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.

POLITICS TRUMPS SCIENCE: MT & IDAHO WOLVES REMOVED FROM THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

In a completely incredible move that flew beneath the radar of many, and completely bypassed the interest threshold of others, Senator Jon Testor and Rep. Mike Simpson from Montana and Arizona respectively, managed to get an inconspicuous, 11 line rider on this month’s must pass budget bill, that removed the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf from the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho. What is more, the rider forbids judicial review.

In other words, screw the science or the legality of the wolves survival, politics and special interest groups won out.

The LA Times’ Kim Murphy has a good factual story on the matter here.

But it is Friday’s NY Times editorial that best gets to the heart of the matter. Here is a clip:

As part of its budget bill, Congress approved a brief rider, 11 lines long, that removes gray wolves in Idaho and Montana from the protections of the Endangered Species Act. The rider overturns a recent court ruling, prohibits further judicial review and cannot be good for the wolf. But the worst part is that it sets a terrible precedent — allowing Congress to decide the fate of animals on the list.

The law’s purpose is to base protections on science. Now that politics has been allowed to trump science when it comes to the gray wolf, which species will be next?

The rider’s sponsors, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, were responding to the demands of ranchers, who sometimes lose livestock to wolves, and hunters, who complain that wolves reduce deer and elk populations.

Sadly and surprisingly, they were abetted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who declared last month that he would accept what he called a “legislative solution” to the status of the wolf in the Rocky Mountains. One Interior Department official has argued that without this concession, the rider might well have been far more radical — possibly removing wolves everywhere from protection.

There is so much emotion and disinformation on the issue of wolves in the Rockies.

It is very disappointing that Jon Testor, whom I usually like, was one of this wrong-head bill’s sponsors.

A BROTHER (AND BROTHER-IN-LAW) OF TWO MURDER VICTIMS CONTEMPLATES THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE MEANING OF MERCY

Read this painful NY Times Op Ed. It has no easy answers but contains much sorrow, anger, confusion and humanness.

CASE OF NEW JERSEY MAN AND MANDATORY STRIP SEARCHES

It looks like the case of Albert Florence is headed to the Supreme Court this fall. The question is whether it is a violation of the 4th Amendment to automatically strip search everyone who passes into a jail cell. It’s an interesting case, and one that bears watching.

Read more at the NJ Star Ledger.

THE GUANTANAMO FILES

Monday the New York times begins its series called The Guantanamo files, based on the latest pile of Wikileaks—all a definite Must Read.

CDCR SAYS SAC BEE EDITORIAL ABOUT BROWN/PRISON GUARD CONTRACT IS FULL OF FACTUAL ERRORS

The California Department of Corrections took strong issue with the Sac Bee’s editorial criticizing Jerry Brown’s recently negotiated contract with the CCPOA—the prison guards union—and they make a good case.

GOOD magazine has the story:

Can you think of a worse place to wreck an oil tanker than a beautiful, pristine island in the South Atlantic where a National Geographic photographer just happens to be on assignment shooting endangered birds?

Photographer Andrew Evans was “following a lifelong dream” photographing endangered Northern Rockhopper Penguins on the remote Nightingale Islands.

[SNIP]

Last week, while Evans was there, the MV Oliva ran aground on Nightingale Island, “spilling its cargo of soybeans and some 800 tons of fuel oil onto the coast.” So Evans’ assignment turned from one of glorious bird watching to documenting ecological catastrophe

This radiation freak out reality check is courtesy of GOOD magazine. Here’s the heart of it.:

For anyone terrified that radiation from Japan is coming to cause devastation in America, something the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already called “very unlikely,” keep an eye on this real-time radiation detector courtesy of EnviroReporter.com.

According to EnviroReporter, the detector is located in the organization’s Santa Monica office (that’s right next to the beach, for out-of-towners) “approximately one meter off the ground in a wood-floored structure with built over crawlspace with soil foundation.”

