Dallas Cowboys

Fuckin' Dez and fuckin' Tony in motherfuckin' Chicago Thursfuck.

After last night's drubbing of the Bears in Chicago, Dez Bryant had one simple request: that the assembled press not censor his post-game rant when the ran it the next day -- no "little stars," no nothing.

After waiting dutifully all day for someone, anyone, to heed this very important Cowboy's simple request, it appears we're once again going to have to play the roll of town potty mouth. So here is Dez Bryant, after last night's game, speaking with the local media:

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Nicholas McWhirter via Meat Fight

The last guy got tonged by Ron Swanson. Just sayin.

Because ours is going back to the UK. Which is sad. He is smart and funny and is easily confused by America, and he makes Chartbeat blush. Remember when we sent him to the NRA convention? Or the time he watched the World Cup -- that was that one soccer thing you pretended to understand -- with a citizen of every participating country? Good times.

Anyway, we need a new him. Get in the queue, as he would say. Here's the job posting:

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Amy Silverstein

A woman using Securus' on-site video visitation in the Hopkins County Jail, where in-person visits have been eliminated.

Most people don't realize that Texas has had a pretty cool law on the books since 1985 that bars merchants from charging customers extra for paying by credit card. The famously annoying credit card surcharge feels like it's everywhere, and Texas is just one of a handful of states where the credit card fee remains illegal. So how exactly is the company that operates the Dallas County Jail's telephones getting away with charging customers $4.95 extra if they pay by credit or debit card?

The phones in the Lew Sterrett Jail are operated by a private jail telecommunications company called Securus that makes its money by offering inmate telephone service on a per-minute or per-call rate, resulting in a high bill that the families of inmates are usually stuck funding.

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Stephen Young

Protesters march down Commerce Street Thursday night.

For the second week in a row, demonstrators took to Dallas streets to protest an out-of-state grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer for killing an unarmed black man. Unlike last week, Dallas police blocked off access to Interstate 35 and kept demonstrators from closing the freeway.

Thursday's protest was against a Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner to death. Pantaleo killed the 43-year-old Garner while arresting him for selling loose cigarettes.

Last week's protest, in which demonstrators temporarily shut down I-35, concerned a a St. Louis grand jury vote not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Mike Brown.

Thursday's march began at Dallas Police Headquarters on Lamar Street and included about 250 people at its largest. They wended their way through downtown from the Cedars, eventually getting as far as the American Airlines Center before turning around and heading back through downtown. Cops blocked downtown entrances to the freeway throughout. At about 9:25 p.m., police shut down the roadway as a precaution, but it was reopened less than 15 minutes later.

.@DallasPD created a blockade in Dealey Plaza as protesters tried to go thru the grassy knoll to get on I-35E. pic.twitter.com/crCVppbuZe

— Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) December 5, 2014

Despite interactions between protesters and cops being overwhelmingly peaceful, the Dallas Police Department made five arrests for obstructing a passageway of highway, a Class B misdemeanor punishable with a maximum fine of $2,000 and as much as six months in jail.

Bentley the dog, may he live a long and prosperous life, survived Dallas' recent brush with Ebola. Maybe it was the $27,000 the city spent on his care. Maybe it's that, though it appears that dogs can be infected with the virus if they snack on Ebola-infected animal carcasses or lick vomit from infected humans, they don't become ill.

In any case, Texans should all breath a sigh of relief, not only because Bentley is so much cuddlier and more adorable -- and, importantly, more American -- than the African human who died here, but because Texas would have been woefully unprepared had the disease had swept through the state's pet population.

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For the past few years, the Dallas City Council says it's been trying to develop a vacant lot on Simpson Stuart and Bonnie View roads, in a section of Dallas south of Loop 12 that is 22.5 square miles but home to just 27,500 people.

What the relatively low-population area needs is another grocery store, Councilman Tennell Atkins has said, even though there apparently aren't enough people to support a grocery store. "Density of just over 1,200 people per square mile is an impediment to attracting established grocers," explains a city report.

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Department of the Interior. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Pierre Agency

These young women would've excelled on the exams, we're sure.

Providing yet another reason for me to be thankful I never have to attend another day of primary school, The Dallas Morning News' Matthew Haag enumerated a little of what's on DISD's controversial exams for elective courses in elementary school Thursday afternoon. They are tough.

The list is littered with stuff I couldn't do now, much less when I was a kid. Kindergarten art students are expected to "[c]reate artworks using a variety of lines, shapes, colors, textures, and forms." Maybe, maybe expecting a 5-year-old to color within the lines is reasonable, but to appropriately use texture? C'mon.

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Wikipedia

Kids are born knowing how to do this. Do they really need special instruction and encouragement in it from the school board?

Two stories in yesterday's Dallas Morning News were bookends for the debate on school rigor. In one, three Dallas school board members launched a campaign against too much testing, saying it's mean to the kids. In the other, the head of the biggest company by far in Dallas and one of the biggest in the world, Exxon-Mobil, said 200,000 good jobs are going unfilled because American students are too dumb to do them.

Did I just say "too dumb?" Do excuse me. Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon-Mobil, never used that phrase in addressing the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable recently and never would. He said instead that too many schools are "producing a defective product."

So take your pick. Which would you rather have your kid be? Too dumb? Or a defective product? Man, if those are the only choices, I'm thinking I could handle too dumb a little better than the other. At least it's human.

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Dallas Cowboys

Josh Brent

Josh Brent may have done his time for the December 2012 drunk driving wreck that killed his passenger, former University of Illinois teammate and best friend Jerry Brown Jr., but the legal battle surrounding the case isn't over. Brent's been sued by Beamers Private Club as it attempts to insulate itself from blame for Brown's death.

Brown's father, Jerry Brown Sr. sued Beamers in November 2013 for over-serving Brent on the night of the wreck. The club, Brown said, served Brent multiple bottles of Ace of Spades Champagne in its private room before the party broke up near 2 a.m. Because of Brent's size, he's listed at 6 feet 2 inches tall and 320 pounds in the Cowboys media guide, he would have drunk enough that a Beamers employee would have noticed him and the fact he was too drunk to drive home, he says.

This November, just as Brent was cleared to play by the NFL and put back on the Cowboys roster, he was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Last Tuesday, the club filed a cross-complaint against Brent seeking that he cover all or part Beamers' cost should they be found liable for Brown's death.

The club says Brent's driving of his Mercedes the night Brown died was negligent, that he "drove at an excessive rate of speed, failed to control his speed, failed to drive within a
single lane of traffic, failed to timely apply his brakes and lost control of his vehicle."

Kaufman County

Eric Williams

He didn't do it. That's what Eric Williams' defense boiled down to. Despite the storage locker filled with weapons and survival gear, the getaway car bought using an assumed name, the emailed confession that came from his house and the bullet found in his possession that came from the same gun used in his alleged crimes, he didn't do it.

Williams convicted by a jury Thursday for the murder of Cynthia McClellend, wife of former Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McClellend. The couple was shot to death in March 2013, two months after Mark Hasse, one of McClellend's top lieutenants was gunned down in the street near the Kaufman County Courthouse. Williams is suspected to have committed all three murders because he was angry about losing a justice of the peace post after being convicted of stealing county computer equipment. Thursday, after deliberating for less than two hours, a Rockwall County jury found Williams guilty.

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