To the rotten core

The lesson that should have come out of the Al Lipscomb trial in Amarillo — the unmistakable lesson for the jury — is that Dallas is a profoundly corrupt city. But that lesson never made the daily newspaper here, because the daily newspaper is part of the corruption. Lipscomb, our…

Black out

AMARILLO — Last week when Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb told his lawyers he wasn’t going to plead guilty to corruption charges and would face trial here on a change of venue instead, the lawyers more or less panicked. Walk around downtown Amarillo for a couple of hours, and you…

The legal commode

When people get mad at the Dallas school board, they often talk about how dumb the members are. But the dumbest thing Dallas school boards have ever done over the years is accept the advice of their own well-educated, high-dollar, ought-to-know-better lawyers. The absolutely most egregious example of all is…

Ready to blow

Either somebody finds a way to turn down the heat at Dallas police headquarters, or the family feud between the new chief and the old one goes nuclear. And won’t that be a pretty sight? Just as Dallas gets ready to do its fashion-model runway walk in the 2012 Olympics…

The YM-Bubble-A

For the last year, the Park Cities YMCA, which lies at the social heart of ultra-competitive, affluent, sports- and youth-minded Highland Park and University Park, has been engaged in a bitter battle for its soul. That’s a lot of battling over what may turn out to have been a small…

Ethics? Um… no thanks

Here’s a difficult public relations puzzle: Let’s say you are the downtown Dallas business establishment, and you are very unhappy about the new ethics code under consideration by the city council. Why are you unhappy? Because you already control the city council through juice. Cash. The money. At least eight…

The perfect crime

The so-called “fraud audit” of the Dallas Public Schools is headed straight to hell. It will never produce significant results or catch any big fish. So far the feds have caught minimum-wage janitors fudging on their overtime, roofing supervisors taking kickbacks, and a former superintendent stealing money to buy bad…

Da thug

In the three months Waldemar Rojas has been superintendent of schools in Dallas, two things have become plain: The only goal he cares about is delivering a fat contract to Edison Schools, Inc., and he’ll resort to any level of political thuggery to make the Edison deal happen no matter…

Calling the cows home

Ben Click, our recently departed police chief, had it down: If you want to make it as chief in Dallas, just go to all of the neighborhood meetings, nod with astonishment and concern every time somebody tells you the amazing news about his garage being burglarized, and stay far away…

The untouchables

Here is the quiz: A city employee sees something crooked going on. He reports it. His claims are investigated and found to be completely true. What does it mean — what do you suppose is going on — if the reaction of the Dallas City Council is to defend vigorously…