I walked for a while yesterday with those Occupy Dallas people. I don’t care what anybody says. They’re cool. You know why? Because they’re awake. People were all over the map about their specific issues. Some of them talked to me about Timothy Geithner and President Obama’s failure to put…
Dear Mexican: I learned Spanish in school as a teen. Then, it seems, because I was young, everybody was an usted. I would like to practice speaking it, but am now an adult and don’t know who gets to be a tú. I’m scared of getting it wrong and unwittingly…
Well, students, the last Dallas City Council meeting was a bad one for you, but like a lot of bad days, this day was important. I’m speaking to those of you who came down to City Hall from Paul Quinn College to lobby the city council. You wanted to stop…
Tea Party people say they hate Washington and its top-down style of governance. They’re the political version of eat-local. Everything should be grassroots. Here in Texas the Tea Party loves Governor Rick Perry, but if you talk to people who’ve gone up against Perry on local issues, they will tell…
So what is all this anger among the old white people really all about? Why are old white people wearing odd costumes and hating the president all the time? We old white people all know exactly what it is. But nobody will say it out loud. It never comes out…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans , where we meet some of the people behind the local music scene — those who aren’t necessarily members of local bands, but more the people who make the scene move. Amy Ivey grew up in Fort Worth listening to her mother play Elvis records…
Well, pardon me for making myself important, but I feel like I do bring a certain perspective to the Rick Perry N-word story. For one thing, I just finished a long stretch of reporting on Perry. I have a story coming out his week in the newspaper that’s pretty much…
I had a big light-bulb moment this morning while reading both daily newspapers. We just price things wrong. We need to stop thinking of clean air in terms of dollars and cents and start quantifying it in our heads by cancer cases. Governor Rick Perry keeps telling us that EPA…
Too bad everybody can’t come downtown and hang out in the lobby outside the city council chamber every other Wednesday, because that’s pretty much the only way to understand what the hell’s going on. Yesterday the council rammed through this “flow control” thing, ordering by law all commercial trash haulers…
Dear Mexican: I hear that at the last Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors hearing about redistricting, some lady accused Supervisor Gloria Molina of Reconquista. What is that — and what on earth is going on over there? I don’t get what all the fuss is about. The U.S. Census…
Property owners on Lower Greenville got snookered. They agreed last year to new regulations governing late-night hours for bars. They didn’t agree to get put out of business. They were snookered by the neighborhoods. I should love that, because I love neighborhoods. But, you know, snookered is snookered. In the…
Angela, I was there. I saw everything. I know what they’re doing. I am on my way. One way or another, I will get there, and I will exert myself and do whatever it takes to rescue your husband, even if it means waking up the next morning with extreme…
It’s not just that Rick Perry screwed up in a debate. He is asking supporters to invest millions of dollars in his campaign. When savvy big donors have their phones in their hands about to send the money, they’re all asking themselves the presidential timber question: Has he got the…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans , where we meet some of the people behind the local music scene — those who aren’t necessarily members of local bands, but more the people who make the scene move. Jeff Jacobs, a fairly recent transplant from Chicago, spends much of his time these…
How would you like to have a federally designated wild and scenic river within a 90-minute drive from Dallas? That could be kind of a life-changer for a lot of us. We wouldn’t have to be satisfied with donning a Hazmat suit and a motorcycle helmet, signing a new will…
In the wake of a multimillion-dollar civil jury award to the family of a girl who testified she was seduced at age 16 by a 34-year-old male teacher, we learn that the Episcopal School of Dallas has already instituted a number of important reforms. According to a pay-walled piece in…
[jump] *Michael Young = Rangers’ MVP. Well, isn’t he? *It’s not a three-alarm fire as so far this season Dez Bryant hasn’t made any negative headlines. (I hear there was a verbal skirmish with his live-in girlfriend after a pre-season game and I keep getting reports that he frequents night…
Straws in the wind: 1) Rick Perry, toll czar of Texas, still pushing private highways; 2) DART a dismal failure; 3) North Texas Tollway Authority still run by the good old boys. This could all be good. You know where we need to wind up with all this? A toll…
With the Big 12 seemingly back together since the Pac 12 didn’t want ’em, SMU is back in play as a potential member in the wake of Texas A&M’s expected departure. But before the Mustangs play with the big boys, they need to beat the little ones. They have a…
Dear Mexican: I am a half-breed, as they say (Mexican father, Anglo mother), and recently I’ve been reading a lot about the drug violence in Mexico. I’ve become increasingly disturbed by the way in which we Americans are directly contributing to this war by supplying the demand for drugs while…
Texas schools earn a couple of mentions in Taylor Branch’s explosive article “The Shame of College Sports” in the current Atlantic Monthly. Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-wining civil rights movement historian, piles shame upon shame in calling for an end to the ludicrous fraud of amateur athletics in America’s colleges and…
Within Deep Ellum’s metal scene, Jerry Rutherford is everybody’s friend. It seems like he’s at all the shows, always up to do a shot and let out that rallying, supportive cry-of-the-rocker that barely edges up above the volume of whichever hard rock act is blaring not far in front of…
