EVEN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, CALIFORNIA KEPT ITS PARKS OPEN, BUT ALL THAT CHANGES IN SEPTEMBER

Speaking personally, I am still having a hard time believing that the state’s scheduled parks closure will truly occur, but Timothy Egan’s NY Times Op-ed brings home the mind-numbing reality that California may really shutter some of its most irreplaceable and historic sites.

For a few months, still, you can see the sunlit room where the author of “Call of the Wild” wrote his daily thousand words before noon, and walk under redwoods and wild oaks on his 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch, where he pioneered “sustainability” before anyone was pushing $20 plates of arugula with a such a claim.

It belongs to you and me — the ranch, the cottage, the pond, the stone scraps of an old winery — an inheritance that is now being dismantled. California created the state park idea with Yosemite in 1864, before it was a federal reserve; it is destroying it in 2011 with a plan to permanently close one-fourth of its parks.

Along with 69 other sites, Jack London State Historic Park will be shuttered, gates locked, and left to meth labs, garbage outlaws and assorted feral predators. Nearly 50 percent of all of California’s historic parks are on the closure list. This is not a scare tactic from the state. Parks go dark starting in September.

Even during the Great Depression, when this state had 30 million fewer people, California somehow found a way to keep its parks and heritage sites open.

The nuclear option is being executed to reach a budget cut of $22 million mandated by a failed state that is forcing lethal whacks for all, even with an improved budget forecast. That’s right, $22 million — one-fifth the price of a recent sale of a single private mansion in Los Altos….

(Meanwhile, though, the feds say that closing some of our parks may be illegal. May it be so.)

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, REDUX

Last month we learned that there was such a thing as a Psychopath test, and that it was being administered in American prisons (California prisons included) to help determine if an inmate should ever be granted parole—a use that has horrified the test’s inventor.

With all this in mind, naturally, Ira Glass and his This American Life team figured they all oughta take the test. In this week’s show, they have the results—plus a lot more on this whole testing-for-psychopathy issue.

Listen to the show here.

GOVERNOR JERRY ASKS THREE-JUDGE PANEL FOR MORE TIME THAN THE MANDATED 2 YEARS TO LOWER THE STATE’S PRISON POPULATION

As long as Jerry has a concrete plan and a solid timetable—which he seems to—he will likely get the extension.

The LA Times has the rest of the story.

PS: On the topic of the Brown v. Plata Supreme Court decision, the NY times’ Linda Greenhouse has an interesting take on the ruling and where it fist into an historical context.

DEAR OC D.A TONY RACKAUKAS, THE US CONSTITUTION IS YOUR FRIEND (AT LEAST IT BETTER BE IN THE FUTURE)

Last month a federal judge slapped some stringent limitations on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’s use of gang injunctions—an issue that is generally hard for average person to understand or care about.

But with an editorial this past weekend, the LA Times skillfully outlined the issue, and why it should matter to the rest of us. I understand that the LAT’s Sandra Hernandez was the primary author of the unsigned editorial. Brava, Sandra!

Here’s a clip:

Earlier this month, a federal judge put the brakes on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’ reckless attempt to enforce an anti-gang injunction against dozens of men and women who never had the opportunity to challenge his designation of them as gang members.

Injunctions are a unique kind of restraining order that bar gang members from engaging in certain activities, such as congregating, wearing particular clothes or going out after 10 p.m. Their goal is to reduce a gang’s ability to control the streets by putting limits on its members’ behavior — generally activities that would be legal if done by anyone else. In some cases, injunctions can be a highly effective tool in loosening a gang’s grip on a neighborhood. But because they impose harsh limits on an individual’s freedom, such restrictions must be subject to court review.

[SNIP]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sued on behalf of the alleged gang members and won. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank put it bluntly: “In sum, their constitutional rights were violated.”

At the very least, Rackauckas’ office failed to follow the law. If prosecutors believe suspected members of a gang pose a danger to the community, they have an obligation to present evidence of that to the court before limiting people’s lawful activities. Instead, prosecutors made a unilateral determination of guilt.

DON’T SHOOT THE NEIGHBOR’S CAT UNLESS YOU’RE PREPARED TO PAY THE VET BILL SAYS STATE APPEALS COURT

The SF Chron has the story:

The market value of a stray cat with a crippling pellet wound is zero, or close to it. But for his devoted owner in Brentwood, a male tabby named Pumkin was well worth the tens of thousands of dollars it took to save his life and restore some of his mobility.

