Politics & Government

When the president is on Twitter suggesting a U.S. senator is a whore and his fellow Republicans are on TV talking about how much they hate the FBI, guess who gets lost in the shuffle? Why, it’s our own Rick Perry, our former Gov. Oops. Where is that boy, anyway,…

There was a moment this year when The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, which serves between 8,000 and 9,000 homeless people a year, almost had to shut its doors because of a stupid software problem. Not its software. Somebody else’s. Although The Bridge had a sophisticated software system, it was paying…

People who watch this stuff closely for a living were not surprised at the end of last week when The Dallas Morning News got Marlon Rollins kicked off the Dallas park board. For one thing, it was a fair shoot. He was vulnerable. For another, it was inevitable because Rollins…

What good do you think it would do for Dallas to carry out the moral, political and social equivalent of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission process of the late ’90s? What if we took a deep dive into the specific decisions in our past that put us where…

Can a reporter become an elected official? I know it’s legally possible, but isn’t it some kind of crime against nature? When WFAA-TV (Channel 8) investigative reporter Brett Shipp announced his resignation last week to run for Congress, most of the immediate comments painted him as an ingénue, a guy…

To our regret or good fortune time only will tell, but Dallas is a great laboratory for viewing the forces roiling around American cities. We’ve got thunder overhead, rumblings in the basement and maybe a great day ahead. Nationally, the divide between cities and everybody else has been consuming ink…

A big picture isn’t necessarily good because it’s big. What if the picture misses the elephant? How does that help? During Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ state of the city address Tuesday, he announced he is launching an initiative he calls Goals for Dallas 2030, fashioned after a 1960s thing called…

Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is running for governor. The sheriff will resign her post Wednesday morning, before officially kicking off her campaign at Texas Democratic Party headquarters in Austin. “Like so many hardworking Texans, I know it’s tough deciding between buying food, finding a decent place to live, and…

Over the weekend, an unknown group of suspects peppered Southern Methodist University’s Park Cities campus with white nationalist banners and posters opposing the LGBTQ community and urging white men to “reject the opioid beast.” Texas Vanguard, a white supremacist group, claimed responsibility online for putting up the material, posting photos…

This last week has caused me to think about something that really never occurred to me before. Maybe it should have. So now I wonder whether U.S. Reps. Joe Barton and Blake Farenthold are bigger hypocrites than former President Bill Clinton. Are they the same grade of hypocrite? Are they…

Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston agreed Friday to pay the just more than $8,000 penalty assessed against him by the city’s chief financial officer in July for missing too many meetings over the previous year. Although he paid, Kingston still disputes the decision and calls it a “witch hunt.”…

From gritty bars to the courthouse steps, a great cry of the collective human heart went up in Dallas last week for a dog named Lamb of God, slated to be killed by the city because she bit a child badly. But this really is not open for debate. The…

I more or less pay the rent by telling you what’s wrong with City Hall. So I’m a little worried. Not sure how this is going to work out. It looks as if I may have to tell you what’s right with City Hall. I ask only this: A couple of…

Republican U.S. Representative Joe Barton, North Texas’ longest-serving House member, will not seek re-election in 2018. Barton’s decision comes amid pressure from fellow Republicans in North Texas and around the country after an explicit photo and suggestive texts from the congressman became public. “I am very proud of my public…

When somebody takes a hard-line position on a City Hall issue and won’t say why, it’s no big surprise to find out later he had something in his pocket that he didn’t want to share. But in East Dallas, I believe I have found a tribe of people who may…

If there is ever to be an autobiography — I, Joe — the moral issue to be addressed in it will be whether Joe Barton, a 32-year member of Congress from Ennis in the 6th Texas Congressional District, was a hypocrite. Somehow, a woman not his wife got her hands on…

It’s not hyperbole to say that 2017 has been a defining year for Texas politics. The state’s biggest cities openly warred with the state government in Austin, and many of those who’d built power bases in Austin over the last decade found themselves confused and frustrated by a new environment…

Dallas has been paying attention recently to some compelling research showing that racial segregation is bad for poor minority children. Truth. But only as an aside, no big deal, just me up here in the bleachers mumbling to myself: I’d like to point out that segregation probably isn’t too good…

Our new city manager is saying and doing all the right things. I’m watching to see how long it takes them to get rid of him. By new city manager I mean, of course, T.C. Broadnax, who came from Tacoma, Washington, in February to take the reins as the first…

The Dallas City Council did its required rubber-stamping Tuesday, signing off unanimously on a settlement that takes care of four of the six outstanding police and fire pay lawsuits against the city. The $62 million settlement takes care of the suits filed in Collin County by former Dallas police officers and…

Members of the Dallas City Council greeted Give Right-Dallas, Dallas city staff’s latest proposal to combat aggressive panhandling, with less-than-stellar reviews Monday. The plan, which would cost about $200,000, calls for a public education campaign that would encourage Dallas residents and visitors to give cash to homeless support organizations through…