Dallas Loses Long Fight With Trinity East Over Drilling in Parks

Finally, after a court case that’s moved up and down the appellate ladder in fits and starts since 2014, Dallas is going to have to pay Trinity East back for all those drilling rights the city never let the energy company use. Thursday afternoon, according to The Dallas Morning News’…

Texas Republicans End Impeachment Exactly Where They Started

In Texas, at least, impeachment didn’t mean a damn thing. Wednesday, three weeks after Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz were sworn in for the trial of President Donald Trump, both Texas representatives voted to acquit the president on both articles of impeachment with which Trump was charged — abuse…

Sanctuary Cities for The Unborn Movement Sneaks Closer to Dallas

Ellis County is now, officially, a safe space for guns, fetuses and conservatives. This week, the Ellis County Commissioners Court voted 5-0 in favor of a resolution declaring itself a sanctuary city for the unborn, hopping on a bandwagon started by anti-choice activists last year in Waskom. In the succeeding…

It’s All About Bolton’s Mustache. The Rest Is Misdirection.

This may be an ill-informed and over-personal approach to a very serious matter, but I truly believe the whole Trump/Bolton imbroglio is about the mustache. Hear me out. OK, hear me part of the way out. Right after he was elected president, Donald Trump declined to hire John Bolton because…

Cruz on Impeachment: What If Obama?

Over the last two weeks, the saving grace of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial has been that the senators hearing the case have, at least in the Senate chamber, had to shut up. Sure, you could get your fill of their self-aggrandizing meanderings from the mics ready to catch their…

DFW Company Fined $3 Million for a ‘Stupid’ Attempt to Fool ICE

A North Texas concrete manufacturing firm will pay a $3 million fine for continuing to employ undocumented workers despite warnings, the Department of Justice announced on Monday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined in 2015 that more than 40 employees of Speed Fab-Crete’s Kennedale plant were not authorized to work in the…

Democrats’ Path to Texas House Majority Runs Through North Texas

The task ahead of Texas Democrats is like the one Dirk Nowitzki and the rest of the 2010-11 Mavericks faced before that season’s playoffs: monumental, but squarely within the realm of possibility. The rewards are similar too, for both groups, should they find success. The Mavs turned back the tide…

Trump Sides With Poverty Pimps and Dallas Gets Chumped

We have to stop being played for suckers on race, crime and poverty, both here in Dallas and as a nation. Take murder. In recent weeks, two significant local studies and one exciting policy proposal have come forward to combat the social and moral dysfunction that drive murder in particular…

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Maimer of the Texas Senate, Takes Aim Again

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, protector of the Texas Senate, is prepared to rewrite one of the chamber’s oldest rules for the second time in less than a decade. Speaking Thursday on a panel presented by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, Patrick said he will have the votes necessary…

For Someone Who Hates Impeachment, Ted Cruz Sure Does Love Impeachment

We probably should have seen it coming. Impeachment is an arcane, anachronistic and deeply partisan process, so of course it’s right up Ivy League nerd Ted Cruz’s alley. Despite lamenting the impeachment process since its specter was raised this fall, Cruz has taken every opportunity afforded him to present himself…

Trump Administration Plays Enabler to Texas’ Crappy Women’s Health Program

In 2011, Texas booted Planned Parenthood from the state’s Women’s Health Program, starving the family-planning provider from federal Medicaid funds. Almost half of Planned Parenthood’s Texas clinics closed, depriving many in the state of critical medical care. Two years later, the federal government cut off funding to the program, because…

Mr. Mayor, How About City Bond Money to Offset General Messed-up-edness?

For one minute, let’s not call it the murder problem. The word, murder, makes people understandably crazy. Let’s go easy on the murder and just call it the general social messed-up-edness problem or GSMP instead. Better? We now have two recent independent reports on GSMP, one assembled by the administration…

Council Sends DART Silver Line Back to the Drawing Board

Dallas Area Rapid Transit promised Tuesday to alter plans for its new rail line after two North Dallas council members objected to an updated design that would elevate portions of the track. Planners had proposed raising the entire track 5 feet, saving at least $10 million and limiting construction impacts…

After Council Speed Bump, Adelfa Callejo Statue Back on Track

There’s something about public memorials Dallas can’t get quite right. Sure, Robert E. Lee has been kicked out of Turtle Creek Park, but the traitorous general’s fellow travelers are still standing, albeit shielded from public view, on Pioneer Plaza near City Hall. Efforts to take down both memorials to treason…