Now a state appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind decision in California, ruling that whoever shot Pumkin can be required to pay his medical expenses.

(MY NOTE: One would think so! You mean prior to this ruling, if someone deliberately shot my cat—or very nice wolf-dog— I couldn’t sue???)

“The people that perpetrate these crimes against domesticated animals are going to have to pay,” said Kevin Kimes, whose lawsuit against his backyard neighbors was revived by the ruling. “Maybe, over time, people will start to think twice.”

Colin Hatcher, a lawyer for the neighbors, said Kimes has no evidence that they shot his cat and they’re prepared to go to trial.

Read the rest here.

On Monday morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case known as Brown v. Plata that California has to reduce its prison population to manageable levels because overcrowding had created a large scale and ongoing violation of the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

Upon news of the ruling, the expected objections from those on the right began immediately.

“By flooding our neighborhoods with criminals, the court will make one of highest taxed states in the nation among the most dangerous as well,” howled former state senator George Runner.

Justice Alito, who had voted against the ruling, said something similar in a verbal dissent given from the bench: “The three-judge court ordered the premature release of approximately 46,000 criminals — the equivalent of three Army divisions.”

The vision of tens of thousands of felons about to be dumped into our communities is indeed a disturbing notion.

Except that it’s not true .

Yet, surprisingly many in the news media unwittingly reinforced the same unsettling misconception.

For example, here is the headline from the LA Times story that followed the ruling:

Supreme Court upholds order for California to release 46,000 inmates

And there was this:

California scrambles after Supreme Court orders the release of thousands of inmates

The LA Weekly’s headline was even more alarming:

Los Angeles Should Brace For Thousands of Released Prisoners Following Supreme Court Ruling

The article that follows opens with the news that, “The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered California to open the floodgates at its state prisons and unleash 37,000 of its 140,000 or so inmates…..”

Even the Wall Street Journal, led with the message that California was going to open the floodgates and disgorge armies worth of incarcerated felons on to the streets.

My personal favorite is Channel 5, KTLA news which reports that:

“The United States Supreme Court is handing out a “Get Out of Jail Free Card to Thousands of Inmates…..It’s about the largest jailbreak in California history…. The Supreme Court itself ordering 32,000 California inmates back on the street.” Then after hearing the heartrending, stomach-churning fears of a mother whose daughter has been murdered about the terrible consequences of this (non-existent) “jailbreak” the reporter has described, KTLA’s Chris Burroughs estimates with bright graphics that the decision will mean 22,400 new crimes committed within the year.

Responsible journalism at its best.

OKAY SO LETS GO OVER WHAT THE RULING DOES MEAN

In practical terms, Monday’s SCOTUS ruling means that that, over the next two years, the CDC needs to cut the inmate count from its existing 143,435, to approximately 109,805 prisoners—AKA 137.5 percent of the maximum capacity that the prison system was built to hold.

Applying simple math to the problem, this means that within 24 months, the California department of Corrections is required to lower the inmate population by 33,630 inmates.

However, the demand to lower the population is not an order to release prisoners.

No one, at the California Department of Corrections or in the Governor’s office, has ever suggested that they will release a massive bunch of prisoners early.

Instead, there are are a number of strategies being discussed that could accomplish the needed population reduction.

The primary of these is something called realignment , which—if implemented— would, by itself, take care of the population reduction.

In very brief terms, realignment would send parole violators and others with very short sentences, to jail instead of prison.

For instance, last year, according to the CDC’s Terry Thornton, 47,000 inmates served 90 days or less in state prison.

Sending people to state prison for less than six months is an inefficient and costly endeavor.

So, if, say 34,000 of those 47,000 were instead kept in the various county jails around the state for their 90 day terms—(rather than going through the very costly process of being carted up to one of the state prison reception centers for testing for a couple of months, and then assigned to a prison for a month or less, then released)—the court-ordered population reduction would be accomplished, without any kind of sentence reduction or risk to public safety.

Realignment is Jerry Brown’s chosen strategy, as it is the preference of CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate.

The only fly in the ointment is the fact that, although realignment will save the CDCR $$$, it also costs the state money because the various counties will have to be reimbursed for taking all those extra inmates. Given the state’s dismal budget status, funding the realignment would require that the voters approve the extension of the 2009 temporary tax hikes—-that is if Brown can manage to get the matter of the tax cut extension to the voters.

