Kris Sweckard

​Received a note earlier in the day that come Friday, Mayor Mike, Comerica CEO Ralph Babb, Serita Ann Jakes (Mrs. T.D. to you) and a host of city council members are meeting at the North Oak Cliff Library Branch for "a major announcement" that will involve the "unveiling of [an] e-book collection and new high-tech library resources" courtesy, who else, Comerica. Also on the guest list: Corinne Hill, still listed as the interim director of the Dallas Public Library system -- though not for long. She's outta here February 15, choo-chooing to Chattanooga.

She told Brantey why a few weeks ago -- in large part because the city's taken forever to either take the "interim" off her title or name a replacement, which was was supposed to do by Thanksgiving using either Hill or two other finalists whose resumes we can now forget all about. Why? Because, per the Mary Suhm memo you'll find below: "We will continue a nationwide search for the next director of the Dallas Public Library with the assistance of an executive search firm specializing in identifying the best candidates for major, urban systems." But time is of the essence, she insists, as Nashville, San Jose and a few other "major library systems" are also "searching for new leaders."

But in the meantime, Suhm has appointed yet another interim -- and someone with whom we're quite familiar, Kris Sweckard, who, for the last eight years, has been in ... the Office of Environmental Quality and the man behind its so-called Efficiency Team. (My, how prescient.) But lest you think that an odd job swap, Suhm reminds that prior to his coming to work for the city, Sweckard was in management consulting with PricewaterhouseCoopers focusing on "process improvements, change management, and technology implementation." Oh, that reminds me: You really must watch House of Lies. Anyway. More >>

Roderick Pullum

Last year's parade drew more than 100,000 people to Greenville.

​So here's some potentially lousy news: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade, that beloved march of green-tinted debauchery that's been blowing down Greenville since 1979, appears to be on its deathbed.

The concert at the parade route's end will play on, headlined by Ryan Bingham. The party on Lower Greenville isn't going anywhere, either. And the Observer's marketing team, which sponsored and produced the parade for much of its existence before pulling out last year, is making a last-minute effort to drum up support from the businesses that line the parade route.

But failing that support or some other unforeseen development, the event's 33-year run will come to an end, Jorge Levy, president of the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association, told me today.

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Anthony Graves, exonerated from death row in 2010

​As "the death chaplain" at Huntsville prison, Reverend Carroll Pickett has counseled 95 prisoners, one at a time, on the day the state has scheduled to end their life. Death by lethal injection, the chaplain found, is not a quiet exit. It's torturous. It's not fool-proof. And there's no guarantee that everyone put to death is guilty.

"That cruel and unusual punishment starts the minute they walk in the death house ... It's not painless. It is not painless," Pickett said last night at SMU, where was joined for a panel discussion by death row exonerees Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley. (Brandley also spoke at an SMU death row exoneree panel last year).

"There are botched executions. I've been there. I saw it," Pickett said.

He supported capital punishment when he started his job in 1982, but death after tortuous death wore away at him. "This one young man, they tried and they tried and they tried, and they couldn't find a place to put a needle in that would flow properly," he said.

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​It's been close to two years since former Dallas Cowboy Kurt Vollers pleaded guilty to his role in a pot-distribution "conspiracy" run from 2006 till '08 out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard, and more than a year since John Newton, the leader of the so-called Newton Drug Trafficking Organization, netted himself 24 years in federal prison. Vollers was to have been sentenced in March of 2010, but for whatever reason he didn't find out his jail time till today. And it's no small stint: Per the U.S. Attorney's Office, Vollers has been sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater to 30 months in federal prison; he has till March 20 to surrender. As the feds recap it today, short and sweet:

Vollers actively assisted Newton by, among other things, facilitating the delivery of marijuana to the Dallas area, facilitating the storage of marijuana, repackaging bulk marijuana for sale, distributing marijuana to buyers, facilitating the transfer of money from buyers to Newton and counting the proceeds from the sale of marijuana.

On the bright side, feds once spoke of possibly giving Vollers 40 years max and slapping him with a $2 million fine.

Photo by Greg Howard

Josh Hamilton at his press conference today: "Once I do drink, I can be very deceptive, very sneaky in a lot of ways."

​An hour and a half after Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton met the media to address the fact that, yes, he did have a few drinks earlier this week, team general manager Jon Daniels hopped on the phone with local media. Hamilton took no questions; Daniels had no choice. And almost immediately, a reporter asked the inevitable: Will revelations that Hamilton has once more succumbed to his addiction affect his future as a Texas Ranger?

"I just want to be clear on something: This is not a baseball story," Daniels said, his voice clear and firm. "This is something that is real, that Josh deals with -- an addiction." The GM said that for now, at least, the team is separating Hamilton's relapse from any talks of a contract extension.

