• Cell phone use + jaywalking on SMU campus = an accident with one person in the hospital.
• Election night traffic crashed the Texas Tribune servers!
• BBC story on San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

J.W. Lown, who served three terms already as mayor of the town of San Angelo, announced that he was resigning his office before being sworn into his fourth term this week. He chose his personal life over his political one; he has been romantically involved with a non-citizen since March (the relationship started after the filing deadline for this past election), and is currently in Mexico while his partner tries to get a visa allowing him back to the States. Town leaders seemed stunned by Lown's decision, speaking to his accomplishments as mayor. Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tem Jon Mark Hogg told the San Angelo Standard-Times, "I think it goes without saying we lost a great public servant with Mayor Lown." [San Angelo Standard-Times] more ›

FRIDAY [30] music • The Skeletons at South Austin Speedshop (7pm) fashion/music • Couture de Amore with fashions by Loves, Mariessa; Stiletto Gold; Sea and Enemies; Amy Kline (Jewelry), and Clap!Clap!, Golden Bear, Haunting Oboe Music, The Valentines at The Parish Room ($10) music • Video/CD release for "The Projeckt" at Latitude 30 music • Bluebonnet Blues Festival, benefitting Historic Main Street Association of Marble Falls, at Marble Falls music • 3rd Annual Global... more ›

Every day we live history. Part of what makes life in Austin unique is the living of music history. Every night of the week we can hit one of the local venues and hear a band we’ve never heard before. That band that hauled itself into town in a rusted out van from the far reaches of Texas—or elsewhere—for the opportunity to play at the Saxon Pub, Antone’s or Stubb’s on a Tuesday night just might be the next big thing. more ›

Another Waco-type situation presently looms on the horizon out in west Texas, just south of San Angelo. This time, instead of the Branch Davidians and David Koresh, it’s the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a radical polygamist organization based out of Utah, headed by its spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is wanted in Arizona and Utah on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor and rape. He is also... more ›

Don’t freak out on Sunday morning, folks. You did not drink so much on Saturday night or stand too close to the speakers that you are now permanently deaf. And, no, the Bush administration did not ransack the public radio stations across the country in search of Communist hippies to hang from the gallows. KUT is making tower and transmitter upgrades this Sunday and, therefore, will have some dead air. From the KUT e-newsletter: more ›

Marginal religious sects, ritual sodomy, women and children in danger and one “evil, evil man”? Just another day in our Legislature. Yesterday a House committee heard from Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, about the hazards posed to the state by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a fringe sect of Mormonism which is currently building a compound outside El Dorado, near San Angelo. The leader of the Fundies, Warren Jeffs (pictured), is being... more ›