Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Speaker Jim Wright have more in common than the office and a couple of embarrassing book deals. They’ve got a taxpayer-funded, solid-gold retirement plan that could prove to be a public-relations time bomb for the Georgia budget chopper. Democrats lambasted House Speaker…
Double Exclusive Saturday, January 7, gave birth to a journalistic miracle: two newspapers were granted the “first” interview with the Rev. Barry Bailey, ousted in a stunning sex scandal at Fort Worth’s giant First United Methodist Church. Bailey, 68, whose 10,500 parishioners at First Methodist included members of the billionaire…
UTA’s glorious future Dallas Observer includes an impressive example of “How to Write Prejudiced ‘News’ Articles” [“Fast Times at UTA,” January 12]. I have never seen, even in the Observer, a more one-sided view of any issue. But the clues are there, even between the lines. A man comes to…
Paul Fielding remembers the moment his antenna rose on this racetrack business. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the end of a long holiday weekend. The Dallas city councilman was at home in North Dallas, dredging leaves out of his swimming pool. He had taken his cordless phone outside and,…
A mere three years ago, optimism reigned at the Dallas headquarters of Greyhound Lines, Inc. The venerable bus company, thread of the American fabric for nearly eight decades, had cheated death–surviving a fractious drivers’ strike and ensuing plunge into bankruptcy. With the government’s blessing, Greyhound had swallowed its only direct…
Dirty old high-tech men A survey conducted by the Dallas-Fort Worth edition of Computer Currents magazine finds that the local byways of the information superhighway are dominated by men (89 percent). No surprise here. But one of the reasons women aren’t out there, writes associate publisher Cade Herzog in the…
On a rainy evening a few days after Christmas, Linda Koop and her friend Rip Parker were handing out food to homeless people near Dallas City Hall. Koop, a 31-year-old single woman who sells multi-million homes in the Park Cities for Ebby Halliday, was tugged by an urge to help…
A state hearings examiner has recommended that a permit to expand Ferris’ landfill be denied because it constitutes an “incompatible land use” with an adjacent black neighborhood, as well as Lancaster’s city airport. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission’s Office of Hearings Examiners issued the long-awaited “proposal for decision” last…
Salute to General Kael In his review of Pauline Kael’s latest collection of criticism [“Love Letters,” January 5], Matt Zoller Seitz takes the opportunity to deliver a stirring defense of Ms. Kael. But it’s a defense that mostly involves marching out a lot of flags and huffily pummeling a few…
Ave atque vale, Miz Ann. Hail and farewell, Governor Richards. Adios, Annie. Keep your wagon between the ditches. May your days be full of laughter. Good on ya. Ann Richards’ electoral loss to George Dubya Bush will keep political scientists studying for years. By all the conventional measures, she should…
News turns on departed It’s remarkable how irresponsible a good journalist can become when she leaves the Dallas Morning News. Especially if she ends up at the Wall Street Journal. That was certainly the case with Karen Blumenthal, who quit her job as business editor at Dallas’ Only Daily to…
Darold Molix is staring at what is commonly referred to as a dead tree. Molix, his head shaking in dismay, runs one finger down a long crack in the tree’s gray bark–the first clue, he says, that this young red oak isn’t alive any more. He points, too, to the…
On a brisk October morning, University of Texas at Arlington President Ryan Amacher and his wife, Susan, rose before dawn for their morning walk and headed down the long gravel drive that leads from their south Arlington farm house. As they reached the big gates at the end of the…
State District Judge Hal Gaither has earned a reputation as a no-nonsense jurist. In the seven years Gaither has sat on the bench in Dallas County juvenile court, making tough decisions on the sentencing of delinquents and the termination of parental rights, he has often preached the gospel of personal…
Ann had the best balls in Austin When Ann Richards was sworn in as governor four years ago, she brought along pals Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Win or lose, the woman with the big hair has been true to her Texas roots. Governor Ann delivered the opening address…
Por Dios! A revolution in New Mexico politics! Now follow this closely. For many, many years, off and on, the governor of New Mexico has been Bruce King, a fellow we love because he is fluent in Gibberish, the native language of former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis. King, who…
Arena lust Wonder why the News is so loving toward city plans to build a new arena for the Dallas Mavericks and Starsso toothless in its news coverage and so supportive on its editorial page? A one-page letter from Texas Commerce Bank-Dallas board chairman John L. Adams to Mavs owner…
The new year is bringing with it happier people–at least the ones who appeared in this column last year are in that condition, for the most part. Minnie Washington, as you may recall, started out 1994 feeling incredibly grateful for having heat in her house. The 62-year-old great-grandmother had spent…
Post-modern anti-Semitism Miriam Rozen’s article on the Crow family dealings [“The Crow-Qadhafi connection,” December 22] with Libyan political figure Mohammed El Bukhari was quite an investigative piece, and rather good until its, ahem, racist climax. The penultimate paragraph, a diatribe by a friend of the Crows against doing business with…
Dallas city councilwoman Donna Blumer could tell that her constituents were not happy. For one thing, they wouldn’t break into small discussion groups, which the city staff was asking them to do. For another, they weren’t opening their city-issue manila envelopes, pulling out their city-supplied ballpoint pens and colored 3-by-5…
It was supposed to be a night of good cheer and celebration. Some 50 people associated with the USA Film Festival–board members, staffers, trustees, and assorted supporters and hangers-on–had gathered December 15 at the Highland Park home of trustee Dan Owen for a combination holiday party and board meeting. The…
The decision whether to grant an expansion permit for a controversial Ferris, Texas, landfill has been delayed several weeks–amid allegations that a state hearings examiner has been pressured to change her recommendation. Waste Management, Inc., the Illinois-based garbage giant, is seeking to expand Ferris’ Skyline landfill from 73 to 667…
