When we last left the beleaguered members of the City Plan Commission, they were opting to once again delay a vote on energy company Trinity East’s application to drill for natural gas in the floodplain along the Trinity River. This morning, the CPC was subjected to a four-hour workshop on…
It’s been a decade since the Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, struck down the state’s law banning sodomy and “homosexual conduct” as an unconstitutional violation of privacy. Texas has since stopped enforcing the law, but not everyone got the memo. In 2009, two men were kicked out of an…
Last night the city held a shmooze event for people who live near a proposed exclusive private golf course and horse park in a poor part of Southern Dallas, but the shmooze blew up. A carefully choreographed scene of friendly information booths and party favors turned into an angry shouting…
Clint Bench was born with with a congenital deformity that prevented his arms from fully forming. That didn’t stop him from going to college, getting married, having children or from riding roller coasters at Six Flags Over Texas. He’s done pretty much all of them: Batman, the Texas Giant, the…
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It now heads to the House for what will likely be an ugly battle over its renewal; President Obama used part of his State of the Union address last night to urge the House representatives to…
In his State of the Union address yesterday, President Obama laid out a moderately progressive agenda, calling for a higher minimum wage, action to combat climate change, comprehensive immigration reform, and tougher gun control measures. The Nuge was not amused. The New York Times described a “stone-faced” Ted Nugent whose…
Governor Rick Perry is in California this week as part of his campaign to lure businesses to Texas, attempting to finish in person what his radio ads started. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News Perry said that California Governor Jerry Brown’s comments that Perry’s radio ad was…
This morning at the Dallas Museum of Art, Mayor Mike Rawlings, along with about 1,000 other men in suits sharing the stage, announced a new campaign dubbed “Men Against Abuse.” The next stop on this tour of well-meaning gestures will be a celebrity-packed rally on March 23, which the mayor…
For eight years, Sheldrick Newton worked a menial job at Dallas’ Central Library while harboring larger ambitions. “I am a very talented person and can fit just about any part,” he wrote in his ExploreTalent.com profile. “[M]ost people see me as a person who could possibly put a movie or…
Over winter break during the 2007-08 school year, Robert Lange, then a social studies teacher at Williams High School in Plano, twice had sex with a high school student at a martial arts studio. The girl was 18, the sex was consensual, and she wasn’t his pupil but a student…
Folks in Oak Cliff have been pushing for an Oak Cliff dog park for a while now. More specifically, they’ve been lobbying the city to pitch in for a permanent one, since they have the pop-up thing down by now. Yesterday brought good news. According to a post on FIDO…
A few weeks ago, one of the digital billboards on I-30 leading west into downtown flashed a message congratulating Sarah Colmark on a successful first year at WRR 101.1 FM, Dallas’ classical music radtio station. Colmark was hired as general manager last January, nearly a full two years after the…
To say that rocker/maniac Ted Nugent is not a fan of Barack Obama would be something of an understatement. Take this quote, which he screamed to fans at a concert while brandishing a pair of machine guns: “Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk,”…
Don’t think about this: your city manager, the CEO of Dallas City Hall, signed a secret deal five years ago promising to help a gas company set up drilling rigs and processing plants in city parks. Think about this instead: the city manager did not sign a secret agreement with…
A hacker using the handle “Guccifer” hacked the email accounts of several members of the Bush family, including the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, Bush 43’s sister. Among the leaked information are a lot of home numbers and addresses for Bush family members and their kids, and two pictures…
In November, Mayor Mike Rawlings took a stroll down Bishop Avenue to inaugurate its status as a complete street, the term of art for roadways designed as much to welcome pedestrians, cyclists and small-scale retail as to accommodate cars. It was a consummation of sorts of the city’s prolonged flirtation…
By now, it’s barely recognizable as a piece of art: an eight-foot-tall ribbon of rusted steel scrawled with obscene graffiti, running through an obscure stretch of grassland on the eastern edge of downtown. It fades into the background now, ignored by commuters and passersby. That wasn’t the original vision when…
Texas parents beware: your children are being “imperiled” by “abortion peddlers” who want to teach them “sex education.” No. No, they’re not. Although at some point someone might want to teach them to put a condom on a banana, and conservative lawmakers, predictably, want to make damn sure that person’s…
Yesterday, the city of Dallas presented its new vision for downtown Dallas parks. As the Morning News pointed out, the plan calls for the amount of green space in and around the Central Business District to roughly double over the next several years. That includes four “priority parks” — Pacific…
The Dallas Plan Commission voted to delay any decision on permitting natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, telegraphing a clear message Thursday to City Council: Your move. Commissioner Gloria Tarpley remains none too pleased about being asked to consider a permit that currently runs afoul of city code’s…
Opponents of Trinity East’s plan to drill for natural gas inside the Trinity River floodplain say Plan Commission Chair Joe Alcantar of pressing his fellow commissioners outside of public meetings or lawful closed-door deliberations to reconsider the permit. In a complaint filed with the District Attorney’s public integrity division Wednesday,…
Documents released yesterday evening by the city reveal that Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm signed a side deal with a gas-drilling company five years ago to help the company win drilling rights on city parkland, even though she had assured the City Council and park board that drilling on parkland…
