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…
For most of the aughts, Bryan Kilburn was the city’s Great Trinity Forest guy. He counted trees in the 6,000-acre woods and, as the forest’s senior program manager, spoke on the forest’s behalf at City Council and community meetings. He was instrumental in creating the city’s plan for preserving the…
It looks like the only thing that’s standing in the way of the Dallas Police Department and citing-and-releasing people in possession of marijuana is a formal vote. Wednesday, the full Dallas City Council was briefed on the issue for the first time, and after the meeting, it was clear that…
On the other hand, what if the affluenza judge was right? What if Ethan Couch was raised in a moral vacuum, in an ethical deprivation chamber so devoid of worthwhile moral guidance that he couldn’t even tell drunk from sober, let alone good from evil? Is that possible? If it…
Earlier this week, Eric Nicholson told you about the latest travesty in the Great Trinity Forest: a long muddy gash of felled trees, cut through the woods by a contractor working to build the private Trinity Forest Golf Club on city property. Ben Sandifer, one of the chief defenders of…
Do you ever have the feeling you’d like to take the old year, put it on a little raft, set the raft on fire and push it out to sea? Nothing against the old year. Maybe it’s even a way of honoring the year just passed. But it would also…
It should be noted up front that the information that’s seeped out today about Texas State Representative Jonathan Stickland and his relationship with marijuana is a classic opposition dump. It’s been passed around by Scott Fisher, the guy trying to beat Stickland in the March 1 GOP primary and none…
Sean Fitzgerald hated working for a big law firm. After moving to a small firm, he discovered that he hated that, too. “I finally realized I need to be out, I need to be moving, I need to be touching earth and touching sky or I’ll be suffocated.” And so,…
Business Insider last month included two Texas cities in a listicle they called, “The 15 Hottest American Cities for 2015.” Not us. Austin and Houston. But I took a look at a particular piece of research that the authors seemed to be working off, a report called “The Young and…
We’ve made our list, we’ve checked it … well, not really twice. There was a ton of bourbon in the eggnog. But now we’re ready to air our grievances with those North Texans who’ve wronged us and celebrate those who help make Dallas such a special place. It’s the official Dallas…
A new front has opened in the Texas battle over nativity scenes. Last week, we told you about the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s plan to erect a “Bill of Rights” nativity scene at the state Capitol. Texas state Representative Donna Howard sponsored the display, which depicts a few of the founding fathers…
This just in: Democracy actually works if you let it. And that’s why the Dallas Park Board shot down the deal last week with the private rowing club that wanted to build a clubhouse in a city park. The demise of the Dallas United Crew floating clubhouse on White Rock Lake…
Eggnog. Caroling. Lawsuits. It’s Christmas in Texas. Every year the legality of public nativity scenes generates court cases and headlines. San Antonio atheist Patrick Greene unsuccessfully sued Henderson County over its courthouse-fronting nativity scene in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2011, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) took issue with…
The city is suing low-rent landlord Dennis Topletz to have a court seize all his property, because his family name, according to City Hall, is “synonymous with dilapidated and often crime-ridden, single-family rental property located primarily in the southern area of Dallas.” (See the suit below.) So, wait. What does…
Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate could not come at a much better time for Ted Cruz. Texas’ Canadian-born junior senator is in the ascendancy. He’s currently seeing his best poll numbers of the campaign, he’s scoring points in rhetorical fights with the most visible candidate in the field and he…
Far be it from me, at this holiest period in the Christian calendar, to defend slumlords or, heaven forfend, Mr. Scrooge himself, as The Dallas Morning News has now formally characterized low-rent landlord Dennis Topletz on its editorial page. But I do have a few small questions to ask about…
The 84th session of the Texas Legislature was weird, man. The most conservative body of representatives ever elected by the people of Texas killed the two-thirds rule — the way the minority party had retained a small amount of power in the Texas Senate for almost a century — cut…
To the court of public opinion: In the matter of City Council member Scott Griggs, who is also member of the board of trustees of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Board, on the question of whether a lawyer representing Griggs as a member of said pension board ever hired…
Yesterday when WFAA was live-feeding a press conference about undocumented immigrant children to be housed in a church camp south of Dallas, I could swear I heard Ellis County Sheriff Johnny Brown say he intended to keep the camp surrounded and make sure his officers keep track of everybody who…
When Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez changed the way her office handled some detention requests from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), charges arose that she created a sanctuary county. On Thursday, she returned to the Texas Capitol to answer charges. It seems increasingly likely that there is going…