Plus, for LA County in particular, keeping all those inmates here is likely to simply transfer the overcrowding problem from the state to the county.

Sheriff Baca told KPCC’s Frank Stolze on Monday, that he worried about realignment.

Yet the California State Sheriff’s Association sent out a statement strongly supporting it:

The California State Sheriffs’ Association (CSSA) believes that fully funded, constitutionally protected and enacted at the proper time, realignment (AB 109) is a credible vehicle to mitigate the impacts of this ruling. Taken together with the recently passed legislation to assist counties with their correctional facility needs, we have a chance to lessen this impact. Simply saying no, as many have done, is no longer a credible answer. We will continue to work closely with the Governor, CDCR and the Legislature to do all we can to ensure we mitigate against the action taken by the court. Funding for front line law enforcement, jail operations and construction, community supervision, and evidence-based programs such as day reporting centers, will give Sheriffs and our public safety partners the best opportunity to protect public safety.

And, again, realignment is not he only strategy. It is simply the one many seem to favor at the moment.

However, whatever the strategy chosen, if the state is going to find the best solution to the need for prison population reduction, it would help if we could all start from a basis in facts—not fear.

SUPREME COURT RULING IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SENTENCING REFORM

Speaking of other strategies, the LA Times put up a very good editorial following Monday’s ruling. Here’s a clip:

….The truth is that experts have been suggesting responsible ways to ease prison overcrowding for years. One way is to create an independent panel to revise the state’s haphazard sentencing guidelines, which all too often result in excessive terms that worsen overcrowding. In other states, sentencing commissions have lengthened penalties for truly dangerous felons while finding alternative punishments for minor offenders.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed such a commission, but he couldn’t get the Legislature to go along. Maybe the threat of wide-scale prisoner releases can finally scare our lawmakers straight.

The Winklevoss twins lose yet one more round.

The mean, mean, mean justices of the full ninth circuit court of appeals have declined to hear the case brought by the crew-rowing lantern-jawed brothers who believe that they are owed more by Mark Zuckerberg than the previously agreed upon $20 million cash payment, and some company stock now worth somewhere between $100 million or multiple billions. (The reporting on this is a bit inconsistent. In any case, it’s worth a pile o’ serious bank.), which they received in a previous settlement.

Oooooh, bad ninth circuit! No cookie! (Said while sneaking ninth circuit justices some treats under the table.)

Here’s the deal, dearest Winklevossters. Dudes. It’s not the idea, it’s the execution. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s carrying them out that’s the trick. You evidently didn’t have what it took to carry this one out OR YOU’D HAVE DONE IT.

Post 9th circuit turn down, either their case is long last dead in the water, or Los Winklevossos will have to try to get the US Supreme Court to do with the 9th Circuit would not.

As of Monday afternoon, the Winklevosskis have released a statement saying, SCOTUS here we come.

Or words to that effect.

The AP has more.

And, no, this isn’t a social justice issue. It is simply an irresistible justice issue generally.

SO IS IT LEGAL TO BRING SNACKS FOR CRIMINAL COURT JUDGES?

Horrifyingly enough Discover magazine reports that a well-fed judge may dole out leniency for criminal defendants more often than a hungry jurist.

Israeli researcher Shai Danziger at Ben Gurion University of the Negev did a 10-month study that looked at more than 1100 applications for parole and found that the judges studied were more likely to grant parole at the start of the day, and after breaks for a morning snack and then again after lunch.

The ABA Journal reports:

The odds of a prisoner winning parole started off at 65 percent, then plummeted over a few hours, and returned to 65 percent after the breaks, before plummeting again, the magazine reports. The decisions weren’t entirely arbitrary, however. Prisoners deemed likely to commit another crime, or who weren’t part of a rehabilitation program, were still less likely to win parole.

Discovery Magazine writes that researcher Danziger felt he could easily explain the judges’ actions:

All repetitive decision-making tasks drain our mental resources. We start suffering from “choice overload” and we start opting for the easiest choice. For example, shoppers who have already made several decisions are more likely to go for the default offer, whether they’re buying a suit or a car. And when it comes to parole hearings, the default choice is to deny the prisoner’s request. The more decisions a judge has made, the more drained they are, and the more likely they are to make the default choice. Taking a break replenishes them.

