News
Scared/Silly
A local gun rights group says it carries loaded semi-automatic rifles in public to show it’s ludicrous. Others agree with the ludicrous part.CHRISTIAN MCPHATE
In a Home Depot parking lot near AT&T Stadium in Arlington, a small group of people, mostly in their mid- to late 20s, stand by pickup trucks filled with flags. It’s a Saturday afternoon in late September, and they’re g...
How Many Times?
STATICJust a few weeks ago, Static was lamenting that Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison outfit in the U.S., probably would get the contract to run a new 2,400-bed family immigration detention center to be...
Ebola’s Grim Math
GWYNNE DYERHere are two good things about the Ebola virus. It is unlikely to mutate into a version that can spread through the air, as some other viruses have done. And people who have been infected by Ebola cannot pass it on to others du...
Get Out
In Riverside, a “gateway to downtown” is being opened by poor-people removal.EDWARD BROWN
Susan Bethke, a seven-year resident of the Scenic Bluff area, chose her house northeast of downtown for its location near her son’s school and their church. From the get-go, she knew the area — consisting mainly of small, m...
A New Mouthpiece
STATICJoe Palazzolo is burning through attorneys the way Elizabeth Taylor went through husbands. In March, the former assistant principal at Arlington Heights High was awarded more than $2 million in his wrongful termination suit aga...
Idolizing Ted
The Willis-Burton race for the Texas Senate has deep implications for Fort Worth.FRANK MATTHEWS
There is an old axiom that says all politics are local. Well, that may have been true years ago, but the political landscape has changed dramatically with the birth of the Tea Party. Take the District 10 race for the Texas Sena...
No Pass/No Job
Advocates for the homeless are upset over a proposal to end free bus passes.ERIC GRIFFEY
On weekday mornings Lou Friese takes an hour-long bus ride to work from his West Fort Worth apartment near Las Vegas Trail. Before he found a job at First Street Methodist Mission in June, Friese had been homeless for more thre...
A Crisis in Care
Profound changes may be coming for Texas’ mental health services and its whole healthcare bureaucracy.EDWARD BROWN
Texas’ massive health services agency, which oversees the state’s psychiatric hospitals and many other aspects of healthcare, is failing to do its job. Its aging hospitals are in crisis and short of staff, and patients ar...
Bad Air Day
Around North Texas parks and playgrounds, children are breathing dangerous doses of toxic fumes from gas industry sites.PETER GORMAN W/ PHOTOS BY LEE CHASTAIN
On a crisp Saturday morning, Delga Park, just north of downtown Fort Worth, was beautiful. The deep blue sky was spattered with cumulus clouds, and birds flitted among shade trees at one end of the park, sandwiched between I-35...
A Game of Creepfrog
STATICResidents of the University West neighborhood just can’t get a break from the “TCU creep.” No, that’s not some weirdo performing lewd acts in public, but the nickname locals have given to the double whammy of steady enc...