The case of the vanishing Appellate Public Defender is a classic whodunnit, and because there are multiple culprits, a difficult one to solve.

In late May, Chief Appellate Public Defender Angela Moore abruptly resigned and Assistant Public Defender Deborah Letz followed her to the door a short while later, leaving the office with just two full-time attorneys. Under the County's recession-induced hiring freeze, departments are obliged to prove that any open position filled would at least pay for itself. That case was never made for the APDO.

Walk into any restaurant in Mexico and ask for the Tex-Mex platter of fajitas and you’re likely to draw a blank stare. Walk into any butcher in Mexico and ask for a kilo of faja, and you’ll get a kilo of skirt steak. Faja usually means girdle in Mexican Spanish, and in culinary terms it refers to the cut of beef underbelly from the “plate” mid-section between the flank and brisket. Sometimes people confuse the term fajitas to refer to the ribbon-like lengths of grilled streak or other fillings that constitute the fajita filling, but this is, in fact, a hyperforeignism.

“Fajita” has had another colloquial misinterpretation in Texas likely to draw blank stares anywhere outside of the state. Following Texas redistricting after the last U.S. census, politicians dubbed a long, narrow Congressional District 25 gerrymander “the fajita strip” because of its skinny, elongated shape. The Supreme Court did not find the platter agreeable: It ruled in 2006 that the district skirted the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

Graciela Sanchez has a hard time getting her mother to attend her LGBT film festivals for one understandably good reason: the lesbian always dies at the end. Indeed, Hollywood's attitude toward gay characters during the mid 20th century created a formula found in examples like the 1961 film The Children's Hour, which sent a clear message to LGBT youth that homosexuality only leads to Shirley MacLaine offing herself. Fast forward to the singing, dancing lesbians of Glee. Spin. Jazz hands. Let's get Sapphic. Pose.

As budget hearings go, the first hour of Monday’s gathering on the East Side was pretty upbeat, even jovial at times. White-haired community activist Leon Thomas commended City Manager Sheryl Sculley for always greeting him with a hug, and joked that it must be because he’s so handsome. Reps from the Boys and Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts and various other groups stood up and enthusiastically trumpeted their causes.

Then Gerald Ripley walked up to the microphone. Ripley, the longtime pastor of the evangelical Abundant Life Church, brought a touch of gloom to the room by denouncing Sculley’s proposed initiative to offer benefits to domestic partners of municipal employees. Ripley said he was speaking on behalf of a group of 85 local pastors who all adamantly oppose the plan.

Annie's List, an Austin-based political action committee that recruits Democratic women to run for the Lege, is taking Bexar County more seriously than it has at any previous point in the group's eight-year history. It's targeting two Texas House districts here and will stage its first major local fundraiser in October. This being San Antonio, the organization also has touched off some carping and a low-level clash or two.

The two degrees of separation that barely buffer most San Antonians from one another wears away to nothing when it comes to dealings at VIA, the mass transit authority that's responsible for running the city's buses and is currently embroiled in a heated public debate over building a downtown streetcar. Former Mayor and current SAISD board member Ed Garza holds part of a deal, awarded July 6 to HNTB, to manage the development of the streetcar, two transit centers, and two park-and-rides. Garza in turn defended the SAISD board's decision last January to hand the contract for overseeing most of the district's $515 million bond program to a team headed by Kell Muñoz, the well-connected architecture firm of VIA Chairman Henry Muñoz, when it faced public complaints of favoritism and unfair competition.

Garza also sits on VIA's streetcar committee – the same streetcar committee from which former Greater Chamber of Commerce chairs and well-known local businessmen Mike Novak and Marty Wender resigned last week, saying that VIA had decided to adopt a plan and pursue county funding without their final recommendation.