There are several other ways of explaining this striking pattern but Danziger ruled all of them out. It wasn’t the case that a few individuals skewed the data, for the pattern was consistent across all the judges. The results weren’t due to discrimination, for the judges treated the prisoners equally regardless of their gender, ethnicity or the severity of their crime.

Read the rest.

And if you’re facing a criminal case, get your defense attorney to slip the bailiff some chips and jelly beans for the judge.

OUR LONG NATIONAL WINKLEVOSS NIGHTMARE APPEARS TO BE OVER**

I’m sure it’s some kind of hidden meangirl urge on my part, but I felt overly pleased by the 9th Circuit’s slapdown of the Winklevoss twins’ attempt to get more money out of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, despite the fact that they’d already settled with FB for $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock, now worth $150 million.

As the Wall Street Journal reported:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, saying the twins weren’t the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace.

“The courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook,” wrote Chief Judge Alex Kozinski in his opinion.

Exactly.

WSJ reporter Ashby Jones, who was possessed of the same meangirl attitude, was even driven to using schadenfreude as a verb when confronted by the Winklevoss ruling.

The reporting at the Awl, while brief, was the funniest.

(**NOTE: It is from The Awl’s Choire Sicha that I heisted the headline for my post.)

It reads:

The Ninth Circuit—our favorite circuit! Sorry, other circuits!—has ruled that the Winklevosseseses must abide by a settlement reached with Facebook regarding their founding of such, or lack thereof. The two fellows claimed the settlement was reached with fraudulent input from Facebook. This sets a very important legal precedent, in that we don’t have to hear about them any more.

Oh, yeah, and there’s also this guy, with his lawsuit.

LAPD OFFICERS WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT TRAFFIC TICKET QUOTAS WIN $2 MIL IN COURT

The LA Times’ Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin have the story:

A jury awarded a pair of Los Angeles police officers $2 million Monday after determining that LAPD supervisors had retaliated against the officers for complaining about alleged traffic ticket quotas.

Howard Chan and David Benioff, both veteran motorcycle officers with the department’s West Traffic Division, sued the department in 2009, alleging that they had been punished with bogus performance reviews, threats of reassignment and other forms of harassment after objecting to demands from commanding officers that they write a certain number of tickets each day, according to the suit.

Ticket quotas are illegal under state law, since they can pressure police to write spurious tickets to meet the goal. The line between setting a quota and pushing officers to increase their productivity is a delicate one for field supervisors, who are often under pressure themselves to generate more citations…

We always suspected as much.

Nice that the officers won.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled early on Monday that U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton was correct in placing an injunction on the enforcement of four key provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, as they are an infringement on the exclusive federal power to enforce immigration laws, and that states can’t make their own laws as they wish.

The injunction was placed pending a lawsuit brought by the The U.S Justice Department, which has sued to block the law contending that Congress has given the federal government sole authority to enforce immigration statutes and that SB 1070 violates the Supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution..

The 9th Circuit panel declined to lift the injunction ruling that the lawsuit was likely to succeed.

The main provision that was struck down would have required police and sheriff’s to order anyone they stopped for any other reason to produce ID proving legal status if they had reasonable suspicion that the individual might be illegal.

The 87-page, precedent-heavy opinion also suggests that the AZ law is something of a legal muddle apart from its Constitutional problems, in that it has several internal consistencies in its detailing of how local law enforcement officers are supposed to behave toward those suspected to be undocumented.

And, as the SF Chron notes:

[Judge Richard Paez, who wrote the majority opinion] said the law has also harmed U.S. foreign relations, citing protests from numerous Latin American nations – notably Mexico, which has cited it in delaying a proposed agreement on responding to national disasters – and the United Nations secretary general.

SHOULD STATE BE ABLE TO DEMAND A JUROR’S FACEBOOK POSTS? CALIFORNIA SUPREMES WANT THE QUESTION CAREFULLY CONSIDERED

This one’s a doozey and is shaping up to be a Constitutional battle. On one side you have the right to privacy and freedom of expression, on the other hand you have the constitutional rights of the accused.

Here’s what the case is about as the Sac Bee reports it:

[A Sacramento juror named Arturo Ramirez] posted his online remarks in a gang-beating trial last year in which five men were convicted. Before the defendants were sentenced, defense lawyers found out about his Facebook postings.

