It was a crisp but bright day in late December, and James was taking advantage of the sunshine to dry his pants on a chain-link fence paralleling St. Paul Street just south of downtown. At the bottom of a small embankment, squeezed between the Interstate 30 service road and Dallas…
Heading into the Iowa caucuses, the contest that could cripple his presidential run, Ted Cruz’s campaign is in flux. Having seemingly peaked in the Hawkeye State around the turn of the year — taking the lead in multiple polls from GOP frontrunner Donald Trump — Cruz has focused the attention…
I believe when you and I spoke recently about what needs to be done with Fair Park, the city’s sadly neglected 277-acre exposition park, I did make a clear distinction between the State Fair of Texas (big and wonderful) and the board that oversees it (small and stubborn). After an…
They couldn’t even acknowledge what had happened. In all of the responses — and that term is being used very loosely — from Texas’ statewide leadership to an investigation they ordered leading to arrest warrants being issued for two anti-abortion activists, not once did Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan…
I don’t really recommend that you read anything by anyone else but me on a regular basis, and I can’t be responsible, of course, for what might happen to you if you insist on making a habit of it, but every once in a blue moon somebody out there writes…
For some horrible reason lost to history and wrapped in political voodoo, the State Fair of Texas, one of the single most beloved icons of Texas culture, operates under the iron-fisted domination of one of the single most despised ownerships in the state, by which I mean State Fair of…
Most of the stuff contained in the Dallas City Auditor’s report about naughtiness and potential naughtiness by the outgoing members of the Dallas City Council last summer isn’t particularly galling. That Tenell Atkins and Vonciel Jones Hill both had outstanding balances on their city of Dallas water accounts when they…
Slowly but surely Dallas is turning the Trinity River into what should be re-named either The Rogue River or The Mad River — the one river in America not subject to the same laws that govern every other river, harbor and waterway in the country. In fact, maybe not even…
Dallas City Council members, closeted in a closed-door session last Wednesday with lawyers from the city attorney’s staff, couldn’t believe their ears. Without any warning or preparation beforehand, the lawyers told the council that the council was up against a legal deadline only a few hours off, and that, if…
This much should be said for Ted Cruz: At least he’s paying attention. Rather than largely dodging the issue, as his fellow GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have done, Cruz has taken time this week to both lambaste all levels of Michigan government and actually do something about…
The official story of homelessness in Dallas over the past decade has generally been a positive one. According to the annual census that the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance conducts each January with the twin goals of measuring the scope of the problem and remaining eligible for some $17 million in…
Historic preservation goes on the muscle today in Dallas with the announcement (see below) of a war chest for buying up threatened properties. A new non-profit, called Dallas Endowment for Endangered Properties (DEEP), will seek ownership of anything its directors think is worth saving and in the way of harm…
Wait. Tell me again. Where do you get money? Do you get money from the mall? I thought the mall got money from you. Nothing against malls. I just don’t get how malls make the people around them richer. Last week the Dallas City Council gave investor Peter Brodsky $2.4…
Slowly, as if it could go any other way, the process that might eventually lead to another process that will end in both the Trinity park and Trinity parkway getting processed is coming into focus. Friday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced the names of the six people who will join…
Texas Senator Ted Cruz handled the biggest moment of his campaign for president thus far with humor and aplomb. Facing increased pressure over his Canadian birth and a misreported personal loan he took from Goldman Sachs in order to fund his 2012 Senate campaign, Cruz cracked wise about making Donald…
Planned Parenthood has sued the Center for Medical Progress over a series of videos released in 2015 that CMP said showed Planned Parenthood officials engaging in illegal conduct — namely, attempting to sell fetal tissue obtained from abortions, for profit. The videos touched off a firestorm from anti-abortion politicians. In…
I think we’ve actually reached the point where nothing, not one single thing that anyone, very much including myself, has to say about the so-called “Trinity toll road” can be understood by anyone, by which I mean any human being, living, dead or unborn. Yesterday Brandon Formby had what I…
Oil prices are cratering, hitting just $30 yesterday, and what happens next is hard to predict. While some ideological enemies of crude might shrug their shoulders at this news, North Texas has a very good reason to keep an eye on these prices and trends. Dallas is home to a…
Surely, it was just a coincidence, but as soon as Ted “Canuck” Cruz crept past GOP national front-runner Donald Trump in Iowa polling a couple of weeks ago, Trump started nudging the issue of Cruz’s alleged Canadian-ness. People, Trump said, were talking to him. They had lots of questions about…
I finally found Mary Suhm, and guess where. In a videotaped deposition. The former Dallas city manager sat down in front of recording equipment for five hours early last December and answered challenging questions in a lawsuit against the city brought by Trinity East Energy, LLC, an oil and gas…
The Dallas Morning News has been carrying out a tough-worded editorial campaign against a Dallas family the paper calls slumlords, describing their business practices as “despicable’ and dismissing the family’s own arguments as a “massively most absurd defense.” The paper wants a court to enforce a petition from the city that…
This was not the Trump show. There were far less people — 750 maybe, compared with at least 10,000 for the Donald. There was less obvious vitriol and the whole thing lacked the fever dream feeling that seeped from the pores of Trump’s September rally at the American Airlines Center…
