Last time the City Plan Commission voted to deny a request to frack the Trinity River floodplain, its rationale seemed pretty clear: For now, it runs contrary to a city law that says fracking land prone to flooding isn’t such a swell idea. The commissioners felt plum awkward on December…
Update on January 7.: Uber’s Dallas GM, Leandre Johns, says the company’s attorneys have looked into the matter and determined that its operation in the city is “completely legal.” His full statement is below. Uber, the on-demand private-driver startup, was stirring controversy even before it launched in Dallas last fall…
State Representative Bill Zedler first gained attention about a decade ago, when he led a grassroots crusade to block a Hooters from opening near his neighborhood in Arlington. To a certain extent, this was a classic case of not-in-my-backyard activism in which neighbors unite against an unwanted business, but Zedler…
This upcoming legislative session is shaping up to be a real barn-burner. In addition to the anti-TSA groping measure and the continued battle against the imaginary scourge of Sharia law already filed by other legislators, Representative Dwayne Bohac of Houston has made things even more lively. A couple weeks back,…
With the shiny new session of the Texas Legislature a mere six days away, your lawmakers are gearing up to debate some important issues, like handsy TSA agents and whether we should drug-test people who have the audacity to file for emergency welfare relief. But, as ever, some legislators are…
In an exercise in states’ rights fetishization, the Texas Legislature tasked Attorney General Greg Abbott with figuring out whether international organizations are usurping Lone Star sovereignty. If you’ll recall, there was an ugly scene leading up to the 2012 presidential election, wherein Abbott, chest out-thrust in his best chickenhawk approximation,…
The state legislature won’t convene for another couple of weeks but, as we’ve noted previously, the biennial push to legalize gambling in Texas is already well underway. With that push comes the flood of money to grease the legislative machine. Already, gambling interests have poured in nearly $1 million in…
Earlier this month, state legislators met in Austin to learn what damage Texas might sustain if the country careens off the fiscal cliff, which is now frighteningly near. The short answer is, quite a bit. As the Austin American-Statesman reported, state agencies stand to lose as much as $1.1 billion…
From the outset, Mayor Rawlings and the city of Dallas have made it clear that they intend to control the narrative on November 22, 2013 when they mark what they’re simply calling The 50th. The 50th what? Never mind that. Just remember that this is about celebrating the life of…
Dan Patrick, the Republican state senator from Houston, has been getting a lot of ink for his controversial plans for public education (read:vouchers). SB 20, which he filed today, should be a bit less controversial. The measure would make it a criminal offense for Transportation Security Administration agents to grope…
If you could make it through the interminable hours of debate regarding the virtues of video boards; the dire necessity of liquoring up establishments zoned dry; and what sounded like a monolithic Oak Lawn apartment building, something interesting did in fact transpire during a Plan Commission meeting: a zoning request…
Freshman state Rep. Jason Villalba has spent much of the past couple days scrambling to respond to the sudden media attention sparked by his announcement that he would file a bill for the coming legislative session allowing teachers to carry guns. He talked to the Morning News yesterday, and yesterday…
The Texas Department of Public Safety has been mostly quiet about the case of Angel and Ashley Dobbs, who were cavity searched by a state trooper during a July traffic stop. The agency released a statement late Tuesday saying only that the troopers’ actions have been investigated and that the…
“They came by the other day and swept some of our stuff up,” Michelle complained. She’s a petite black woman in her mid 40s, with chin-length hair partially hidden under a black and orange knit cap. On a recent weekday morning, she was perched atop an upside down bucket, blowing…
During the 2011 session of the Texas Legislature, after hearing a report on the radio indicating that judges in Dearborn, Michigan, now embrace Islamic jurisprudence, state Representative Leo Berman, a Republican from Tyler, filed a bill to keep Texas courtrooms free of sharia law. The proposal was referred to committee,…
Jason Villalba, the newly elected state representative from North Dallas, is starting his legislative career with a splash. Villalba announced today that he will introduce the Protection of Texas Children Act, the innocuous-sounding title of a bill that would allow Texas school districts to designate pistol-packing faculty and staff members…
You know Micah Hurd as the 23-year-old UT-Arlington student whose petition for Texas secession gained 120,000 signatures and triggered a yet-to-materialize White House response, and who claimed he would have posted it anyways if Romney were elected. It was an entertaining gesture, and its entertainment value will no doubt increase…
Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson was among the first to opine that the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday were a testament to the need for more guns in schools, not fewer. That other pundits and politicians would deploy the same argument in the days that followed, casting…
In the wake of the massacre of 27 people, 20 of them children, at a Connecticut elementary school today, Texas officials behaved with remarkable decorum. Attorney General Greg Abbott, a noted gun lover, sent a muted press release urging parents and students to be vigilant about school safety. And Governor…
When the Texas Legislature passed new rules governing the payday and auto-title lending industry in 2011, lawmakers accidentally (or not) left gaping holes large enough to drive large, cash-laden trucks through. It was little surprise, then, that that’s exactly what’s been happening. The Texas Observer’s Forrest Wilder found one of…
Yesterday afternoon, we were summoned down to City Hall via a text message from Paula Blackmon, Mayor Mike Rawlings’ chief of staff. After several long months of silence, it appeared that there was finally going to be some semi-official word on the new regulations for gas drilling within Dallas city…
U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who coasted unopposed to a 10th term last month, was on Fox News today to discuss the fiscal cliff. Johnson, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, is a Democrat. Fox News host Neil Cavuto is — well he’s a Fox News host…