Mostly, the writings chronicled the juror’s attendance at the trial in which he later served as foreman of the panel. At one point in his writings, Ramirez said he found the evidence “boring.”

Defense attorneys asked Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny to retrieve all of the juror’s postings to see if he was biased or if he was influenced by any of his Facebook friends.

Kenny on Feb. 4 ordered Ramirez to allow Facebook to make the postings available for a private review. Facebook had opposed releasing the postings on its own, citing federal computer privacy law….

Mike Wise, the lawyer for one of the defendants in the gang case, said it is critical for his side to see what Ramirez wrote to make sure the defense clients received a fair trial. Wise on Wednesday also welcomed the state Supreme Court decision.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to resolve the issue,” he said. “I think in the end, the constitutional rights of the accused will prevail over the privacy rights of the juror.

A new hearing on the matter is expected soon.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WRITES LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE ASBURY PARK PRESS PRAISING STORY ABOUT HOW BUDGET CUTS ARE AFFECTING MANY OF THE POOR

To wit:

Thank you for your March 27 front-page story by Michael Symons, “As poverty rises, cuts target aid.” The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions, on the other…..

And so on.

Nice to know that The Boss is paying attention to such things, as the US Congress doesn’t seem to be concerned.

BRONX ZOO EGYPTIAN COBRA FOUND AND RECAPTURED…. (NO WORD ON WHETHER THE SNAKE WILL HOST SNL)

Entertainment Weekly reports.

You may now breathe a ssssigh of relief. After escaping from a cage at the Bronx Zoo last week and going MIA, a venomous 24-inch Egyptian Cobra was found on Thursday by zoo staffers. Was it captured while slithering its way through Central Park? Catching a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden? Enjoying a quiet dinner at an Italian bistro in the Village? Nope. She was just coiled up in a dark corner of the reptile house, a mere 200 feet from her cage, and is now “resting comfortably and secure,” according to zoo officials. (Cue the singer from Survivor: The search is over/you were with me all the while…)

The snake, who insists she is a female (at least in her very popular Twitter incarnation), has launched a Facebook campaign to host Saturday Night Live.

THE QUESTION OF HUFF POST NOT PAYING ITS WRITERS ISN’T GOING AWAY

Author Michael Walker is the latest voice to question the Huffington Post’s no-pay policy for its freelance writers. The clip below is from his LA Times Op Ed.

Should stage owners who profit from the talent appearing on those stages be obliged to pay the talent in something other than exposure?

<strongTwo labor disputes over talent and compensation, three decades apart yet eerily similar, suggest the issue remains as vexing as ever.

The more recent concerns whether the Huffington Post should pay its non-staff writers and bloggers, who supply most of the popular website’s content for free. Arianna Huffington, who sold the site she cofounded to AOL in February for $315 million, has increasingly come under fire for not paying for most of the content she runs.

Last week the Newspaper Guild called on its 26,000 members to boycott the Huffington Post in support of a “virtual picket line” until a pay schedule for writers was established.

The core of Huffington’s justification for not paying is that the Huffington Post is a showcase for writers, and that exposure there leads to paying gigs and greater visibility. Huffington merely — and generously, by her estimation — provides the stage. Mario Ruiz, the Huffington Post’s spokesman, claims that contributors are happy to write for free because they “want to be heard by the largest possible audience and understand the value that that kind of visibility can bring.”

This was precisely the argument put forth 32 years ago by Mitzi Shore, the owner of L.A.’s Comedy Store, for not paying the comedians whose performances filled her club night after night…..

It’s astonishing that allowing this suit was even a question.

In 2000 Congress passed a law that prohibits the government from imposing a “substantial burden” on prisoners’ religious practices unless a compelling reason can be shown that the restrictions are necessary.

One would have thought the law would logically come into play with the Orange County woman, Souhair Khatib, who was made to take off her head scarf for “security reasons” while she waited in a Santa Ana courthouse holding cell. Whether or not the court had a “compelling reason” to make Khatib take off her hijab would be a matter for a jury to decide. But surely the lawsuit itself would be valid under the 2000 law.

However a lower court ruled that it was not.

Here are some of the details, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Khatib and her husband pleaded guilty in 2006 to a misdemeanor welfare crime, which Kieffer said involved receiving overpayments. They were placed on probation and ordered to perform 30 hours of community service apiece.

When they went to court to ask for an extension of the community service deadline, a judge revoked their probation and put them in holding cells, where deputies ordered Khatib to remove her hijab.

