We received an automated phone message at the home last night from Ron Kirk, urging us to vote for Chris Bell for governor in the primary today. Kirk identified himself at the top of the call as “Mayor Ron Kirk.” I didn’t think anything of it. But my wife, who…
Strange: I drive by graffiti all the time in East Dallas. I don’t even notice. Sergeant Mark Langford of the Dallas Police Department’s gang unit told me the other day: “People just drive by it like it’s a street sign. It’s almost become a part of the fabric of the…
Last week’s column was about the deal to redo the Mercantile Building downtown, and the day it came out (last Wednesday), I went to the City Council meeting and heard the mayor misstate a key element of the deal for some reason. I don’t think she was doing it on…
The first thing that happens to me when I hear about something like the most recent meeting of the city council finance committee: I assume I must not be getting it. I know that grown-up people on the city council of a major American city would not sit there and…
The noose tightens. Keep an eye on the tax incentives the city gives developers and the bickering about it at City Hall. They’ve been giving away the store for years, and now all of a sudden they feel the pinch. I realize the stories about this stuff in The Dallas…
What happens when one of those beat-on-the-car-window street hustlers approaches you while you’re stopped at a traffic light? And he starts fast-talking how he ran out of gas and he needs to get to Shreveport and he lost his wallet and his baby needs a prescription for the hole in…
It’s the race that killed race. You wake up one day, and the city’s not white anymore. First thing we have to say: You sure have been asleep a long time. This didn’t just happen overnight. Must have been some party. But then we have to ask: So what? Every…
Here’s the thing with the Dallas transit police: It’s not that DART cops are totally insane wacked-out Nazi Robocops. But they do have a way of turning absent-minded missteps by otherwise law-abiding people into high-drama scenes. Another damn jaywalker eatin’ some sidewalk! I’m not saying people should jaywalk. But come…
I have waited patiently for the holiday season to expire. Now I’m afraid I must bring up the guy who got caught sprinkling his own dried feces on the doughnut display last summer at Fiesta Mart. For some weeks I have been in possession of new information–a haunting burden for…
Most of the year, I try to live up to the general rule of thumb around the offices of this newspaper, which is: “Every little chance you get, please try to tell the readers something they don’t already know.” Normally I devote more of my energy to reporting than pontificating…
So here is how Dallas ushers in the holiday. Last week an obscure city board meeting in the bowels of City Hall stretched the meaning of available city ordinances in order to evict poor people from an East Dallas mobile home park that has existed since the 1940s. And why…
Michael Sorrell, who was on the city’s charter review commission, wrote an op-ed piece for The Dallas Morning News last week praising the people of southern Dallas for going to the polls this year to help shoot down two “strong mayor” ballot initiatives. I do believe voting is always better…
Let’s do it this way. I will tell you this story a few times from different people’s points of view, and you can make up your own mind. This is about a guy who wound up spending 11 days in jail on what started out as a jaywalking charge in…
Don’t tell me it’s too early to worry about the 2007 Dallas mayor’s race. It’s never too early to worry. And the next mayoral race is going to have everything to do with what’s going on in the city right now. There are two main scenarios for the next mayor…
I figured this for a typical cat caper. One guy takes a strong liking to another guy’s cat. Nabs it. Cops refuse to step in because of an entrenched anti-cat bias. Luckily a crusading journalist–moi–arrives on the scene in the nick of time, and the story has a happy ending…
Reviewing Mary Mapes’ new book, Truth and Duty, in the November 2 National Review, Byron York opens with a description of the 60 Minutes II story that got her fired from CBS last year. That story said CBS had new documents shedding light on an old story–that George W. Bush…
Last weekend I’m watching the news on Channel 8, and I see this amazing story. Gloria Campos leads the newscast: “Two men arrested in one of the largest drug raids in Dallas history are back on the street tonight, freed on a technicality.” A technicality? That’s no good. The rest…
Hey, I wish you could have been at last week’s Dallas City Council briefing. It was Friday night football. John Scovell, a lobbyist who had just won a huge city tax cut for Hunt Oil, was down in the end zone spikin’ the ball and doin’ a hula dance. “I…
There’s a difference between the short end of the stick and the long end, between how people get treated when they’re well-connected and how it goes when they’re not. Most of us can live with that. Within reason. The problem at Dallas City Hall is that there’s too big a…
Dallas Morning News, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Morning News. I know. You think I’m obsessed and don’t have a life. You’re half wrong. I am not obsessed. Mildly fixated, maybe. Hey, I often admire the News as a newspaper. But the corporation has an extremely irritating quality I can’t let…
Just about everybody who served or worked with Harriet Miers during her brief political career in Dallas remembers her as a hard-working, fair-minded moderate. When the Dallas political spectrum is properly framed against the national matrix, that means many people elsewhere will view her as a right-wing Christian nut case…
Just about everybody who served or worked with Harriet Miers during her brief political career in Dallas remembers her as a hard-working, fair-minded moderate. When the Dallas political spectrum is properly framed against the national matrix, that means many people elsewhere will view her as a right-wing Christian nut case…
