Forgive me if I see not just some irony but a couple red flags in the new right-wing support for a federal shield law for reporters. Oh, now that it’s a way to defend Fox News and get back at Obama, well, sure, we need a shield law. Count me…
Jimmy and Sandy Martin live in a 4,000-square-foot McMansion off Inwood Road in Bluffview. Architecturally, it’s completely unremarkable. The home they recently built in Central Texas, on the other hand, is much more interesting: It’s a 75,000-pound treehouse. The structure, perched on an isolated clump of trees on their ranch…
It’s a long drive to the Omni Hotel downtown from the nearest Waffle House, which is three-fourths of the way to Farmers Branch. It’s a sleepy one, too, when made at the typical Waffle House hour of 4 a.m. Nevertheless, an unidentified gentleman driving a 2004 Lexus SUV decided to…
The Trinity Groves project is still in its infancy. Babb Bros. BBQ and Four Corners Brewing arrived last year, followed by Hoffman Hots. The restaurant incubator hasn’t just started incubating. The stores and apartments are still just a glimmer in Phil Romano’s eye. But backers aren’t letting the preliminary nature…
Tom Clancy buffs are already well-acquainted with the USS Dallas. The 5,700-ton nuclear submarine, a hair longer than your standard football field, was a main player in The Hunt for Red October. Back when the novel was published in 1984, the ship was still young, having joined the Navy’s fleet…
Ever since they parted ways with ESPN Dallas, sports talk duo Ben Rogers and Skin Wade have hinted that they had something else lined up. They’ve just been vague about what exactly that might be. No longer. As Rogers announced a few minutes ago, he and Wade have officially found…
We were pretty sure that Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Ricks’ recent suggestion in the Washington Post that America exile Texas in pursuit of a more perfect union was a joke. Blaming the state for the JFK assassination (without Texas, “John F. Kennedy might still be alive”) and the wars in Iraq…
On Sunday, The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams donned a novelty sombrero and festive pink dress and came to Dallas in search of an authentic Cinco de Mayo fiesta. What she found instead was a few thousand disappointingly sober people gathered downtown to march for immigration rights. Instead of drunken debauchery,…
You know the building, even if you don’t know its name. It’s a neon silhouette that juts from the downtown skyline like a radioactive thumb. My 3-year-old calls it The Pickle, because that’s kind of what it looks like, but its official name is the Bank of America Tower. Since…
Pretty much every serious national news organization has at least a skeletal presence in Dallas. The major networks, as well as CNN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, all have a Dallas bureau. Partly it’s that Dallas is a thriving commercial and cultural hub, partly…
Obama’s reelection last year prompted a lot of talk over whether Texas should once again secede from the Union. Except for a few die-hard secessionists, though, few considered it a serious proposal, more like an opportunity to make Texas jokes. So the debate just kind of fizzled out. But the…
Reunion Tower will finally be reopening “soon,” with a slew of renovations planned to make it bigger and glossier. Judy Pesek, a partner at the design firm responsible for the project, laid out the planned renovations to a crowd gathered on the tower’s observation deck. The renovations will include a…
The biggest tip-off that the above picture is a rendering of Victory Park and not a photo isn’t the color saturation or its overall sketchbook quality. It’s the presence of human beings, who have tended to steer clear of the rather forbidding development when there’s not a Mavs game or…
Mireya Villareal is the junior member of CBS 11’s crack squad of investigative reporters, the I-Team for short. She’s a tough, no-bullshit type, as is clear by the Serious Face she dons in her photo, and she’s dedicated her career to sniffing out government corruption and waste and protecting consumers…
The Dallas Morning News, you may have noticed but probably didn’t, is in the middle of a mammoth, months-long effort to pick the best neighborhoods. First came the safest neighborhoods, then the best schools, then those best suited for empty nesters. It’s all leading up to the June 16 reveal,…
You didn’t seriously expect Ron Paul to disappear into a quiet, uneventful retirement, did you? If you did, you probably weren’t watching as over a couple of decades in Congress and a pair of long-shot presidential runs, Paul became the outspoken face of unapologetic libertarianism, and you probably didn’t listen…
Hang on to your hats, everybody, because I’m about to give you a super-duper exciting glimpse into the inner workings of the Dallas Observer. We get a lot of email from our readers. Some of it comes directly to our various email addresses, but a lot of it goes to…
We somehow missed this in the chaotic aftermath of last week’s Boston Marathon bombing, partly because we don’t watch the news with closed captioning on, partly because we don’t follow Zooey Deschanel on Twitter. But local Fox affiliate KDFW seems to have labeled the 33-year-old actress/indie songstress/Apple pitchwoman as an…
Are you excited about the George W. Bush Presidential Center? We’re so excited. Not quite excited enough to fight our way through the throng of ex-presidents and “Bush-Cheney Alumni” attending the dedication tomorrow, but pretty goddamn enthused nonetheless. So, it appears, are a few SMU students and some random non-affiliated…
In the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s death last week, the Morning News took the opportunity to plumb its archives to remind us of the British prime minister’s surprisingly strong ties to Dallas. She was something of a regular here, making frequent trips to Highland Park to visit her son Mark…
This afternoon, Josh Hamilton and his luxuriant, flake-free hair will take the field in Arlington for the first time since dashing the Rangers’ playoff hopes by badly muffing routine fly ball then bolting for Anaheim. And no one really needs to be reminded of last season’s summer-long slump, his absurd…
When I read a story in The Dallas Morning News this morning about a contest for ideas to link the Trinity River to downtown and saw that the contestants were required to include the city’s stupid underwater proposed toll road on top of the river in their submissions, my first…