What the detection unit is measuring is the Counts Per Minute of iodizing radiation, which EnviroReporter says is between 40 and 46 CPM for their site. Some sites have higher normal background CPM, while others are much lower. And when you’re on a plane, the CPM level can climb up to 200 for hours at a time.

[WLA NOTE: AS I WATCH THE THING, IT BOUNCES AS HIGH AS 60]

Now click and look at the streaming video of the actual monitor for yourself — and best to put away your potassium iodide pills for the moment.

PS: A UCLA prof has answered reader questions over at the LA Times.

PPS: Is it just me, or is it slightly discomforting (and ironic) that the video ad that plays before the live stream kicks in is courtesy of BP Petroleum?

MEMORIES OF JAPAN, SOME INDELIBLE, SOME WASHED AWAY

The frightening news out of Japan cannot help but hold our attention, as heroic engineers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station continue to try to save the plant’s crippled nuclear reactors from meltdown.

But, in addition to the devastating TV news reports, please do yourself a favor and read Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s essay on her memories and reflections as the terrifying and heartbreaking news from Japan continues to unfold. It will be in Tuesday’s New York Times. Here is how it opens:

ON Aug. 9, 1945, my great-uncle was out fishing in the Pacific, far enough away from Nagasaki, Japan, that he missed the immediate impact of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans that day. My great-aunt was in their new house outside Nagasaki; the entire family had only a few days earlier fled the city because my great-uncle feared a repeat of the bombing of Hiroshima.

I heard this story many times during my childhood. Back then, it made me feel that my great-uncle was a clever man. As an adult, I realized he was also very lucky, because cleverness alone cannot keep you safe.

For 36 hours after the earthquake and tsunami that eviscerated the east coast of Japan on Friday, I was unable to get any word from my relatives who oversee and live in our family’s Buddhist temple in Iwaki City, south of Sendai, the biggest city near the epicenter. I wondered if they too were lucky and smart.

I wanted to know, and I did not want to know. I dipped into the world of the Internet, with its videos of water raging over the farmland and crushed ferries, and then quickly backed out. Not looking at the videos kept reality at bay, because the images of the coastline do not match the Japan that I know….

JERRY NEEDS FOUR REPUBLICANS TO PASS THE BUDGET, BUT WILL THE CRP’S THREATS PREVENT IT

Madeleine Brand had Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters on her show Monday to talk about how bleak the chances are that any Republican legislators will vote for Brown’s proposed budget.

According to Cal Buzz, it is not so much that certain moderate Republicans wouldn’t cross over party lines, as it is the fact that the California Republican Party is out-and-out threatening any Repubs who vote with the governor. Specifically, if they do the California Republican Assembly has proposed a resolution that…..

“….censures these traitorous Republicans-in-Name-Only, ask(s) for their resignation(s) from their positions within the California Republican Party, pledges to endorse and support efforts to recall them from office, and directs the California Republican Party staff, agents and officers to refuse to provide them with funding or assistance in future elections.”

Nice. That’s really putting the good of the state first. Well done, guys.

THE ART OF THE POLICE REPORT & NONEXISTENT APOLOGIES

Both of these stories were linked by Kevin Roderick at LA Observed:

First there is LAPD crime analyst and fellow Bennington MFA graduate, Ellen Collett, who has written a delicious piece that appears in the Utne Reader about the art of writing a good crime report, and a South LA cop named Martinez who is her favorite practitioner.

Roderick also links to the “correction” run by the LA Weekly’s Simon Wilson pursuant to her creepy, insensitive and marginally assaultive coverage of the February Tahrir Square attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan, coverage that was criticized by a number of other women journalists, myself included.

Not only does Wilson fail to apologize (which was what was called for), but her correction, such as it is, also manages to be creepy and vaguely assaultive.

To wit:

The LA Weekly reported earlier in the day on February 15 that Logan had been raped, based on language in a press release from CBS. The CBS release said Logan had suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.”