She stayed in the cell most of the day, trying to cover her head with her vest. When she was brought into court, the judge extended the deadline and restored her probation.

Khatib says her religion forbids her to expose her head or neck to men outside her immediate family. She sued the county for damages.

County officials argued that the law covered only prisons and other institutions that hold inmates for substantial periods, and not to the courthouse cells where those awaiting criminal proceedings can be kept for up to 12 hours.

A federal judge followed by a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit panel agreed with the county and ordered the suit dismissed.

The ACLU, which represented Khatib, was outraged. “By that logic,” read the ACLU’s statment, ” the county would be required by law to protect a person’s religious rights while detained in a jail, but not when the same person was transported to and held in the holding facility of a courthouse before and after making court appearances. This would be an absurd result.”

It was especially illogical since the both the U.S. Department of Justice and the California Department of Corrections recognize and protect a Muslim woman’s right to wear her hijab. So why does Orange County suddenly become special?

Judge Alex Kozinski, who was the lone dissenter out of the three judge panel, went further. He wrote:

Freud is reported to have said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And a facility used for holding prisoners prior to trial is a pretrial detention facility. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) covers prisoners held in certain kinds of institutions—defined to include both correctional facilities (such as prisons and jails) and pretrial detention facilities. Souhair Khatib was held in a facility where prisoners are routinely detained awaiting trial and other court appearances. She was therefore held in a facility covered by RLUIPA and is entitled to its protections. This pretty much sums up the case for me.

Duh!

Fortunately, the full 9th Circuit agreed to hear the case.

The Obama administration also joined with a brief arguing that the law applied to courthouse holding cells.

Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, the 9th Circuit handed down an 11-0 decision reinstating Souhair Khatib’s lawsuit against Orange County.

The decision doesn’t guarantee a verdict, it just says that she has grounds to sue—-which would seem to be a no-brainer.

AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NEWS…..THE SXSW STORY ZOOMING AROUND TWITTER ON TUESDAY AMONG JOURNALISTS AND WRITERS WAS THIS ONE HAVING TO DO WITH NEWS ETHICS

It all started when former LA Weekly writer, Alexia Tsotsis, now writing for Tech Crunch, was at SXSW where she wrote an article on the new movie Source Code.

Then the problems began, as Tsotsis herself explains it.

Earlier this week I interviewed Duncan Jones and Jake Gyllenhaal at SXSW, at the press junket for their movie The Source Code. While the film doesn’t have a huge tech angle other than the title, I thought it might be good video content for TCTV—the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley is fascinating, and the movie industry is one of the last to get disrupted. It’s always interesting to see how old school media players are aware of the monumental shifts going on in their own industry.

In any case I thought that the way The Source Code and Summit Entertainment were trying to target the tech press and, through us, our more social media savvy readers was an intriguing marketing strategy—and an angle! I wrote my “Jake Gyllenhaal Movie ‘The Source Code’ Markets Itself To Techies“ post about that instead of turning it into a free ad for the film.

Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit, and they let it be known to the AOL person at Moviefone who hooked us up with them in the first place. This morning I received this email from that Moviefone/AOL Television representative….

Read the rest here. You won’t want to miss it.

THE ONGOING MISTREATMENT OF BRADLEY MANNING

The punitive mistreatment of Bradley Manning has taken another turn. The London Independent summarizes the situation:

The young American soldier who has been charged with leaking confidential cables to the WikiLeaks website is being forced to sleep naked in his cell and stand outside each morning to be handed back his clothes because he made a single sarcastic quip, his lawyer has claimed.

Fresh outrage at the conditions faced by Bradley Manning, a former research analyst in the Army, at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia erupted last week.

“Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib?” Democrat congressman Dennis Kucinich, demanded. At the time, the Army would say only that the order was “non-punitive”.

In a blog post yesterday, the soldier’s lawyer, David Coombs, said he had got to the bottom of the nocturnal nudity requirement: his client was being punished because of a response to a suggestion from his warders they he was being considered a risk of “self-harm”, if not actual suicide.

Since Manning is not on suicide watch, it is difficult to see the warders’ actions as purely motivated by Manning’s health and well being.

Former Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald at Salon is withering on the topic.

Keep in mind, Manning has not yet been convicted of anything, as Scott Lemieux at The American Prospect points out.

