Earlier this week, The Dallas Morning News ran an editorial under the headline, “Dallas businesses that become criminal hubs must be held responsible.” The newspaper gave City Hall a pat on the back for filing suit against a Texaco station in far East Dallas: “Ratcheting up pressure against property owners…
The thinking behind former Mayor Mike Rawlings’ “Grow South” campaign was that City Hall needed to encourage investment in the city’s historically segregated and economically shortchanged areas. But what was standing in the way in the first place? Multiple causes are commonly invoked, from active racism to passive unawareness of…
Maybe Sen. Ted Cruz’s battle with big tech is more personal than we thought. Sure, he can wail to his heart’s content about supposed anti-conservative bias on the part of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Maybe that’s what he’s worried about. Or maybe Cruz is looking out for No. 1 and…
Former Mayor Laura Miller and former City Council members Scott Griggs, Angela Hunt and Philip Kingston may no longer be at City Hall, but their ideas are still there, because they were right. Like the river that runs through the heart of the city, those ideas will persist no matter…
Here at your friendly Observer news vertical, our email inboxes are inundated daily with pitches about this report or that study, which purports to show, usually to some advertising end, something about North Texas. Most of them get ignored, but, occasionally, we’ll get some data that’s interesting enough to pass along…
Mostly, Wednesday’s testimony from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller to the U.S. House Intelligence and Judiciary committees came off exactly as one would’ve suspected. Democratic members of the committees pushed Mueller to make definitive statements about potential crimes committed by President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and his first…
There are a lot of ways Sen. John Cornyn could have gone after Dallas state Sen. Royce West, the newest entrant into Texas’ Democratic Senate primary. They could have suggested that West was out of touch after nearly 30 years in office, or maybe too close to U.S. Rep. Eddie…
Pretend it’s midnight, and I’m rolling by some cops who are standing on the street in Dallas. I stop. I put my window down. I say, “It’s 12 o’clock at night. Do you know where your chief is?” Only I don’t really make jokes with cops on the street. Too…
Long-serving Dallas state Sen. Royce West is making a big announcement Monday morning. It’s not much of a surprise, given that he’s already filed campaign-finance documents, but West is running for U.S. Senate, hoping to take on incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in November 2020. West will join a field that…
This spring, the Texas Legislature passed a bill legalizing hemp and hemp-based products as long as those products contained less than .3% THC. THC is the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. At the time, the decision seemed simple enough. It put Texas farmers on a level playing field with farmers in…
For 15 years, the city’s entire ostensible argument for shutting down Jim’s Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas has been that the car wash is a hotbed of crime. But the city made a big mistake two weeks ago. They published a map of the…
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has resurrected the only plan for paying for President Donald Trump’s favorite pet project that’s less likely to succeed than the president’s own plan for paying for the scheme. Cruz, echoing the totally conceived-in-good-faith idea that first sprang from his mouth in 2017, thinks that Joaquín Guzmán…
Women were getting up and walking out in twos and threes, and at some point I realized they weren’t all taking a potty break. With eye rolls and grumpy looks, they trudged up the stairs to the balcony exit in the Music Hall at Fair Park. We were here on…
Really? Leave the country if he gets reelected? No, I get why people say it, and, man, do I ever know a ton of people who say it. I think half the people I know are shopping already for other countries. But really do it? The first thing is this:…
Dallas police confirmed Tuesday afternoon that they’ve arrested Jonathan Moore, 36, in connection with the wrong-way crash that killed former Dallas City Council member Carolyn Davis just before 8 p.m. Monday. Moore remains in the hospital, but police expect he will be charged with intoxication manslaughter for allegedly killing Davis…
An alleged drunk driver killed former Dallas City Council member Carolyn Davis on Monday night, according to multiple current council members. The crash on East Ledbetter Road in Oak Cliff also seriously injured Davis’ daughter, Melissa Davis-Nunn.
The city of Dallas is ramping up to implement its new paid sick leave ordinance on Aug. 1 and along with it, nonprofits and political groups are working to educate employees on this new law. Starting Aug. 1, any employee of a private business or nonprofit who performs at least…
Even before it began in earnest, a question-and-answer session about the city of Dallas’ new paid sick leave ordinance grew heated Wednesday afternoon. Before she began a presentation explaining the new ordinance, Hannah Alexander, partnership liaison with the city’s Office of Fair Housing and Human Rights, told a packed auditorium…
The core Achilles’ heel problem, the perennial failing and persistent flaw in the way Dallas City Hall thinks and operates, is its bizarre insularity, almost as if the world outside Dallas city limits does not exist. Maybe the strangest and most wonderful illustration of that problem is the now almost…
Nationwide, Ross Perot was known as an eccentric Texas billionaire who launched two unsuccessful presidential bids. In Dallas, he’s known, among other things, as the man whose name is on one of the city’s better-known museums. Perot died Tuesday after a five-month battle with leukemia, a family spokesman confirmed to…
A real debate, sure, I can see that, where we can watch opponents drill down on an issue, but an adolescent, reality-show put-down fight? Really? We’re going to choose our presidents that way? No, c’mon. I can’t believe I’m supposed to take former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as a…
Texas, for all its grand political history, has had more than its share of bad candidates, ranging from the benign but deluded, like 2002 gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez, to the not-so-benign but totally hopeless, like Craig James. Scattered among the political graves are several Texas politicians who got too big for…
