If you think Texas’ highways are too beautiful to sully with cheap, unpermitted signs, you’re not alone. Under the Highway Beautification Transportation Code, the Texas Department of Transportation has some very strict, un-Texas-like regulations dictating the types of signs people can display. First, for what is allowed: businesses along highways…
Wendy Davis’ 11th-hour filibuster in June 2013 didn’t ultimately stop the Texas Legislature from passing some of the country’s most sweeping abortion restrictions, nor did it stop abortion clinics across the state from shutting their doors when they couldn’t meet the stringent new standards or obtain the newly required admitting…
Houston-area House member Steve Stockman never fails to make Unfair Park grateful it’s based in DFW rather than anywhere near the congressman’s Bayou City fiefdom. The guy has suggested arming infants, walked out of one State of the Union address and invited Ted Nugent to another. He’s also raised funds…
For a major bureaucratic initiative, County Judge Clay Jenkins’ plan to house around 2,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in Dallas County is falling into place very quickly. Just this past Saturday, Jenkins announced at the Texas Democratic convention his plan to shelter these kids in Dallas by the end of the…
It’s not a new problem, but it does appear to be a growing one, and it’s definitely one politicians are talking more and more about in public settings. The flood of unaccompanied children migrating to the United States from Central America is expected to reach all-time highs this year, with…
Dallas cops act like terrorists in black communities, at least according to the gadfly speaking to City Council on a recent Wednesday. “Realistically, councilmen and councilwomen, this has reached genocidal proportions,” the man added. Councilman Lee Kleinman decided to let that one go. The gadfly pressed on. “For us in…
This afternoon, the Dallas City Council voted unanimously to kick in more than $4.4 million from sports arena tax-increment financing district funds to begin some of the more rudimentary tasks necessary to rehabilitate the dystopian pseudo-urban wasteland that is Victory Park. The money is but a small part of the…
It may comes as a surprise, but as more of the Trinity River project becomes actually worth using, the security concerns facing the area become more complex. To that end, with help from a grant by the Caruth Foundation through the Trinity Trust, the Dallas Police Department is conducting a…
In a lawsuit filed in Dallas’ 44th District Court on Thursday, state Senator Royce West claims a resident of his district has consistently defamed him and has, more recently, begun stalking him at campaign and other events, including a pair of funerals. At the events West cites, Bennie Jeffery held…
Give U.S. Representative Pete Sessions credit for participation. In December, he met with a group of students from Richardson’s Berkner High School to answer some questions and be filmed for a C-SPAN contest in which the students were competing. The students seem well informed — or at least well prepped…
Life isn’t fair. It’s why kids starve. It’s why puppies suffer. It’s why the people who live next to Cityplace will soon also be living next to a 130,000-square-foot Sam’s Club. Dallas’ City Plan Commission confirmed this afternoon that yep, the big box Trammell Crow has planned for the corner…
After finally worming its way onto the Dallas City Council’s briefing agenda, the newly revised transportation-for-hire ordinance, the one that’s supposed to fix the whole Yellow Cab/Uber/Lyft mess, has been put off. Despite protestations from Sandy Greyson, who headed the work group behind the new ordinance, and Dwaine Caraway, a…
In month when Texas Republicans seemingly cannot stop saying dumb things about homosexuality, the party’s finished 2014 platform makes it clear the state GOP isn’t just ignorant about gay life — it’s willfully ignorant. They even put it in writing. See also: Rick Perry Doubles Down on Stupid Talking About…
Greg Abbott debuted his first general election campaign ad Tuesday, bucking his party’s recent trend by at least attempting to appeal to Hispanic voters. The ad, which can be seen in full below and features Abbott’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law, was aired on Univision during Mexico and Brazil’s 0-0 World Cup…
A few months ago, just south of the Texas-Mexico border, a 17-year-old girl was cautiously making her way to the Rio Grande river and the American desert beyond. In her arms she carried her 1-year-old daughter. The two made it across, but, like most of the South American women and…
We should probably be used to it by now. Governor Rick Perry went on CNBC earlier this week and said something that, were it to have come from anyone else, would’ve been stunning for its intellectual dishonesty. In the midst of an interview, which you can see in full below,…
On Saturday, when the other, more ordinary candidates for the Texas House of Representatives were probably making campaign calls or hanging out with their lame families, Arlington Republican Tony Tinderholt appeared to be on a bolder mission. Dressed in camouflage gear, Tinderholt posed for three photographs posted to Facebook Saturday…
If nothing else, Rick Perry deserves points for hubris. In California to stump up business for Texas — including a proposed factory to build batteries for Teslas — the governor responded to questions about the Texas GOP platform’s endorsement of dangerous reparative therapy for LGBTQ individuals by comparing homosexuality to…
Chivalry, you’ll be happy to learn, isn’t dead. Almost, maybe, but it still burns on in the heart of former Dallas police officer Michael Mosher. Mosher was one of seven officers who responded to a report of three potentially suspicious young men walking through an alley in the 6600 block…
House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor went down to ignominious defeat in his Republican primary in Virginia last night, becoming the first sitting majority leader to lose a party primary in the position’s history. In the upset’s aftermath, two North Texas representatives — Pete Sessions of Dallas and Jeb…
After a thankfully brief and largely unfocused debate this morning, the Dallas City Council amended city ordinances to allow bicycles in public buildings, remove unwieldy prohibitions against stunt riding and racing, and allow bicycle riders older than 17 to choose whether to wear a helmet. Changing the helmet requirements was…
Commissioners began considering whether to allow the installation of so-called historical racing terminals at Texas horse tracks at a Tuesday afternoon meeting of the Texas Racing Commission in Austin. The machines, which allow bettors to rapidly wager on replays of past races that have scrubbed of all identifying information, are…
