Opinion & Commentary

The Trinity toll road mafia recognizes only two positions to be held on the need for a new 10-lane tolled expressway through downtown on the banks of the Trinity River: 1) short hairs or 2) bullet in the face. I talked briefly yesterday to former City Council member and anti-toll…

Years ago, David Spence, an influential developer in Oak Cliff, was showing me around an area of North Oak Cliff where he was successfully re-imagining an early 20th century apartment building — down-at-the-heels and slummy — as a hip urban enclave. I asked him if it wasn’t a problem that…

State Senator Kel Seliger, a Republican from Amarillo, is pushing a measure that we might well dub the “No More Wallace Hall Bill.” In a transparent attempt to shield Texas universities from basic public accountability, Seliger’s meat-ax bill would do serious violence to basic institutional governance in all of Texas’…

Expressions of shock and awe over the OU racist frat boy episode remind me of a party we attended when our son was a junior or senior in high school. This very wobbly lady trying to walk on grass in spike heels came up to me — cross-eyed drunk, windmilling…

Now The Dallas Morning News is in a wad, sort of, because a federal magistrate has ruled that taxpayers must pay some of the legal bills for criminally indicted Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Editorial writer Rudy Bush has personally opined that it’s “moxie” (gentile chutzpah) on Price’s part…

Rob Thomas is playing at Choctaw Casino and Resort in Durant, Oklahoma on Saturday, March 14. But, you already knew that. You screamed, “OH, HELL YES” when you saw the giant billboard on I-75 here in Dallas with his giant Rob Thomas face on it and those intense Rob Thomas…

Eminent domain — where the government takes your property — sounds so neat and clean when the government describes how it’s done. We only see the down and dirty when the government actually does it. Assistant Dallas City Attorney Christopher J. Caso, testifying Monday before the Texas Senate Committee on…

We’ve all heard of the FOMO, that is, the Fear of Missing Out. In Aziz Ansari’s new special, Live at Madison Square Garden, he sharply criticizes the millennial generation’s anxiety in regards to missing out on something better happening right now. Woe unto the person at the thing, who checks…

One big number the Trinity toll road hustlers don’t want us to see before the May City Council elections: How much it would cost to drive on that dog. You saw the story about the new North Texas toll road where they jumped the rate to $7 to drive four…

Just after noon on July 4, 2005, I was sitting under a blazing sun in a dusty, wide-open field behind Billy Bob’s Texas in the Fort Worth Stockyards. I had just unpacked my folding chair and settled in for the first of what would be over a dozen performances during…

You already know how Greg Abbott rolls. Our brand-new so-called conservative (small government, close to the people) governor wants to make it illegal for Texans to pass their own local close-to-the-people laws on fracking, plastic bags or tree cutting — matters he thinks are better left in the hands of…

David Jensen is the guy I wrote about a few weeks ago who owns and occupies a warehouse in West Dallas in the path of a major new real estate development heavily favored by City Hall. His main point in talking to me was to tell the city to tell…

There are plenty of places in Dallas to go get drunk, but some neighborhoods have more charm and community than others. That’s what makes us flock to them and to then keep coming back. This week, Dallas lost one of its best watering holes in Exposition Park’s Amsterdam Bar. For…

The Wobble is a song written by V.I.C. that plays everywhere from clubs to bars to weddings to school dances. It’s a line dance. A dance craze abomination brought here by the Line Dance Devil himself. If you are unfamiliar with the dance, here is one of thousands of instructional…

If the lasso tightens around Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly’s neck after all, it will be the Dallas connection that does it. O’Reilly has improbably wriggled out of other whoppers, like saying he covered a war from 1200 miles away, for example, but so far he hasn’t had the balls…

Who you sue is who’s got the right pockets. The contention at the heart of nurse Nina Pham’s lawsuit against Texas Health Resources, owners of Dallas Presbyterian Hospital, is that her bosses at Presby told her her hazmat suit “was safe and that she was at ‘no risk’ of having…

I view of our story from yesterday — about Dallas ISD trustee Joyce Foreman’s troubling voting record and internet ranting — I present the video below, from the late-night wind-up of last week’s school board meeting. It shows Foreman giving her views on “modern education.” They’re telling. I know Foreman…

Last week the Dallas school system saw the most appalling example yet of Scandalgate — the scandalous scandal of skimpy school scandals. Three board members said they wanted to fire the superintendent over a teacher-hiring scandal. But by the end of the week the teacher-hiring scandal had already turned to…

Wait a minute. The story you’re getting from The Dallas Morning News this morning about last night’s Dallas school board meeting is flat not what happened. It may be some deft ass-covering by the News’ lead DISD beat reporters, but it’s not the news. The paper this morning makes it…

A story in The New York Times yesterday about New York’s only Ebola patient and how he doesn’t want to be a hero got me thinking about hero narratives in the news. For every flood, fire, earthquake, mudslide and measles outbreak, there must be a hero. Dr. Craig Spencer caught…

As I angled for a good spot at Trees’ stellar “local music revue” with Sarah Jaffe, Sam Lao and Blue, The Misfit at Trees a couple weeks back, an elbow descended from on high at dizzying speed, only to directly and sharply make contact with my boobs. I hollered, “Hey,…