In the chilly, wooded land where I was born, there’s a holiday we don’t get to celebrate down here.

People party in the streets and stand in line for hours to celebrate this day in San Antonio and parts north, but never before has this special, special day been acknowledged in the Rio Grande Valley as it should be.

This year, it will!  All hail Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day!

The new scoop shop at Palms Crossing will tie ice cream enthusiasts here with those across the country who realize that free ice cream just tastes better.

Mark your calendars.  Free cone day is  Tuesday, April 29! Free scoops will be slung from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., according to a press release.

According to our local dealers, here’s the flavors you can choose from: Read the rest of this entry »

For those waiting on the edges of their seats (ha):

After two weeks of trying to get Mission PD’s Lt. Garza on the phone (the whole department was occupied with arrangements for Cpl. Jose Rubio’s funeral, and so was I), I spoke to him this morning.  He says the “first tape”  — the dashcam from the first car, which pulled over Eddie Saenz and whose occupant administered a sobriety test — doesn’t exist because the equipment in question was broken.

Why on earth not just say so in the first place?

I would be inclined to take Garza at his word, since he’s a likeable and trustworthy officer who’s been a peach on previous assignments.  But combine this with the city attorney’s very lawyerly refusal to comment on the existence or release of the tape, the city manager’s uncomfortable grimace when I told him I was still looking for it, the fact that not having a tape would be disastrous to any possible prosecution of Saenz for DWI and the executive session item on Christopher Davis’s request on the last city commission agenda, and I’m just not yet a believer.

I’ve asked Garza to dig me up any record that the equipment in question was broken.

Last winter, city commissioner Ricardo Medina and the new commission majority cancelled the city’s comprehensive plan contract with a company called Ambiotec.

Medina and the majority cited the nearly half-million dollar cost of the contract as reason to quash it.

The city went out and sought proposals from companies interested in getting a contract for a new plan, ostensibly to get a better price. Medina advocated for that plan.

But at last night’s meeting he made an about-face.

Medina and his majority voted to rescind the city’s request for proposals. They seem to favor giving the contract to Wilbur Smith Associates.

Mayor Polo Palacios pointed out Medina’s apparent flip flop. But Medina responded by saying his opposition to the Ambiotec contract was about the price, not the lack of proposals.

That’s not what he told the Monitor back in December. “We need to get some proposals to see what’s out there or not so we can pick and choose,” Medina said at the time.  

Since we’ve been low on posting this week, here are some general-interest links.

1. The Express-News is reporting that New Braunfels police are checking on whether a middle school principal made terroristic threats — against his teachers, over TAKS scores. According to a teacher at the middle school, the principal told a group of science teachers that if their TAKS benchmark scores didn’t increase, he would “kill you all and then kill myself.”
2. Some possibly dubious web logs are reporting a new threat to an already vulnerable population: Mexican Emo Kids. According to them, emo beatings are becoming more common since a VJ went on a semi-hilarious rant about the 15-year-olds who treat near-suicidal sadness as a trendy style. The language used on this page might not be appropriate, so use discretion.
3. I’ve added a new blog to our links section. It’s a travelogue by former Monitor features reporter Travis Whitehead, who is moving to Michoacan to write a book on artisans there.
4. Finally, the Monitor is planning to introduce new restrictions for commenters on the Web site due to the high volume of unpleasant, racist or libelous content that gets posted after our stories. I, for one, am torn about this plan. On the one hand, I’m happy whenever the volume of ad-hominem attacks (and insinuations that I am sleeping with various public figures) are minimized. On the other hand, our readers sometimes use anonymity to say what they really are thinking, right or wrong or racist, and to demonstrate their passion for various subjects. I hope people will register and continue to comment and discuss. [But remember that you don't have to register to comment here on the blogs. You can give a fake e-mail if you like.]

I got a call back from Mission City Manager Julio Cerda today, saying he couldn’t say more than the city attorney could about the public information law-violating fiasco his city has wandered into.

The tape was released, shouldn’t I be satisfied?

Well, picked up my copy today, and I’m not.

Read the rest of this entry »

Minutes after I sent off a letter of my own to Mission city hall demanding the tape of Eddie Saenz’s DWI arrest (see here for background on why), Chris Davis of Cafe Brownsville called to say that the city agreed yesterday to give him the DVD of the dashboard camera footage.

Davis said he had decided to give his request one more shot, and faxed the state Attorney General his records and evidence that Mission wasn’t responding to his letter asking for the tape.

An AG rep called to say they’d talked to someone at the city, and the city secretary have it for him in a week.

“I don’t know what happened, but they jumped,” Davis said.

David Guerra, the city’s attorney, still will not give any word on why it wasn’t provided earlier (and the city manager’s out of town today). A political hold on the request could have come from a number of directions (none of them legal of course). But tomorrow, Davis will be dropping by a copy of the tape, and maybe it will contain answers.

If there aren’t answers forthcoming, I’ll file a new information request for e-mails, memos or records related to the decision to withhold the tape.

(photo courtesy tianchua )

For a more international supplement to our local coverage of the Iraq War’s 5th birthday (anniversary seems less accurate, since it’s still growing and going, and certainly doesn’t remain an event in the past), you can’t do better than this beautiful, horrible retrospective from Reuters .