"You can't completely do that, I understand," he allowed. "But we have more important things to deal with."

It's Hamilton's second public relapse in three years, the last occurring in January 2009 in Arizona. Daniels acknowledged the parallels of the two relapses, as January is generally the most unstructured part of the year for baseball players.

Still, Daniels was both fiercely loyal and coy through the conference. Although he admitted speaking to Hamilton on Tuesday about his star's Monday relapse, he didn't divulge whether the Rangers would take disciplinary action, saying it largely depended on Hamilton's trip to New York to be evaluated by the MLB's substance abuse program.

Earlier, at a packed-house press conference at the Ballpark, Hamilton called his relapse "a moment of weakness" that happened because of a "personal reason with a family member." He would expound on the drinking, but not what led to it. And he took no questions.

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Riley Rawlins with his mother Monica

​Several Friends of Unfair Park have been asking, repeatedly: When will Dallas Police arrest the 19-year-old woman who, on January 7, hit 17-year-old Riley Rawlins as he crossed Royal Lane, near Audelia Road, to meet some friends at the Sonic there. It's a question that's been repeated again and again since the incident, especially since, according to police, the woman didn't have insurance or a license and admitted to hitting the Lake Highlands High School junior -- and then dragging him 400 feet. Craig Watkins, the Dallas County District Attorney, was noncommittal when asked by The News a few days ago whether an arrest was coming:

"If we do indict it, it's going to be a coin toss," District Attorney Craig Watkins said last week. He said questions about the driver's speed and whether Riley was jaywalking are complicating the case.

But, at last, an arrest has been made. This just in from the Dallas Police Department:

The suspect in the January 7, 2012, fatality accident, in which Riley Rawlins was killed while crossing the road at 9900 Royal Lane, was arrested at her home today and transported to Lew Sterrett Jail. She has been identified as Soraya Villanueva L/M/7-25-93. She will be charged with Criminally Negligent Homicide with a bond set at $125,000.

​Speaking of Uplift Education and its planned expansion into Deep Ellum ...

There's an intriguing item that just appeared on the Dallas City Council's consent addendum for next week's meeting, posted here. According to the doc, the city wants to create a nonprofit called the City of Dallas Education Finance Corporation "for the purpose of financing or refinancing of educational facilities and/or housing facilities incidental to education facilities."

But not just any ol' educational facilities. This is being done at the request of Uplift Education, which, according to those familiar with the proposal, wants the city's help issuing bonds to help with expanding not just in Dallas, but also in Fort Worth, where Uplift expects to open two new campuses in the coming school year. The Educational Finance Corporation, which would have its own board approved by City Manager Mary Suhm and city council, would issue the bonds on Uplift's behalf. Sources say the board's already in place.

Update at 6 p.m.: A lengthy explanation from Uplift CEO Bill Mays follows, in addition to your regularly scheduled jump. Here too is the council briefing for Monday that explains what the city's attempting to do and why.More >>

​Wait, wait. We haven't finished the conversation yet about whether Rick Perry has embarrassed Texas so badly we can never again show our faces outside the state. Are you telling me now we've got to have the same conversation already about Nancy Brinker?

What if people start connecting the dots?

Brinker totally cratered this morning and apologized for the haymaker she landed on the schnoz of Planned Parenthood just a few days ago. You know what that means, right? It means she didn't know there was going to be any problem with landing a haymaker on the schnoz of Planned Parenthood.

What dots am I talking about? I think that's pretty obvious, don't you? What are the last two big things anybody outside of Texas heard about Texas?

Oops. And oops.

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​"Here they go again," Reverend Kyev Tatum said. He laughed, but stopped abruptly. He was talking, of course, about the atheists.

When we last caught up with the Dallas-Forth Worth Coalition of Reason, our local band of atheists, freethinkers and humanists, they were trying fruitlessly to get The Dallas Morning News to include a "secular perspective" in their weekly religion blog. Just in time for Black History Month, they're announcing their newest campaign: a billboard in South Dallas celebrating black atheists and freethinkers, both historical and contemporary. And considering the reaction their last ad campaign got -- those "Good Without God" bus ads in Forth Worth -- they're preparing themselves for a big reaction.

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Photo by Sam Merten

​Several Friends of Unfair Park have asked: Why nothing about Josh Hamilton's alleged "relapse"? Well, because for now, we don't know much, just that the recovering (and re-recovering) addict may have had something alcoholic (not sure what or how much) at Sherlock's (no shit) on Monday and that Ian Kinsler may have tried to stop him from having more of whatever that something was.

But now, there is something to report: Hamilton himself will weigh in with his account of what happened this afternoon at 1 at the Ballpark in Arlington. In the words of Texas Rangers spokesman John Blake: "There will be no further comment at this time."