Most of the year, I try to live up to the general rule of thumb around the offices of this newspaper, which is: “Every little chance you get, please try to tell the readers something they don’t already know.” Normally I devote more of my energy to reporting than pontificating…
So here is how Dallas ushers in the holiday. Last week an obscure city board meeting in the bowels of City Hall stretched the meaning of available city ordinances in order to evict poor people from an East Dallas mobile home park that has existed since the 1940s. And why…
Michael Sorrell, who was on the city’s charter review commission, wrote an op-ed piece for The Dallas Morning News last week praising the people of southern Dallas for going to the polls this year to help shoot down two “strong mayor” ballot initiatives. I do believe voting is always better…
Let’s do it this way. I will tell you this story a few times from different people’s points of view, and you can make up your own mind. This is about a guy who wound up spending 11 days in jail on what started out as a jaywalking charge in…
Don’t tell me it’s too early to worry about the 2007 Dallas mayor’s race. It’s never too early to worry. And the next mayoral race is going to have everything to do with what’s going on in the city right now. There are two main scenarios for the next mayor…
I figured this for a typical cat caper. One guy takes a strong liking to another guy’s cat. Nabs it. Cops refuse to step in because of an entrenched anti-cat bias. Luckily a crusading journalist–moi–arrives on the scene in the nick of time, and the story has a happy ending…
Reviewing Mary Mapes’ new book, Truth and Duty, in the November 2 National Review, Byron York opens with a description of the 60 Minutes II story that got her fired from CBS last year. That story said CBS had new documents shedding light on an old story–that George W. Bush…
Last weekend I’m watching the news on Channel 8, and I see this amazing story. Gloria Campos leads the newscast: “Two men arrested in one of the largest drug raids in Dallas history are back on the street tonight, freed on a technicality.” A technicality? That’s no good. The rest…
Hey, I wish you could have been at last week’s Dallas City Council briefing. It was Friday night football. John Scovell, a lobbyist who had just won a huge city tax cut for Hunt Oil, was down in the end zone spikin’ the ball and doin’ a hula dance. “I…
There’s a difference between the short end of the stick and the long end, between how people get treated when they’re well-connected and how it goes when they’re not. Most of us can live with that. Within reason. The problem at Dallas City Hall is that there’s too big a…
Dallas Morning News, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Morning News. I know. You think I’m obsessed and don’t have a life. You’re half wrong. I am not obsessed. Mildly fixated, maybe. Hey, I often admire the News as a newspaper. But the corporation has an extremely irritating quality I can’t let…
Just about everybody who served or worked with Harriet Miers during her brief political career in Dallas remembers her as a hard-working, fair-minded moderate. When the Dallas political spectrum is properly framed against the national matrix, that means many people elsewhere will view her as a right-wing Christian nut case…
Just about everybody who served or worked with Harriet Miers during her brief political career in Dallas remembers her as a hard-working, fair-minded moderate. When the Dallas political spectrum is properly framed against the national matrix, that means many people elsewhere will view her as a right-wing Christian nut case…
When they come down to City Hall for council meetings, why don’t the white people know how to behave? As a white person myself, I find it very embarrassing. I’m not talking about people getting mad and acting up over an issue. Everybody does that. Human nature. I’ve tossed off…
It’s not the Chisel Rights Movement. And isn’t it interesting that all the same issues coming up around the federal bribery/corruption probe at Dallas City Hall came up five years ago during the federal bribery/corruption trial of former Dallas City Council member Al Lipscomb? How many times do we have…
At the pit of my own stomach while I watched New Orleans drown was a nauseous awareness. This misery was no natural disaster. This was human error mixed with sin. And Dallas, where I live, is in the process of committing the same errors and sins, which will lead inexorably…
The origins of the ongoing scandal at Dallas City Hall are in a well-intended bill passed two years ago. This bill is a great example: They pass laws in Austin, and it’s like two guys kicking a bomb out of an airplane with their feet. They crawl over on all…
Wait a minute. Before it slips beneath the waves forever, I would like to take a quick second look at the recent Dallas Morning News series, “Striking Differences,” in which the newspaper accused the Dallas County prosecutor of racism. Race is a tough issue in town. Everything in Dallas is…
The Dallas City Council voted last week to protect the man on the plan commission who refuses to say who gives him the luxury cars he drives. The issue here is that the cars may be bribes. Your stellar city council danced all around the town about it. Everybody was…
Please try to follow this. You might need a notebook. I’m trying to get across a very complex technical point about urban governance. You’re familiar with The Three Stooges, right? You know how sometimes Moe whacks both Curly and Larry in the back of the head, then Curly whacks Larry,…
You’ve had this experience, too, I know. You talk to somebody and not too far into it you think, “This individual is seriously separated from reality.” And then you start smiling too much and speaking in a soft voice. That’s how I feel sometimes about City Hall. Only it doesn’t…
So now the Dallas Independent School District is going to marry the suburban Wilmer-Hutchins district? Let me ask you something. Is this not every parent’s absolute worst nightmare? “Hi, Mom and Dad. Me and Wilmer-Hutchins here have something really, really important to tell you. First, I know how you feel…
