Sometimes somebody who actually knows a thing or two looks at a story on the TV news and just can’t stay still about it. Documentary filmmaker Dustin Grant has been working for a year on a film about Jim’s (benighted) Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South…
Dallas’ natural gas provider, Atmos, is requesting an $18 million rate hike. It’s the biggest yet and comes on the heels of a protracted pricing dispute with the city. Atmos claims the rate increase is necessary to fund the replacement of the city’s aging pipeline network. It will raise consumer bills…
A Dallas County jury is deliberating whether to make former Dallas Police Department officer Christopher Hess the third DFW police officer sent to prison for an on-duty police shooting in as many years. Hess shot 12 times at Genevive Dawes, hitting her five times and killing her on Jan. 18,…
Dallas’ hometown team in the Overwatch League, the Dallas Fuel, opened the 2020 competitive season with a two-day festival at the Esports Stadium Arlington. After a less than stellar 10-18 season in 2019, capped by a disappointing 12-loss streak, the Fuel hoped to clinch a pair of wins at home as the first chapter in a redemption story.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, forever at war with affordable healthcare, women’s personal autonomy and reality, added a new foe to his list Monday afternoon: California. Three years after the fact, Paxton is making his objection to the Golden State’s ban on state-paid travel to Texas his office’s newest cause célèbre,…
The Dallas City Council wants much tougher penalties for those caught participating in street races in the city. Dallas city staff, and its police department, appear ready to oblige. Monday afternoon at City Hall, Dallas Police Department and city staff filled in the council’s public safety committee on just what…
Thursday afternoon, Dallas got hit with a punch that’s been on its way for long time. A Dallas County jury found that the city, thanks in large part to former city manager Mary Suhm, owes drilling company Trinity East somewhere between $23 and $33 million for accepting $19 million from…
Last week, Dallas published the first draft of its plan to address climate change. The 139-page document, produced by a consulting firm in consultation with dozens of local advocacy groups, governmental agencies and businesses, provides a road map for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lessening the impact of climate change…
In a small town, the powers-that-be can usually handle the town’s affairs over a dinner table at the country club, because, most of the time, not that many other people in town know what’s going on or care all that much. In a big city where lots of people not…
Speaking after the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, President Donald Trump took on Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the only Republican to vote for the president’s removal from office during his just concluded impeachment trial. “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,”…
In 2018, Dallas set an ambitious goal to speed up medical emergency response times: get to the scene within five minutes at least 90% of the time. The new goal — based on guidelines set by the National Fire Protection Association — was a reaction to growing dissatisfaction with how long it took ambulances to…
Dallas’ Reverchon Park fight, already voted on twice by the Dallas City Council, isn’t over. Thursday afternoon, a group of the park’s neighbors announced a lawsuit intended to stop the city’s deal to give the reins of the park to a private group led by Dallas Mavericks executive Donnie Nelson…
In light of Wednesday’s vote in the U.S. Senate to acquit President Donald Trump of a pair of impeachment charges, former U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards said Thursday that voters might reasonably wonder whether it’s possible for there to be such a thing as a fair, bipartisan impeachment process. There’s a…
Finally, after a court case that’s moved up and down the appellate ladder in fits and starts since 2014, Dallas is going to have to pay Trinity East back for all those drilling rights the city never let the energy company use. Thursday afternoon, according to The Dallas Morning News’…
Just after 1 p.m. Thursday, Dallas firefighters received a call about a burning upholstery warehouse in the 2400 block of Irving Boulevard in the Design District. Lots of smoke was coming from the building, but no one was inside when firefighters showed up. After a roof collapsed, the fire department…
The Dallas County public defender’s office plans to hire social workers to help keep its mentally ill clients out of jail. It’s one more attempt to end the cycle of hospitalization, incarceration and homelessness caused by the criminalization — rather than treatment — of mental illness. Nonprofits and county administrators…
The Observer’s news vertical is, for the most part, a local concern. We do our best to stay focused on DFW, while occasionally allowing our eyes to wander further afield to the rest of Texas. So we are, for the purposes of this article at least, going to disregard about 99.8%…
Last week an attorney for indicted Dallas housing developer Ruel Hamilton filed a federal court document (see below) describing “outrageous government conduct” by FBI agents going after Hamilton. Outrageous government conduct is a legal term. But let me tell you what’s outrageous to me as a non-lawyer. I’ve been out…
In Texas, at least, impeachment didn’t mean a damn thing. Wednesday, three weeks after Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz were sworn in for the trial of President Donald Trump, both Texas representatives voted to acquit the president on both articles of impeachment with which Trump was charged — abuse…
The Dallas City Council is requesting a review of a city contract to develop nearly 100 units of affordable housing in southern Dallas after a member accused the developer of having a conflict of interest. Notre Dame Place, the nonprofit that submitted a bid for the project, is led by…
The ground being fought over is getting smaller, but, five years after the fact, the Dallas County Commissioners Court is still fighting among itself and with activists over phone calls at the Dallas County jail. Tuesday, a plan that would’ve seen Dallas inmates paying some of the lowest per-minute rates…
The document by which Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall announced the outcomes of a two-year crooked-cop investigation of the vice squad reads like it was written by Joseph Heller, the guy who wrote Catch-22. Only Heller was funny. The memo made public a week ago makes Hall look far worse…