But did the attack constitute rape? The legal definition of rape is penetration with any object, to any extent — the most extreme form of sexual assault. Experts on legal language have since informed us that CBS’ description of the incident implies repeated rape, but the Weekly has not been able to determine what occurred. CBS declines all further comment.

Therefore, we conclude that we erroneously interpreted CBS’ report of what happened to Logan on February 11, 2011.

Gee, thanks Simone, for the graphic “legal definition.” Very helpful.

Next time you have the desire to make things better, please don’t.

The photo of Sutter Brown, the state’s official First Dog, contemplating budgetary matters with the governor, was taken by Brown political adviser, Steve Glazer.

On Tuesday, voters rejected Prop. 21, the ballot measure that would have added $18 to most vehicle registrations and allocated that money to support California’s state parks.

And not only did the voters of California nix Prop 21, they did so by a healthy margin—with 58 percent voting NO.

So what does that mean? Nobody feels they can afford the extra 18 bucks in this economy—parks or no parks? Californians suddenly don’t care about their parks?

And whatever it meant, what can we do to preserve the health of our state’s irreplaceable wildlands?

Civil rights lawyer, Robert Garcia, head of the City Project, answers the first question with a resounding no. Garcia points out that several times over the last ten years, even in the state’s poorer communities, “voters of color and low income voters have voted to tax themselves to create parks and recreation that meet the needs of all the people..”

The “no” on 21 reflects voter rejection of “ballot box budgeting” — and the profound need for economic stimulus programs to create jobs and infrastructure for all. Parks and recreation programs must create local green jobs, and improve quality of life for all.

Okay, fine. But how do we do that?

Garcia and some of his partner groups say they have a plan that Garcia insists can help save the parks, expand park access, AND help provide green jobs—all without putting more weight on the state budget. (For more details go here.)

Garcia and company hope to meet with Gov-elect Jerry Brown sooner rather than later about the matter.

Garcia also points out that park distribution is not exactly created equal in California. [See map.]

“There are few state parks where the need is greatest. State parks are overwhelmingly located in communities that are park rich and income rich. State parks are typically not located in park poor, income poor, communities of color, where unemployment rates are highest. Lack of places for physical activity contributes to disproportionately high obesity levels.

“…the Los Angeles region has only 5.5 acres of state parks per thousand residents, compared to 34.7 acres in the San Francisco region — almost seven times more. While Los Angeles has 49% of the state’s population, San Francisco has only 19%…”

At least 700 groups supported Prop 21 says Garcia, who is a practiced champ at alliance building. With this in mind, he hopes to enlist the help of of as many of those 700 as humanly possible to “expand access to and support for state parks.”

Me and my Topanga State Park jogging trails hope that it works.

PS: SPEAKING OF JERRY BROWN....the LA Times’ Culture Monster blog has a nice little story about the still controversial “official” portrait of Brown, painted during his first gubernatorial term, by artist Don Bachardy.

PPS: I LOVE that painting, damn it, despite what the art Philistines think. It’s way better than the preposterously stuffy portraits it used to hang beside before it got stuffed away in some back room.

Now it’ll get trotted out again, and a good thing that is.

AND SPEAKING OF JERRY AGAIN….CalBuzz has a very smart rundown listing “5 Key Reasons” Jerry won—among them, they said, was the fact that he made “an asset out of his Gandalfian presence in California politics.”

Gandalfian. Well put, CalBuzzers.

The city of Los Angeles is in the process of building a brand new war memorial named the Eugene A. Obregon Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial, which is to honor all those who have won the medal.

Okay, so far so good.

As the San Jose Mercury News reports:

Crews have nearly finished the first stage of the memorial, which consists of a 30-foot long, 5-foot-high plaster wall covered with tiles bearing the names of nearly 3,500 medal recipients.

The memorial’s sponsors also plan a 20-foot high pyramidal monument paying tribute to the medal’s 40 Hispanic recipients.

A statue atop the stone structure would depict the memorial’s namesake, Marine Pfc. Eugene A. Obregon, coming to the rescue of a comrade during the Korean War. The 19-year-old Obregon died during the rescue.