THE TIRE IRON AND THE TAMALE

An essay from the NY Times. I don’t want to give away the whole thing. Just read it. Here’s how it opens:

During this past year I’ve had three instances of car trouble: a blowout on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out-of-gas situation. They all happened while I was driving other people’s cars, which for some reason makes it worse on an emotional level. And on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my own car, and know enough not to park on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.

Each time, when these things happened, I was disgusted with the way people didn’t bother to help. I was stuck on the side of the freeway hoping my friend’s roadside service would show, just watching tow trucks cruise past me…

(Thanks for the tip from the always awesome Daniel Kowalski)

MANY STATES TRYING FEWER KIDS AS ADULTS (EXCEPT CALIFORNIA, OF COURSE)

Why is it that our fair state sucks so badly on this issue?

Here’s a clip from the article by the NY Times’ Mosi Secret. (Is that a great name or what?) It is very much worth reading:

A generation after record levels of youth crime spurred a nationwide movement to prosecute more teenagers as adults, a consensus is emerging that many young delinquents have been mishandled by the adult court system.

[SNIP]

The changes followed studies that concluded that older adolescents differed significantly from adults in their capacity to make sound decisions, and benefited more from systems focused on treatment rather than on incarceration.

A 2010 report by Wisconsin’s juvenile justice commission to the governor, James E. Doyle, and the Legislature found that “for many, if not most, youthful offenders, the juvenile justice system is better able to redirect their behavior,” in large part because of the greater availability of social services.

Most of the studies pointed to a 2005 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons that outlawed the death penalty for defendants who were younger than 18 when their crimes were committed, because of the “general differences” distinguishing them from adults — a lack of maturity, greater susceptibility to peer pressure and undeveloped character….

MO DO DOES JERRY

Sunday’s Maureen Dowd column on Gov. EGB Jr. was reasonably amusing. Here’s a clip. (And yes, Jerry Brown is a social justice issue. He always was.)

Once a priest-like bachelor and loner whose only visible attachment was to power, Brown now seems almost cuddly. At an Oscar lunch at the Beverly Hills mansion of Diane Von Furstenberg and Barry Diller, Brown and his wife, 52-year-old Anne Gust Brown, stood by the fire chatting with other guests.

Anne did not know she was coming to the lunch and had nothing to wear, so Brown swept her off to the store of his old friend Von Furstenberg and helped her pick out three frocks. He reminisced about how he had conspired with Von Furstenberg to design his wife’s wedding dress.

Was this, I wondered, the same guy who sometimes showed up in the ’70s with mismatched shoes?

His clever and charming wife, who served as top campaign adviser and is now de facto chief of staff, is a huge improvement over his ’90s Sancho Panza, Jacques Barzaghi, who wore a black beret and made strange comments like: “We are not disorganized. Our campaign transcends understanding.”

Oh, the Jacques Barzaghi stories I could tell….

FEDERAL JUDGE GOES ON A FIELD TRIP TO GANG NEIGHBORHOOD TO BETTER UNDERSTAND A CASE

Better than simply taking the usual ivory tower stance, I guess, although his stroll was not exactly casual, in that it featured an armed retinue.

Tom Hays of the AP has the story.

BE SURE ALSO TO READ….

….The Liberation of Lori Berenson by Jennifer Egan in the NY Times Magazine. It’s a fascinating tale and Jennifer Egan is a wonderful journalist—who also happens to have written one of last year’s best novels. (Really. )

THE SUPREMES AFFIRM THE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS OF THE HIDEOUSLY HATEFUL, WESTBORO-ITES

Just speaking personally, Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church gay haters almost make me wish there was a hell just so they could be consigned to it.

All that said, of course the Supreme Court made the right decision on Wednesday when, in an 8 to 1 decision, it affirmed Phelps and Co’s constitutional right to preach their insanely hurtful crap, even outside the funerals of young men and women who have died in the service of our country.

There honestly shouldn’t have been a doubt.

The one hold out on the court was Samuel Alito.

The AP reports his reasoning:

The rest of the court relied on the First Amendment to say that the father of a dead Marine could not prevail in a lawsuit against members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., who picketed his son’s funeral.

Alito countered that church members have countless ways to express their belief that the deaths of U.S. soldiers are God’s way of punishing the nation for its tolerance of homosexuality.

“It does not follow, however, that they may intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons at a time of intense emotional sensitivity by launching vicious verbal attacks that make no contribution to public debate,” Alito wrote.

