It’s Your Call, Mayor Laura

Dwayne Bray, Metro editor of The Dallas Morning News, called me yesterday in response to a call I had placed to Dave Levinthal, the News reporter who wrote a story over the weekend about Mayor Laura Miller and some stock she and her husband owned briefly in AMR Corp., parent…

Mayor Tries to Shoot Down DMN Story

Mayor Laura is pretty pissed off at The Dallas Morning News and reporter Dave Levinthal over his story Saturday about Mayor Miller, her husband and some stock they owned briefly in AMR Corp., parent of American Airlines. She says she gave Levinthal information showing she didn’t vote on any American…

The B.S. Plan

Can I tell you the worst part in this whole exercise the Dallas City Council and the mayor are going through about adopting a so-called “comprehensive plan” for the city? Forget what’s in the plan. Whatever’s in it, it’s irrelevant. In fact, that’s the worst part. This deal about adopting…

Someone’s Got a Complex

The Dallas Morning News ran a story on Wednesday insisting that the Billy Bob Barnett entertainment complex originally slated for downtown Dallas may have found a home instead in suburban Irving, in the Las Colinas development. But I think the opposite is probably true. According to the people I’m talking…

Whose Internet? Smokey Joe’s, Duh.

Well, if you visit here, you can see what Smokey Joe Barton’s congressional committee did to the Internet today. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, of which Barton is chair, voted out a bill sponsored by him that would give phone companies all kinds of new rights to peddle…

Why Plan?

How many people in those beautiful houses on deep lots along Forest Hills Boulevard near White Rock Lake want to see a Blockbuster Video store on their street? Who knows, maybe a tanning salon. Or a couple nice big apartment blocks. Because it could happen. Believe it. There’s a political…

Re: Mayoral Race or Girlfight?

Jim, Sharon Boyd’s posted a comment for you regarding your who’ll-replace-Laura item. But I thought I’d put it here too, to make it easier for you to respond…and so everyone else could play along at home. (And that means you too, Veletta Lill.) “You can’t possibly be serious that a…

Mayoral Race or Girlfight?

So let’s keep trying to narrow our focus on the who-can-beat-Laura runway show. I have blogged in recent weeks that certain people in the business community are devoutly interested in finding a candidate who could knock Laura Miller out of the mayor’s job in the May 2007 election. I’m working…

Whose March Was It?

Pretty interesting how the Dallas Half a Million Mexicans March is shaking out politically, now that it’s all in the past. All of the big-name Latino politicians are trying to step in front and take credit for having set it up. But I have been talking to people who were…

Help, It’s the Police!

Well, I guess I need your help. I have two very different versions here of a story about the DART police. The first version is that they beat up, Maced and jailed Todd Lyon again for no good reason. He’s the guy I wrote about last year who said DART…

Miller’s Crossing

Out there in the heat of the night, the mayoral drums continue to throb. Who can beat Laura? Who-who-who? All kinds of men want to be mayor next time, but all kinds of men always want to be mayor. Just like they wanted to be Boy Scouts. The drums say…

Four More Years? Well…

There has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments among folks who want to see Mayor Laura defeated next time around. Too many old white guys running, they say, none with enough name ID to cash a check, and all they’re going to do is split the opposition…

Southern Hospitality

Not to be self-referential or anything in attempting to deal with the single most significant political event I have witnessed in the city of Dallas in almost three decades of reporting, but the next morning after last weekend’s monumental immigration march downtown I went to the mirror to see what…

DART Strikes Back

Last December I wrote about Todd Lyon, a 48-year-old guy with long hair who got beat up by Dallas Area Rapid Transit cops for jaywalking in the West End. Apparently on St. Patrick’s Day the DART cops spotted him back in the West End and beat him up again. He…

AWOL

While the politicians were milling around waiting for the big immigration march to start last Sunday, one of the things they were all gossiping about, of course, was politicians: who was going to show up and who wasn’t. In particular, I thought I picked up some anxiety on the part…

Devil Creek

Years ago–I don’t remember how many; I was young myself, that’s how long–an old guy pointed a line across my neighborhood with a chopping motion of his arm and told me it was where the creek bed must have been. I have romanticized the memory–a bad habit, I know–but I…

Waking a Sleeping Giant

No telling how many Mexican-American kids have seen Walkout, the movie directed by Edward James Olmos depicting a mass walkout by high school students in East Los Angeles in 1968. It just premiered on HBO Saturday March 18. (You can see the trailer here.) But I do find lots of…

Butt Naked

To the extent black Dallas is southern Dallas–and I’m not sure how much water that cliché still holds–then black Dallas wants to be known as a solid bloc these days. I see a crack. Southern Dallas did defeat two recent ballot propositions for so-called “strong mayor” reforms at City Hall…

Here Comes the Flood

This was the view from Jim Schutze’s front yard Sunday. Expect more of this when the Trinity River Project becomes a reality. We watched Sunday while the streets in front of our house in East Dallas turned suddenly into white-water rapids. We watched cars float away with people in them…

Of Course

Last week, when the weather was fair, it was interesting to see all these rich-looking white guys with their polo-shirt collars flipped up piled into a Lexus getting off I-35E at Ledbetter Road in the heart of Southern Dallas. I thought, “These guys have got to be French.” But, no…

SMU’s Shame

Let’s assume we have two camps. People in Dallas who love President Bush and would love to see the Bush Presidential Library here. People in Dallas like me who do not love President Bush and would not love to see his library here. Fair enough. But I don’t see why…

Heck of a Job, County

Got any extra food at your house? I’m not begging. I have my own extra food. I’m just doing a wacko check on myself. I have extra food. I have extra water. I have extra shotgun shells. No, you can’t have any. They’re for me. And my family. And as…