What could be wrong with that?

Well, it turns out—a lot.

Civil Rights Attorney Robert Garcia, who is counsel for and president of The City Project, plans to file an injunction this morning, Friday, to stop the construction. He is joined by a list of other organizations, including the state-chartered Native American Heritage Commission and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California.

According to Garcia (who rarely does not have all his legal ducks in a row), the memorial project “has not received proper legal review and approval by government agencies and the public, in violation of state and federal laws and principles, including protections for parks and the environment, historic preservation, equal justice, Native American sites, transparent government and the rule of law in a democratic society.”

Other than that, it’s fine.

Here’s the deal: For reasons that now seem profoundly illogical, the memorial is being built in the one acre grassy expanse that is Father Serra Park, which happens to be smack in the middle of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument—in other words, the site of the birthplace of the city of LA, not to mention the site of a historic village of the Gabrieleño indians, and the site of Old Chinatown, and the site of the so-called Chinatown massacre, where 19 Chinese men were killed in 1871.

Put another way, it’s a little like deciding to build a Vietnam memorial in the middle of the Alamo—if the Alamo was also the site of the Dome of the Rock. (Or something of that nature.) No one would dispute the importance of the Vietnam memorial, but that particular location ain’t where it should be.

On Saturday, the mayor and other city officials are supposed to attend a press conference unveiling the tile-covered wall, that is the first stage of the memorial project.

Awk-ward.

Garcia and company say there are plenty of other far more appropriate places to honor Medal of Honor recipients—including “the Western Gateway at the 16 acre Los Angeles National Veterans’ Park and the 115 acre Veterans’ National Cemetery on the mile long Veterans’ Parkway across from the U.S. Army Reserve Center on Wilshire Boulevard—and about five other alternative locations.

It is worth watching to see how this turns out.

One should not miss Lindsey Hoshaw’s gruesomely fascinating article in Tuesday’s NY Times, about the vast garbage islands in the Pacific.

Most of us had heard about these giant floating garbage collections, but somehow Hoshaw has gone the needed distance to make us feel how impossibly and fantastically awful these land masses of refuse in the ocean really are.

She writes:

ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.

Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans.

In addition to its content, the story is also interesting because of the fact that the primary funding for the research and the writing of the article, did not come from the NY Times, but from David Cohn’s innovative “crowd funding” model Spot.us, where anybody who wanted could give a few bucks toward Hoshaw’s month=long, $8000 reporting adventure.

Go here to Spot.Us to find out how it all came about.

Spot.Us is launching in LA soon (It’s got a nominal site up now), and we’ll be hearing a lot more about the model in the near future.

Meanwhile, many people I know are nattering on about the London Time’s Ben Macintyr’s column about how the Internet is killing narrative,—to which I say piffle.

The delivery system is changing, but good storytelling is not going away.

Photo: Mario Aguilera/Associated Press

“Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.” Chinatown

Except in our case, we’re in the middle of a drought and a budget crisis, and our fired—excuse me—recently resigned head of the DWP, David Nahai, is not drowning in the least. Instead he’s swimming happily in our public money.

Yes, Nahai is still leaving the job, David Zahniser reports at the LA Times, but he’s getting a big, yummyparty favor as he goes out the door in the form of a “consulting fee,” that happens, coincidentally, to be the exact same dollar amount as his former salary—namely $27,000 and change per month. He will receive said amount weekly until the end of the year. The only difference is that Nahai he no longer has the irksome task of actually running the DWP to earn his monthly $27,000.

“There’s nothing nefarious about it, nothing complex about it. This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that,” [DWP commission President Lee Kanon Alpert] said. “David’s resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months.”

News flash, if you have to keep the departing head of a public agency on salary for a ridiculous rate because he’s the only guy who’s got the requisite “institutional memory” to know where to find the executive restroom keys, or whatever, what does that say about the former exec’s management style?

(HINT: Nothing good.)