We all get Alito’s point. And, emotionally, most of us agree with him. But our wiser selves—and eight wiser SCOTUS justices—understand that there is a far more important principle at stake here. And it is one that—should we disregard it—would cause all of us a much more fundamental, less repairable harm than the awful emotional injury that the ghastly Westboro Baptist people seem intent on inflicting.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER RODNEY KING – THE LA TIMES REFLECTS ON THE CHANGE IN LAPD’S ATTITUDE TOWARD YOU AND YOUR VIDEO CAMERA

A nice story by Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin and Scott Gold.

Here’s how it opens:

It was shortly after midnight, 20 years ago Thursday, when George Holliday awoke to the sounds of police sirens outside his Lake View Terrace apartment. Grabbing his clunky Sony Handycam, he stepped out on his balcony and changed the Los Angeles Police Department forever.

The nine minutes of grainy video footage he captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity. The video played a central role in the criminal trial of four officers, whose not-guilty verdicts in 1992 triggered days of rioting in Los Angeles in which more than 50 people died.

The simple existence of the video was something unusual in itself. Relatively few people then had video cameras, Holliday did — and had the wherewithal to turn it on.

“It was just coincidence,” Holliday reflected in an interview a decade ago. “Or luck.”

Today, things are far different and the tape that so tainted the LAPD has a clear legacy in how officers think about their jobs. Police now work in a YouTube world….

TRUTANICH’S INSISTENCE ON HARSHER PENALTIES FOR PROTESTERS—HAS BROUGHT UNRELATED PROTESTERS TOGETHER (AND HAS CAUSED A SERIOUS IRONY OUTBREAK)

Kevin Grant at Neon Tommy has a good story about the City Attorney’s very vexing actions.

Here’s a clip:

Frank Mateljan, a Trutanich spokesman, confirmed policies are different under his boss.

“We’ve certainly upped the ante a bit,” he said. “Criminal charges are being filed. There was an unwritten rule that [civil disobedience] charges were treated like an infraction. You’d pay a fine and be off to the beach.”

Mateljan said his office wasn’t trying to limit Angelenos’ right to expression.

“Our intention is not to violate the First Amendment,” he said. “We look at protesters’ conduct, not the content of their speech. Our ability to express our opinions is to be celebrated but we live in a world of ordered liberty.”

Oh, well isn’t that reassuring.

Dear Mr. Mateljan—dude—look up the definition of civil disobedience. It doesn’t just involve speech, it involves action, an essential American tradition you and your boss are trying to criminalize.

By the way, does all this criminalizing protesters stuff seem a tad ironic in the light of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision?

Let’s review: the highest court in the nation protects the right of hateful loonies to ruin the funeral for the parents of a young American servoce man killed in the line of duty, but our good city attorney wants to legally chase after a group of student protesters who locked arms in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. in support of the DREAM Act?

Gene Maddaus of the LA Weekly also has a worthwhile story/interview about Trutanich in which “Nuch” assured the reporter, “I’m not a thug.”

Once again, we find this soreassuring.

ALSO AT NEON TOMMY, A HARROWING TALE IN WHICH AN ANNENBERG STUDENT/REPORTER TELLS ABOUT WHAT SHE SAW IN LIBYA TWO YEARS AGO

NT reporter Tasbeeh Herwees writes about her family’s 2009 experience with a terrible prison massacre that the Libyan government covered up for years.

LA TIMES REPORT ON INCAPACITATED PRISONERS REQUIRING $800,000 A YEAR ROUND-THE-CLOCK CARE HAS PROMPTED ACTION ON THE PART OF THE CDCR & THE FEDERAL RECEIVER

Sometimes reporting actually matters. Go Jack Dolan!

Here’s the gist of the issue:

Ten of California’s sickest and most costly inmates — some are in comas, some are paralyzed — will be promptly scheduled for parole hearings, corrections authorities announced Wednesday.

An article in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times detailed how, despite being chained to bed frames, such inmates are guarded around the clock by multiple corrections officers at an annual cost to taxpayers of roughly $800,000 per inmate.

“You look at these inmates and say, ‘This person is not going anywhere,’” said J. Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal court to oversee California’s troubled prison health services.

Kelso said he met with Corrections Department Secretary Matthew Cate on Wednesday morning and the two agreed to schedule parole hearings for the 10, who are no longer deemed a threat to public safety.