Today the Dallas City Council will be asked to vote to commit a form of public fraud. The council will be asked to launch a process that would shut down a private business as a public nuisance, even though years of extraordinary effort have failed to prove it’s a nuisance. But…
If you’ve been to a political event this election season, there are two dates that speakers have tried to sear into your memory. The first is obvious. Nov. 6, two weeks from Tuesday, is Election Day, the first chance Texas and the rest of the United States will have to…
The Dallas Police Department wants to start patrolling the space between its cops on the ground and its helicopter unit, DPD Assistant Chief Paul Stokes said Monday. The department wants drones, he said, to keep officers safe and provide better surveillance of protests, demonstrations and other large events. Stokes compared…
Former Dallas City Council member Larry Duncan faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced Monday. In court documents, Duncan admits that he took $245,000 in…
Monday night in Houston, Texas’ junior senator, governor and lieutenant governor will take the stage with the president of the United States, two weeks and a day ahead of the Nov. 6 mid-term election. At almost any other point in American history, the rally wouldn’t be a surprise or even…
Last week I told you a story about Dallas City Hall that made no sense whatsoever — nothing new there — but this week I have it sort of figured out, and I want to share. Last week I said the city had formed a special taxing district to raise…
There’s probably a more delicate way to put it, but former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is getting molly-whopped by incumbent Greg Abbott in their race to be Texas’ governor. That’s the only takeaway one can draw from the new gubernatorial forecasts published by polling guru Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday…
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price gave local Republicans a gift earlier this month when he sent out a mailer encouraging his constituents to vote a straight Democratic ticket in the mid-term elections by comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Predictably and rightfully, much of the local media, led…
After two debates in their race to the U.S. Senate, it’s hard to imagine what Texas voters might’ve learned about U.S. Senator Ted Cruz or U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke that they didn’t know going in. Tuesday night in San Antonio, as they did in Dallas a couple of weeks ago,…
I may join the Republican Party and start pinching women on elevators. I swear I’ll do it. The one thing that could drive me to it, the only thing that might actually push me out of the Texas Democratic Party for good is the Texas Democratic Party. It’s the party…
Anyone planning to gather outside Dallas City Hall early today and cheer as council members pedal their bikes into work for the Bike to City Hall event can sleep in instead. The event has been canceled because of inclement weather. What Bike to City Hall event, you ask? Beats us…
Monday, more than a year after the Texas Legislature, the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund struck a deal to give the city some breathing room from the threat posed by a massive shortfall in the retirement system, Dallas residents got a peek at what’s…
Throughout his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, El Paso U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke has remained unrelentingly positive. Cruz and his campaign have, in ads or in person, called him a socialist, insinuated that he supports flag-burning and painted him as an enemy of law enforcement, but O’Rourke has…
Dwaine Caraway’s City Council district is about to do the same thing again: elect somebody who owes her or his soul to outsiders. It’s the tragic flaw in Dallas’ system of city government. Nobody who might really represent a poor district, who might truly stick up for it, can beat…
Over the last 90 days, Democrat Beto O’Rourke raised more cash in a three-month span than any U.S. Senate candidate since there have been U.S. Senate candidates. He raked in $38.1 million, more than three times as much as his Republican rival, incumbent Ted Cruz. Despite the El Paso U.S…
The real, hard news coming out of the U.S. Senate race between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke Friday is hard to read as anything but good for the challenger. Over the last three months, the El Paso U.S. representative raised an astounding $38.1 million, the most ever in a quarter…
Another week, another regulatory change that could hurt millions of Texans proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. This time around, Kirstjen Nielsen’s Department of Homeland Security is looking to change the way the federal government evaluates immigrants applying for permanent residence in the United States. If a change to the so-called…
As the Observer reported Monday, Resilient Dallas, a plan for building a better city ready to face the future, told us a lot we already know about inequality between Dallas’ northern and southern halves, rich and poor, and white, black and Latino populations. One stark fact it revealed was surprising:…
Just looking at the two candidates’ Facebook pages, it couldn’t be clearer what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his challenger, Houston attorney Justin Nelson, are trying to do as they head into the homestretch of their campaigns. Four years after gaining his office as a Tea Party insurgent, Paxton…
I have been writing about Dale Davenport, proprietor of Jim’s Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Fair Park, for 14 years. Monday for the first time in all those years, I heard him say something I didn’t believe was true. Speaking in reference to a new initiative…
Tomorrow is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 6 election, so here’s a quick primer on what you need to know. First: Seriously, what’s wrong with you? Too busy? Scored some really good weed and been glued to the couch? Oh sure, we understand. It’s not…
Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Pete Session, the incumbent in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. On its face, the Trump’s seal of approval was nothing out of the ordinary, just another rote tweet from a president who’s an endless source of them. What was attention grabbing was that this…
