Politics & Government

This last week has caused me to think about something that really never occurred to me before. Maybe it should have. So now I wonder whether U.S. Reps. Joe Barton and Blake Farenthold are bigger hypocrites than former President Bill Clinton. Are they the same grade of hypocrite? Are they…

Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston agreed Friday to pay the just more than $8,000 penalty assessed against him by the city’s chief financial officer in July for missing too many meetings over the previous year. Although he paid, Kingston still disputes the decision and calls it a “witch hunt.”…

From gritty bars to the courthouse steps, a great cry of the collective human heart went up in Dallas last week for a dog named Lamb of God, slated to be killed by the city because she bit a child badly. But this really is not open for debate. The…

I more or less pay the rent by telling you what’s wrong with City Hall. So I’m a little worried. Not sure how this is going to work out. It looks as if I may have to tell you what’s right with City Hall. I ask only this: A couple of…

Republican U.S. Representative Joe Barton, North Texas’ longest-serving House member, will not seek re-election in 2018. Barton’s decision comes amid pressure from fellow Republicans in North Texas and around the country after an explicit photo and suggestive texts from the congressman became public. “I am very proud of my public…

When somebody takes a hard-line position on a City Hall issue and won’t say why, it’s no big surprise to find out later he had something in his pocket that he didn’t want to share. But in East Dallas, I believe I have found a tribe of people who may…

If there is ever to be an autobiography — I, Joe — the moral issue to be addressed in it will be whether Joe Barton, a 32-year member of Congress from Ennis in the 6th Texas Congressional District, was a hypocrite. Somehow, a woman not his wife got her hands on…

It’s not hyperbole to say that 2017 has been a defining year for Texas politics. The state’s biggest cities openly warred with the state government in Austin, and many of those who’d built power bases in Austin over the last decade found themselves confused and frustrated by a new environment…

Dallas has been paying attention recently to some compelling research showing that racial segregation is bad for poor minority children. Truth. But only as an aside, no big deal, just me up here in the bleachers mumbling to myself: I’d like to point out that segregation probably isn’t too good…

Our new city manager is saying and doing all the right things. I’m watching to see how long it takes them to get rid of him. By new city manager I mean, of course, T.C. Broadnax, who came from Tacoma, Washington, in February to take the reins as the first…

The Dallas City Council did its required rubber-stamping Tuesday, signing off unanimously on a settlement that takes care of four of the six outstanding police and fire pay lawsuits against the city. The $62 million settlement takes care of the suits filed in Collin County by former Dallas police officers and…

Members of the Dallas City Council greeted Give Right-Dallas, Dallas city staff’s latest proposal to combat aggressive panhandling, with less-than-stellar reviews Monday. The plan, which would cost about $200,000, calls for a public education campaign that would encourage Dallas residents and visitors to give cash to homeless support organizations through…

It looks as if Dallas City Hall may finally get itself out from under a billion-dollar sword of Damocles by resolving a bundle of police and fire back-pay lawsuits. After two decades of failure to get it done, what has changed? People on both sides of the dispute, speaking to…

The city of Dallas will be two-thirds of the way to escaping one of its biggest financial threats, pending a Tuesday vote from the Dallas City Council. On Friday evening, the city announced that it has reached a settlement for about $62 million in four of the six police and…

The other day in the daily paper, there was an item of a type I call a bathroom-wall story. By bathroom wall, I mean you read it and sort of get what they’re getting at, but there’s a lot of context missing, and you’re not sure why you’re reading it…

With all the anger and frustration Philip Kingston has caused his colleagues during his four years on the Dallas City Council, his critics around the horseshoe weren’t going to miss an opportunity to get in their licks when they could. And on Wednesday, with Kingston facing city ethics charges because…

Do you ever get the feeling the whole purpose of the news is to convince you we’re all screwed by problems so huge that we might as well give up and binge-watch cable until the end comes? I do, and I write news. But every once in a while, thank…

Four-term Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is considering challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott next November. If she throws her hat in the ring, she’ll be the first major Democratic contender for the governor’s mansion in 2018. If Valdez wins, she’ll be Texas’ third female governor, first Hispanic governor and first…

This week, Texans will head to the polls for the state’s off-year constitutional amendment election. Dallas County residents, especially those who live in Dallas, will do some electoral heavy lifting as they vote on the city’s $1.05 billion bond package and a controversial measure that could change the way school…

There’s is unlikely to be any more action on Dallas’ remaining monuments to the Confederacy until 2018, according to information discussed at the latest Dallas City Council meeting about the city’s Confederate totems. Dallas quickly removed Oak Lawn Park’s Robert E. Lee statue in September but will deal with the…