Despite the clear and convincing evidence, not to mention the guilty plea, showing that now-former Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway took about $450,000 in cash to push the City Council to pass Dallas County Schools’ bus stop-arm ticketing scam scheme scam, the Observer is going to miss the guy. For…
Today the Dallas City Council goes into closed-door executive session, away from the eyes and ears of the taxpayers, to decide if the taxpayers should pick up the tab for the legal defense of City Council member Dwaine Caraway, who has been accused in a lawsuit of racketeering. Get out…
Dallas state Sen. Don Huffines, along with his twin brother and former Dallas County GOP Chairman Phillip, spent much of Monday in Russia. It wasn’t a well-publicized trip — both brothers’ social media accounts are bereft of any mention of the excursion — but as photos and stories began to…
Texas’ Senate Select Committee on Violence in Schools and School Security closed up shop Monday. Its final report follows the lead of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by urging more guns in the state’s schools and better mental health services for students who might become shooters. It shies away from recommending any…
It took a couple of weeks, but we finally know the fate of the remaining ofo bikes in Dallas. Sunday afternoon, photos of hundreds of the company’s bikes, stacked up for recycling in South Dallas, began circulating on social media.
Anybody can claim anything in any lawsuit, but the suit filed last week accusing Dallas City Council Member Dwaine Caraway of corruption is not just any lawsuit. If Caraway can’t quickly pony up some persuasive public responses to these charges, he can forget about running for mayor in 2019 —…
Last week, unless you had the good fortune of staying off the internet, you couldn’t miss it. Dallas U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions got asked about ending no-fault divorce in Texas, put his foot in his mouth and took all sorts of hell for it. Sessions’ comments, to be sure, are…
When the 2018 race for Texas governor is done and dusted, the two major candidates in the election, Democrat and former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and incumbent Republican Greg Abbott, likely will have debated at least once. Both sides have already agreed to a debate, albeit not with each…
Dallas Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions found himself in the middle of an angry left-wing media mob Wednesday afternoon after Talking Points Memo posted a video in which the House Rules Committee chairman appears to blame a Highland Park woman for being murdered by her husband. Sessions’ trouble began when…
In the last couple of months I have been reporting here that the city still cannot open the new Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River because, a year after completion, the supervising engineer will not certify its safety. A number of readers have contacted me to say there are…
The Dallas County Republican Party is switching horses as it comes down the homestretch ahead of November’s general election. Tuesday, the party announced that it’s replacing its candidate for county judge, the county’s highest office, with a former justice of the peace kicked out of his own race earlier this…
Dallas’ shiny, new anti-abortion billboard isn’t from one of the usual suspects. It’s not paid for by Texas Right to Life or the Texas Alliance for Life, Texas politics’ twin anti-choice behemoths. Instead, the billboard, which reads “Abortion is not healthcare. It hurts women and murders their babies,” is the…
Dear Whoever It Is: Face it. The South lost the war. It was about slavery. American slavery was a monumental evil, and it will remain a monumental evil for all of time. That damned Robert E. Lee statue we tore out last year is never coming back, never ever, just…
Justin Nelson took the opportunity Thursday to put the pressure on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trailing Paxton by single digits in multiple recent polls in their race for attorney general, the Austin attorney and University of Texas adjunct professor challenged the incumbent to a series of debates. “You and…
Throughout his insurgent campaign to depose Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke has insisted that he wants to debate the incumbent as often as possible. Initially, O’Rourke suggested six debates, four in English and two in Spanish, before eventually settling on six debates in English when Cruz said…
The new $115 million bridge upon which no person may safely set foot is not going without notice or attention at City Hall. According to good sources who speak to me regularly in return for my promise of confidentiality, the city department that brought us the bad bridge is about…
The 2019 mayoral race will have the potential to make Dallas a new kind of city because it will be the first time for a whole new generational wave of voters to have a shot at anointing the city’s only citywide elected official, effectively putting their stamp on the city…
Ofo, the China-based purveyor of the yellow bikes that overwhelmed Dallas’ urban landscape during the fall and spring, announced Thursday that it’s getting out of the city. Dallas’ newly passed bike-share rules were too much for the company, said Texas General Manager Everett Weiler, who added that the company had…
Texas’ recently upheld voter ID law is one of the toughest in the nation. There is little wiggle room for those who, for whatever reason, don’t have one of the seven forms of identification deemed to be satisfactory proof of identity by the state: Either sign an affidavit under penalty…
Carrollton’s Jeff Hinkle got a lot of publicity Wednesday and Thursday from one of his business cards featuring his lawn care service business, Mow Masters. Most of the time, getting viral attention on social media for one’s business would be a good thing — advertising that money can’t buy. For Hinkle, however,…
This is coming from me, a local columnist in Dallas, Texas, so basically I bring no authority, expertise or gravitas to the subject and shouldn’t even be opening my mouth. My excuse is a column I read on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News this morning, but between…
The workers-rights groups behind the push for paid sick leave in Dallas still believe that they turned in more than enough valid signatures to get their cause on Dallas’ November ballot. If Dallas City Secretary Billirae Johnson doesn’t recount 32,000 signatures deemed previously invalid, the advocates will consider suing Johnson…
