Dallas’ Citizens Police Review Board got meaningfully stronger Wednesday. The new board won’t be as strong as activists wanted it to be and is probably a little stronger than Dallas’ police associations would’ve preferred. Its creation is a compromise, just as Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall said it would…
Today I proudly and courageously don my tinfoil hat. I do so for you, Dear Reader, so that you will not have to wear one. First, in the Department of Problems It Seems Like Maybe We Should have Been Able to Foresee, we learned recently that the mayor’s plan for…
Missy Shorey, the combative head of the Dallas County Republican Party, died Tuesday night at age 47, her husband said Wednesday morning. “Friends and family,” Marc Himelhoch said in a Facebook post. “It is with heavy heart that I must inform you that my beloved Missy Shorey passed unexpectedly last…
For the second time in two weeks, one of Texas’ biggest political names has decided there’s no error like an unforced Twitter error to get people talking. Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz chose to mock Disney for its $5 million offer to help rebuild fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral Paris. Tuesday,…
Do you like having a previous speculation confirmed in black and white? I kind of do. A lot. That’s why I got such a kick out of the endorsement editorial in The Dallas Morning News last weekend urging people to vote for three people not named Scott Griggs for mayor…
More than two weeks after running into a couple of state troopers outside Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s house in Angleton, gun rights activist Chris McNutt spoke out against Bonnen at a news conference Tuesday. He refused to take the blame for the Texas Legislature’s apparent failure to expand gun…
Dear Indianapolis, Welcome to NRA convention week. About a year ago, we, and by we, we mean Dallas’ feisty alt-weekly, were sitting in the same spot you are now, wondering what to expect from Wayne LaPierre and his merry band of misfits. Given that we’ve already seen the other side,…
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot defended his recent decision to stop prosecuting certain quality-of-life crimes over the objections of members of the Dallas City Council’s Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee on Monday. The reforms, Creuzot said, are meant to make Dallas a safer, more equitable city, not to…
Nine months after a petition drive to get an ordinance requiring paid sick leave for everyone who works in Dallas went down in flames, the Dallas City Council will take up a similar ordinance. Wednesday, the council will decide whether city code will require all Dallas employers to credit their…
Sen. Ted Cruz learned a lesson he should’ve leaned long ago the hard way Wednesday afternoon: Mess with the mouse, and you’re going to get the ears. The story starts, as many have over the last six-years plus, with Cruz trying and failing miserably to pass himself off as human…
Sometimes you learn more about people in politics from their shadows than their faces. Serial efforts over a period of years to take down two progressive Dallas City Council members have cast the same kind of shadow consistently. In the effort, mostly failed I think, to dirty up council members…
Texas is set to turn a very fake problem into a very real law. Monday night, the state’s House of Representatives signed off on Plano Republican Jeff Leach’s “Born Alive Protection Act” which would create civil and criminal penalties for doctors who fail to care for babies born after attempted…
If Beto O’Rourke drives to a coffee shop or college campus and cable news doesn’t mention it, does he make a sound? O’Rourke’s been running for president now, at least officially, for just more than a month. During those first 32 days, his campaign is happy to tell you, the…
Last month, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to turn over records showing exactly what state officials were up to earlier this year when they tried to purge nearly 100,000 voters from the state’s rolls. Last week, as the deadline…
You do what you want, but this is popcorn and folding chair time for me. An eye-popping little tent show is about to unfold, and I want a front-row seat. It started last week with this: Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs, running for mayor on an anti-boondoggle platform, scored…
Four candidates for mayor of Dallas agree on at least this much: Homelessness is a growing problem that the city must find a way to solve. At a public forum Thursday, candidates shared their ideas for meeting that goal, ranging from partnering with the agencies and nonprofits that are already…
A blueprint of a site plan for proposed construction is projected on a pull-down screen before me; a city official is at the podium droning through a very long litany of legalese while five bored-looking board members try to maintain the yes-I-am-too-paying-attention facial expression; and as I write this with…
You may not believe this. I can’t do anything but tell you. The same people who brought us the absurd and embarrassing $6 million fake kayak rapids fiasco in the Trinity River, the folks who brought us the $115 million bicycle bridge that’s too dangerous to use, the same social…
The headlines on reports about last week’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raid on an electronic repairs plant in Allen were startling. In one day, ICE agents arrested 280 people at CVE Technology Group, making Wednesday’s bust the biggest in a decade. Despite the scale of the operation, however, the way…
Officials at the Salvation Army will have to wait another month before learning if they can move forward with a planned 20-acre campus in northwest Dallas. The Salvation Army hopes to build the $95 million facility to provide shelter and services to the homeless in an industrial area on North…
Friday afternoon, nearly seven months after Dwaine Caraway pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and resigned from the Dallas City Council, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn will tell him just how long he’ll spend in prison for his transgressions. For a while Thursday, it looked like that might not happen…
The Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas is the city’s ne’er-do-well relative who shows up every year or so for yet another handout. Is it a mercy for us to give her more money, or have we just become codependent? Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,…
