Those expecting President Donald Trump to make news during his speech Friday afternoon at the NRA’s annual convention came away disappointed. Trump didn’t unveil any new policies, aside from a sarcastic comment that banning guns makes as much sense as banning vans or trucks. He didn’t say the name Stormy…
Turns out, Texas Governor Greg Abbott was right to think something fishy was going on when the federal government announced a series of U.S. military training exercises known as Jade Helm 2015 three springs ago. He just could not have been more wrong about what it was. Speaking on an…
When the National Rifle Association’s convention kicks off Friday, its leaders, supporters and President Donald Trump won’t be the only people at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center talking about guns. The gun lobby group’s annual gathering will find protesters and marchers in Dallas from national groups such as #NoRA…
The National Rifle Association’s annual convention is in Dallas this weekend. For gun-rights advocates, it’s Mardi Gras. More than 800 exhibitors displaying acres and acres of gear, gun accessories and literature. An air-soft range. Seminars on the “guns of Vietnam” and the “survival mindset.” It’s got everything for protesters, too…
The results from the 2018 version of Dallas’ big community survey, the one it contracts the ETC Institute to do every year, might come as a bit of surprise — if you’ve just immigrated to the city from Norway and haven’t driven around town yet. Dallas residents who took the…
Until last week, Salman Bhojani was just running for Euless City Council. The Euless attorney, who became a U.S. citizen in 2006 before putting himself through law school at SMU, thought his suburb’s council could use a little more diversity, and decided to do something about. Then state Rep. Jonathan…
Here’s a thing that’s getting closer and closer to being totally unfathomable. The Dallas city manager is drip-drip-dripping information to the City Council about a yearlong federal investigation of housing programs, giving the council information barely a drop at a time. The piecemeal approach is less than fathomable, because none…
Following a federal court ruling ordering the Trump administration to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last week in Washington, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made good a threat he initially made in 2017 and sued the federal government to halt the program. DACA, an Obama-era policy that…
Jonathan Stickland must be bored. Without serious opposition as he seeks his fourth term representing state House District 92 in the Mid-Cities or a back-of-House chamber microphone at which to bloviate, Stickland, the id of the Texas GOP, has waded into a nonpartisan City Council race in Euless. Stickland’s attack,…
Texas’ controversial voter identification law is slated to go into full effect for the first time, following a Friday afternoon ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. According to a three-judge panel in the case, a lower court exceeded its authority when it blocked the…
A lot of side-of-the-mouth talking took place during this week’s Dallas City Council debate on removal of the shabby Confederate war memorial next to City Hall, but let’s not lose sight of the big thing: The vote to keep that ugly monstrosity in place was led by three of four…
Monday wasn’t a great day for the Dallas County Republican Party. Already down to one countywide officeholder and a single spot on the commissioner’s court, the Dallas GOP and its new chairwoman, Missy Shorey, had its lawsuit against the Dallas County Democratic Party — the one that would’ve wiped dozens…
Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway has an idea to break the stalemate over what to do with City Hall’s Confederate memorial: Put Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on top of the damn thing. The Dallas City Council voted 9-6 Wednesday to put off deciding the fate of the Confederate…
Someday, perhaps when your grandchildren have grandchildren and the Cowboys have been pried away from some Jones scion’s cold, dead hands, Texas will adopt statehouse and congressional maps that are minimally acceptable to all interested parties. Until that day, however, the state’s political parties, voters and interest groups will continue…
Dallas City Hall is like Washington. We have a Deep State, and for all the same reasons. A new regime is in charge here, too. It’s making big policy changes. Those new policies have serious consequences in the real world. Some people in the real world are very unhappy, so…
Just a thought. I’m not a lawyer, certainly not a prosecutor. But after watching the extremely unsatisfying hearing before the Dallas City Council on Wednesday on this winter’s natural gas home explosion crisis, I wonder why authorities are not at least looking at the recent indictment in Wyandotte County, Kansas,…
Atmos Energy officials went to City Hall on Wednesday to say that the company has made good. Since the February gas line explosion that killed 12-year-old Linda Rogers, Atmos President and CEO Mike Haefner said, the company has done everything it can to ensure that its pipes, the ones that…
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso got some good news Wednesday from one of the first major nonpartisan polls of his U.S. Senate contest with incumbent Ted Cruz. According to Quinnipiac University’s polling department, O’Rourke trails Cruz by just three points, 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s 3.6 percentage…
Crystal Mason thought she was doing the right thing. Newly out of federal prison after a three-year stint for helping people file inaccurate tax returns, Mason was pulling her life together while serving out the rest of her sentence on supervised release. She’d found a job and headed back to…
After a brief hiccup in the form of a disputed set of recommendations from Dallas city staff, all signs point to the city of Dallas getting rid of the Confederate war memorial in Pioneer Park sometime later this year. During a City Council meeting last month, Dallas Assistant City Manager…
This is how it works at City Hall. The city gives a mixture of city money and federal money to a community group to build affordable housing. The group sucks down the money. But the group barely nibbles away at the construction project — doesn’t get it done, in other…
At the end of last week, I did a Facebook Live interview with Dallas Park and Recreation Board President Bobby Abtahi in which Abtahi gave evasive answers on some key questions. I did not nail down those issues in the interview, for which I blame myself. I do think it’s…
