Monday morning, Dallas finally rolled out its performance dashboard, which is supposed to give residents something close to a real time look at some of the things they care most about, like police response times, street repairs and homeless services. There are 35 items included on the dashboard, all part…
Dwaine Caraway isn’t afraid of guns. In fact, he’s a big supporter of the Second Amendment, something he made clear Monday morning at City Hall. The Dallas City Council member owns guns and thinks his constituents have the right to do so, too. He just doesn’t want the National Rifle…
At a little before 1 a.m. Friday, Austin became the first city in the South to protect workers with mandatory paid sick leave. No matter their employers, any person working in Austin will get at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 worked, up to a maximum…
Plano City Council member Tom Harrison, after listening to his united council colleagues call on him to do the “honorable” thing and resign for publishing anti-Islamic posts on his Facebook page, delivered a short, simple reply: “I will not comment about anything on the advice of my attorney, but I…
The Plano City Council will debate council member Tom Harrison’s fate at noon Sunday, following repeated calls from Plano’s mayor that Harrison resign. Tuesday night, Harrison reposted an anti-Muslim video on his Facebook page. The video, created by “Joined Hands Across America For Trump,” shows purportedly Muslim children engaged in…
You take whatever position you like on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. I will always think of him as an acolyte of Satan. Now he’s moving to suppress an effort by certain public school districts to increase voter show-up at the polls. Right. And the wolf admonished Little Red Riding…
After another assault-weapon-assisted tragedy, this time at a Florida high school, the usual actors took their usual marks quickly. Thoughts and prayers, so many thoughts and prayers, rang out from Republicans’ social media accounts while gun-control supporters retreated to the fatalism that’s come from so many mass shootings and so…
Texas’ voter turnout has gotten slightly better over the last half-decade but remains among the worst in the country, according to new research from the University of Texas at Austin. The state ranks 44th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in voter registration, and it ranked…
Agents working out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Dallas office arrested nearly 17,000 people in 2017, according to a new study from the Pew Research Group. That’s the highest number of arrests in any ICE region — the agency calls them “areas of responsibility” — and an uptick of…
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…
