On Tuesday, the same day two men opened fire at Houston’s Lone Star Community College, a bipartisan trio of state lawmakers unveiled a plan aimed at reducing school violence. Dubbed the Texas School District Safety Act, the measure would allow voters to approve special taxing districts that would pay for…
Klyde Warren Park has drawn nearly universal praise since it opened three months ago, charming even Schutze into dropping his cynical scowl for a time. That’s what makes today’s news that KWP president Mark Banta is quitting so surprising. Banta’s not talking about why he’s leaving, offering only a brief,…
It’s clear and has been for a while that, barring a wholesale shift in the worldview of both Republicans and Latino voters, demographic shifts will turn Texas into a Democratic state. Eventually. That’s what San Antonio’s political wonderkinder Joaquin and Julian Castro were talking about on Sunday when they told…
It’s impossible to pin down exactly how much employment discrimination there is against the LGBT community in Texas. Equality Texas estimates that gay men and women on average make 10 percent less than their straight, married counterparts and that a quarter of transgender Texans have lost a job because of…
On Friday, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst handed out his picks for the State Senate committees; from those assignments, we learned that “Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security” is, for some mystifying reason, lumped together into one body. And in a move that’s drawn a ton of attention and more than…
If you don’t know anything about Elliott Naishtat, you can go here, where you’ll learn that he likes to color with crayons, wears the same shirt every July 4, is pretty sure he’d make a fantastic president and loves buffets. He’s also a Democratic state representative from Austin who, though…
Mayor Mike Rawlings said today that he’s behind President Obama’s push for new restrictions aimed at curbing gun violence. “We already say we can’t own Stinger rockets. So the question is where does the line go? And the line being at semiautomatics is the right place,” Rawlings told the Morning…
Back in 2011, a simpler time, the most heated gun-related debate in the Texas Legislature was over a provision allowing concealed weapons to be brought onto college campuses. That proposal seems almost quaint as the focus has shifted to proposals to arm elementary school teachers. That’s not to say that…
In a midday press conference, President Obama laid out proposals to combat gun violence. You can read them in full here. In a nutshell, he called for background checks on all gun sales and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Rick Perry wasted no time in issuing a proclamation…
Yesterday was the deadline for state and local candidates to report their fundraising totals for the last six months of 2012, which meant a flurry of last-minute clicks on the City Secretary’s website. The reported figures first real glimpse at candidates’ fundraising prowess and a suggestion of which candidates are…
Nearly two years ago, the City Council approved a scaled down version of the Margaret McDermott Bridge, the second of the signature Santiago Calatrava-designed spans across the Trinity River. That was accompanied by a promise by City Manager Mary Suhm that no city funds would be used for the project,…
Domestic violence killings were on the rise in Dallas last year, which might be one reason why Mayor Mike Rawlings called a presser Monday afternoon. Another could be the fact that exactly a month has passed since a deeply troubled young man slaughtered 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, most of…
The dream-crushers over at the White House will not be building you a Death Star, and they will not be considering your requests to secede. Two months or so ago, just after President Obama won reelection, 23-year-old UT Arlington student Micah Hurd hastily wrote up the Texas version of the…
This week’s edition of the Dallas Voice features a long article about the video you see above, an “It Gets Better”-themed compilation featuring a whole bunch of LGBT city of Dallas employees, including city spokesperson Frank Librio, assistant city manager Joey Zapata, asisstant city attorneys Melissa Miles and John Rogers,…
Texas’ voter ID law wasn’t in effect for last November’s election thanks to an order by a federal appeals court, but it remains on the books of the state’s election code. (A refresher: Anyone who shows up to vote must present a photo ID. Handgun permits are okay; school IDs…
Jim Moore was, for a time, the frontrunner in the race to succeed Tom Leppert as Dallas mayor, if only because he declared his candidacy long before anyone else. His star shone only briefly, however, as the criminal defense attorney pulled out of the race three months before the actual…
Any attempt to explain the goat-fuck at that Dallas Plan Commission meeting Thursday afternoon, I fear, may not do it justice, but here goes: A few weeks ago commissioners concluded that approving a special-use permit to allow driller Trinity East to hydraulically fracture the Trinity River floodplain wasn’t such a…
Governor Rick Perry has been coy about his plans for 2016 leaving the door open for a second presidential bid but remaining noncommittal. His epic flameout in 2012, one supposes, might be written off as a fluke. The man who had never lost an election was overly confident and thus…
Texas’ booze landscape is famously arcane, part holdover from Prohibition-era teetotaling, part jigsaw puzzle carved out by liquor interests and the municipalities that profit from them. Frustrating, too, when you find yourself on the dry side of a county line or try to buy a beer a six pack at…
U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who returned to Congress to represent his suburban Houston district last week after a 16-year absence, wasted no time courting controversy when he publicly called for John Boehner to be removed as House speaker. He’s made his second foray into the headlines with a call to…
It seemed a bit puzzling last week when Joe Alcantar, chair of the City Plan Commission, asked that the CPC reconsider Trinity East’s request to drill in the Trinity River floodplain, which the body had just gotten through denying. Perhaps Alcantar, who voted in favor of Trinity East’s proposal, had…
Dallas police will soon be able to run your license plate through state and federal crime databases without ever lifting a finger. This morning, the City Council approved DPD’s $3.2 million plan to equip some of its squad cars with automated license plate scanners, which can check up to 1,800…
