Justin Rodriguez knows the difference between a good tie and a cheap tie. With seamless expertise the former District 7 City Councilman explains to me over breakfast at Mi Tierra Mexican Restaurant how some ties are too thin, so you can't make a good knot. As he points to his mesmerizing grayish blue Ike Behar number, he let's me in on a little secret – "it's all about the knot." I have to admit, it does look pretty incredible. Although he tries not to be judgmental, sometimes he has to stop others in the name of political fashion.

COPS-Metro Alliance leaders want the credit crisis at Project Quest to go away – but not to waste.

The workforce-development agency, which boasts more than 3,300 graduates over the last 19 years, is $700,000 in the hole and effectively cut off from placing new students in higher-ed and training programs around San Antonio. Representatives of Communities Organized for Public Service and Metro Alliance – which pressed for the creation of Quest in the early Nineties after the Levi’s plant closed, a jobs disaster – are scurrying around City Hall to shore up political support.

Whether by coincidence or design, controversy tends to follow Henry Muñoz – VIA Chairman, impresario of the precariously funded Museo Alameda, and the marquee name in frequent public-contract winner Kell Muñoz Architects. So it's little surprise that last week's County vote to commit $55 million to VIA's blueprint for a downtown streetcar system was followed yesterday by the resignation of two high-profile members of the transit authority's Streetcar Steering Committee. The unforgivable insult: they weren't consulted about the plan that Bexar's Commissioners approved.

She didn’t cross the border. The border crossed her.

Last week, State Representative Veronica Gonzales (D-McAllen) announced that she will run for her first term to represent House District 40. But if she wins, it would actually be the lawmaker’s fifth term battling for the Rio Grande Valley’s interests in Austin. Her previous four terms, during which she garnered various awards for her activist legislation and climbed to a committee chair, were spent serving HD41. During the recent redistricting process, though, Gonzales was carved into a neighboring bloc and left with less than 2 percent of her former constituency.

In the 1982 song "Time" by the British band Culture Club, lead vocalist Boy George poetically ponders time's natural tendency to deceive, making "lovers feel like they've got something real." Friend or foe, time is one of life's most precious commodities, and everyone measures and values it differently. Whether anxious for time to speed up or wishing it would slow down, the wish to control it is universal.

Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson, whose number of board memberships is remarkable, has a philosophy about time that encourages him to aspire to his "level best." This week, I connected with Adkisson on the tenth floor of the Paul Elizondo Tower to find out more about one of the county's most camera-ready politicos.

Francisco "Quico" Canseco was adamant.

Every time a constituent or a reporter approached the freshman Republican congressman over the first half of this year and asked for his position on raising the federal debt limit, Canseco insisted that he would never vote for it. On August 1, however, Canseco reversed his field and cast his vote in favor of a budget deal that raised the debt ceiling. As a result, the District 23 representative quickly found himself sharing confined quarters in a Tea Party doghouse with 58 other GOP freshmen who learned, much like Justin Bieber and Romeo Void, to never say never. In Canseco’s case, his compromise vote might even result in a 2012 GOP primary challenge.