Mayor Mike Rawlings is proposing that we move our local elections from May to November in even-numbered years as a way to do something about our deplorably low voter participation. And we do need some tricks. Short of hanging all the losing candidates, it’s hard to imagine anything that could…
Sid Miller has done it again. Over the weekend, the Texas agriculture commissioner, not content with comparing the release of sensitive intelligence information to freeing slaves, posted a glowing tribute to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, smack in the middle of Black History Month. The commissioner, best described as a cross between…
Dallas’ favorite muckraker, Jim Schutze, will be live on video at 4 p.m. Wednesday on the Observer’s Facebook page. After his first Facebook Live appearance last month drew literally dozens of viewers, including members of his family, Schutze decided he wanted to take another crack at answering readers’ questions. So,…
On Feb. 4, for at least the fourth time in the last three years, someone attacked a Dallas Police Department substation. This time, Gregory Simpson, 58, allegedly busted up 12 squad cars at DPD’s Deep Ellum outpost with a sledgehammer a little after 5 a.m. Simpson’s alleged act of vandalism came…
Sometimes it’s a good exercise to listen closely to what Dallas City Council member Rickey Callahan says is going on. Take whatever he says. Turn it upside down. Now you’re looking at reality. He’s a coffee table puzzle. Last week at a meeting of the council’s Patronage and Payola Committee…
One thing we should all be able to agree on about now. The Trump debate — against, for — really does not get anybody one inch off the dime. Most of the time, I don’t even think any of us can really remember what we started out thinking we were…
Throughout the winter, much has been made about a feature in Google’s Arts and Culture app that uses an algorithm to match a user’s selfie to a piece of art from around the world. The results have ranged from amusing to terrifying, but Dallas has largely been left out on…
Two cable-stayed structures across the Trinity River, collectively called the Margaret McDermott Bridge, remain closed to traffic for one reason and one reason alone: No one is willing to certify the structures intended for use by hikers and bicyclists are safe for human beings. The difficulty is that no one…
Monday marked 30 days until the March 6 Texas primary. It was the deadline for Texans to register to vote in the primary and the second fundraising deadline for candidates running for state office. For former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, considered a favorite to make it into a runoff…
It’s not Groundhog Day, but it’s close. Late Monday afternoon, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, still under felony indictment and still taking on all comers, announced that his office has new plans to curb what he frames as an epidemic of in-person and mail-in voter fraud in Texas. In a…
I have a great idea. OK, so it’s not my idea. But it could be. My idea — OK, it’s actually Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s idea, technically — is that the city set up an independent agency to analyze the real value of all these huge giveaway deals people…
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said something he wasn’t supposed to earlier this week. Commenting on the uproar over the potential release of sensitive intelligence information in a memo drafted by Republican U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Miller compared the situation to slavery. While this isn’t the first…
Whatever you think of President Donald Trump, his racism, his behavior towards women and his unpleasant demeanor, you might have been shocked, or will be in shock, when the IRS’s new withholding tables take effect at your workplace. Those tables contain new tax rates, created by Trump’s massive new tax…
Nearly four months have passed since the Las Vegas mass shooting spurred outrage over bump-fire stocks, which gunman Stephen Paddock attached to 12 of his semiautomatic rifles before he killed 58 people and injured hundreds more. A bump-fire stock replaces a rifle’s butt stock, or “shoulder stock,” and lets the…
Oh, no. Not again. Forgive me, but I know this setup so well by now, it’s like my old pal, Count Dracula, dropping by again for another visit from the tomb. I open my Dallas Morning News yesterday and choke on my coffee when I see the front-page headline: “DALLAS…
Within hours of publication by the Dallas Observer on Tuesday of a story detailing flaws in the unopened Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River, the Texas Department of Transportation fired off a heated response — but not to the Observer. The three-page TxDOT letter sent yesterday, which alleged “inaccurate and…
Two years ago in a gushing “interactive” story, The Dallas Morning News described the new Margaret McDermott Bridge across the Trinity River downtown as “heavy metal ballet,” saying the city’s second cable-stayed bridge, named for a wealthy Dallas socialite, was “as much art as engineering.” Maybe more ballet than engineering…
The race card is real. But it depends on who uses it for what purpose. Local case in point: Ten days ago, Dallas County Republicans sued in Judge Eric Moyé’s 14th District Court to get 128 Democratic candidates kicked off a March election ballot because, according to the Republicans, there…
Ted Cruz told a giant lie this week. Actually, it was more like a series of whoppers, designed to roll back his essential role in the 2013 shutdown of the federal government just as Washington emerged from Shutdown 2018. Cruz’s lie came the same week as his claim that anyone…
The Dallas city auditor’s office rolled out its final report late Friday afternoon on the four City Council incumbents voted out in last spring’s municipal elections. The results, which show hundreds of dollars in unaccounted-for meals and event tickets paid for with cash from city-funded officeholder accounts, don’t look great…
The first numbers for the city of Dallas’ cite-and-release program for marijuana enforcement are in, and they’re fairly consistent with the city’s marijuana arrest numbers when Dallas police officers were required to take those busted for pot possession to the county jail. Dallas officers have written 23 citations for marijuana…
At this week’s Dallas City Council meeting, one of those very odd moments occurred when the people up onstage seemed suddenly to fall into a weird other language, Martian or something, and the people out in the peanut gallery were all craning around looking, at each other to see if…
