a choice committee chair. According to Charlie Cook over at the National Journal, there are some 22 House Republican primaries to watch this year. Rep. Ralph…
It costs north of a million bucks to win a U.S. House seat these days. Winning District 33, the new DFW block carved out of the totally riveting and not at all arcane redistricting process, should cost considerably less, thanks to a shortened primary and probably noncompetitive general. Still: It…
All this arguing we’re doing about contraception is getting a little tiresome, isn’t it? Sure, we get to use the word “sluts” repeatedly in a national conversation, and we’ve watched several elderly male politicians state their understanding of how birth control works, explanations which often deserve bonus points for creativity…
Still deciding who to favor among the Republican candidates vying for nomination to the U.S. Senate? Might as well play eenie, meenie, miney, mo, or choose based on favorite color or music preference, because politically, they’re practically the same. Tom Leppert, Senate candidate and former Dallas mayor, even noted at…
What prompted Governor Rick Perry’s frenzied bout of outraged tweeting about the Women’s Health Program yesterday? As much as we’d like to speculate that it was a bad batch of PCP (and will continue to do so privately, purely for our own amusement, not because it’s at all true), it…