Later on in the conversation with Zahniser, Alpert further clarified the reasons for shoveling money Nahai’s direction:

“He may have knowledge we want to pick his brain on,” Alpert said.

Oh, okay, well, now that explains everything!

Ron Kaye broke this story over the weekend, and is in high dudgeon about Nahai’s golden handshake—with good reason.

Meanwhile, on other priorities-challenged fronts, Meg “I-don’t-need-to-vote-in-elections-because-Sonny-Bono-didn’t-vote-either” Whitman, has announced plans to fire at least 40,000 “selfish and arrogant” state workers when she’s governor (excluding the prison guards, naturally). George Skelton has some choice words about that.

photo from the Jewish Journal

ARNOLD STEPS IN TO SAVE STATE PARKS—BUT MAYBE NOT FOR THE REASON HE SAYS

This past Friday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the budgetary breach with a plan to miraculously rescue 100 state parks from closing (the same 100 he had personally and unilaterally elected to close, but okay. A niggling point).

The story is that the governor brought out his budget crunchers and told them to go forth and find enough savings elsewhere to be able to keep the parks open with minor cutbacks and partial closures to a few parks. Not a perfect solution but much better than shuttering 100 of California’s precious public wildland spaces. That, Arnold! Such a problem solver!

But what, one wonders caused this sudden change of heart?

Could it maybe have been the looming threat of nasty lawsuits and the possible loss of millions of dollars in federal grants?

Yep. Looks like it. In another one of his excellent essays on state and national parks, civil rights lawyer and City Project head, Robert Garcia, pointed out rather presciently, just before Arnold had his come-to-Jesus cost cutting session, that it had been recently been brought to Schwarzenegger’s attention that closing the parks would cost a hell of a lot more—in legal bills and funding losses—than keeping them open.

Here’s a clip:

[The National Park Service] told the governor in June that state park closures would violate the contracts the state signed to receive $286 million in federal funds for 67 parks under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and could jeopardize hundreds of millions more in future funds. The land for another six state parks could also revert to the federal government. (Read the NY Times article.)

Months after the plan to close state parks was announced, the department’s lawyers finally got around to analyzing the law earlier this month in a memo that was promptly leaked and posted on the Internet. (Read the Mercury News Article on the memo.)

The memo outlines about eight reasons why closing state parks would raise serious problems under contract, property and environmental laws…..

[Here's the rest of Garcia's essay. And here's the memo.]

PS: Try to catch Ken Burns series on the National Parks before it’s over. It’s fantastically good.

THE SUPREMES CONSIDER THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF LWOP KIDS WHO DID NOT COMMIT MURDER

In Monday’s LA Times, David Savage gave a preview of the case that the Supreme Court will consider in November to determine whether or not life without parole for minors who didn’t kill constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, “The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles.”

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

[SNIP]

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court’s tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Here, by the way, is a past look at California’s LWOP kids.

UC PRESIDENT MARK YUDOF TO ALL UNDERLINGS: YOU’RE DEAD TO ME

Okay, he didn’t say those words exactly, but in last week’s NY Times interview, University of California president Yudof said some things that were a bit flip sounding given how drastic the cuts have been at the state’s UCs.

For instance there was this:

….Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. I listen to them.

(“…like being a manager of a cemetery?” Okay, so faculty and staff are either dead to him—or the undead. Hard to tell.)

And, regarding his salary (Yudof makes $540,000 plus $228,000 a year toward his pension plan, plus an annual $120,000 housing allowance, totaling: $888,000 a year), when asked what he thought about the suggestion that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, ($400,000), Yudof said:

Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?

Yudof may or may not be good for the UCs (there are a lot of people lately weighing in on the NOT side of things)—but, given the hits the university system, its employees and its students are taking, a little diplomacy would go along way, dude.
.

THINKING OF STAFON JOHNSON

This isn’t a social justice issue, but many people—myself included— are sending positive thoughts the direction of USC running back, Stafon Johnson, who went though 6 hours of surgery Monday after a weight room accident in which a weight bar fell on his throat.