Now that we know that the US Supreme Court will, indeed, consider the issue of California’s Proposition 8 (along with the Defense of Marriage Act case, the United States v. Windsor), the handicapping has begun as to what the Supremes might decide and why.

With Prop 8 the justices have at least three possible choices:

1. They could elect to reverse the 9th Circuit’s ruling that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional and, in so doing, outlaw same sex marriage in California by letting Prop 8 stand.

2. Alterately, there is the best case scenario: the court could find that Prop 8 violates the U.S. Constitution. And that’s the ball game; same sex marriage will be legal throughout the nation.

3. There is, however, a third option, a sort of trap door that lets SCOTUS out having to make one of the two blanket decisions on constitutionality. With option 3, they could reach in and rule, not on the issue, but on whether the Prop 8 defenders have the “standing” to have appealed the lower court ruling that declared Prop 8 unconstitutional. If the Supremes go for option 3, then wedding bells may ring in California, without affecting the rest of the nation one way or the other.

One of the more upbeat essays analyzing the various possibilities is this op ed in the Sunday LA Times by Harvard Law prof, Michael Klarman, in which Klarman basically says that the most likely options are #2 and #3, that even the most conservative justices can see the way the wind is blowing culturally in the U.S., and they’re not likely to want to have to explain in 10 years to their grandchildren why they voted on the resoundingly wrong side of history. Thus, if they’re not ready to open the doors to marriage rights, nationwide, they’ll kick it back to the states.

Here’s how he ends it:

….Many state legislators have explained their votes in favor of gay marriage on the ground that they wanted to be on the right side of history and to have their children be proud when reflecting on their parent’s legislative record. Judges authoring opinions in support of gay marriage have frequently invoked examples of courts being on the right side of history. Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, the author of Massachusetts’ pioneering gay-marriage ruling, has compared it to that court’s 1790s ruling that barred slavery under the very same constitutional provision. Similarly, the California Supreme Court’s decision in favor of gay marriage proudly invoked its landmark 1948 ruling that invalidated a state ban on interracial marriage.

In 1954, the court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, which invalidated racial segregation in public schools, split the nation in half. Within two decades, however, it had become iconic. A high court ruling in favor of marriage equality would similarly divide the nation in 2013. Yet, given how quickly public opinion is evolving, within a decade or so such a decision would probably also be almost universally applauded. What justice would not be tempted to author the opinion that within a few short years likely would become known as the Brown vs. Board of Education of the gay rights movement?

However, Adam Liptak is not nearly as chipper in his outlook in Monday’s New York Times.

Here’s a clip:

…The cautious move for the justices would have been to hear just one of the cases they were asked to consider, the one posing the relatively modest question of whether the federal government can discriminate against same-sex couples married in the places that allow such unions.

But the court went big on Friday, also taking the case from California filed by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies. Their case seeks to establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the remaining states, almost all of which have laws or constitutional provisions prohibiting it.

“We are now literally within months,” Mr. Boies said Friday, “of getting a final resolution of this case that began three and a half years ago.”

The speed with which the court is moving has some gay rights advocates bracing for a split decision. The court could strike down the federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, saying that the meaning of marriage is a matter for the states to decide. At the same time, it could reject the idea that the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex marriage, saying that the meaning of marriage is a matter for the states to decide.

That may be why supporters of traditional marriage sounded pretty cheerful on Friday.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage. “Taking both cases at the same time exposes the hypocrisy on the other side.”

It is entirely possible, then, that the votes to grant review in the California case came from the court’s more conservative justices. They may have calculated that they had a shot at capturing the decisive vote of the member of the court at its ideological center, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, at least in the California case.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC, HERE ARE the coolest photos of the first wave of same sex couples getting married in Washington.

CHICAGO IS THE FALSE CONFESSION CAPITAL OF THE NATION: 60 MINUTES SHOWS SOME OF THOSE WHO WERE PRESSURED TO FALSELY CONFESS

60 Minutes has an excellent and disturbing story about the prevalence of false confessions, particularly in Chicago, and about two groups of teenagers, now adults, who were pushed into confessing to murders they didn’t commit.

Here’s a clip from the transcript:

Why would anyone confess to a crime they did not commit? It happens so often in Chicago, defense attorneys call the city the false confession capital of the United States. Chicago has twice as many documented false confession cases as any city in the country. One reason may be the way police go about questioning suspects. And 60 Minutes has learned the Chicago Police Department is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation into its interrogation practices.

Two cases we examined involve several teenage boys who were arrested and they say forced or tricked into confessing to violent crimes they never committed. Each spent nearly half their lives in prison. They are free now, and told us their story together for the first time.

Terrill Swift: We all of us got one thing in common. We did an extensive amount of time in jail for something we didn’t do. And that’s the bottom line.

They each would serve sentences that ranged from 15 years to life. Terrill Swift, Michael Saunders, Vincent Thames, and Harold Richardson were convicted in one rape and murder. James Harden, Robert Taylor and Jonathan Barr, in a different one. All were found guilty based solely on confessions.

YELLOWSTONE’S MOST FAMOUS WOLF IS KILLED BY HUNTERS

The latest instance of a tagged and monitored wolf that are part of Yellowstone’s wolf study program being killed makes clear that some better system needs to be designed that protects these wolves during hunting season.

The New York Times’ Nate Schweber has the story about the shooting of 826F—popularly known as ’06, the rock star female wolf.

Yellowstone National Park’s best-known wolf, beloved by many tourists and valued by scientists who tracked its movements, was shot and killed on Thursday outside the park’s boundaries, Wyoming wildlife officials reported.

The wolf, known as 832F to researchers, was the alpha female of the park’s highly visible Lamar Canyon pack and had become so well known that some wildlife watchers referred to her as a “rock star.” The animal had been a tourist favorite for most of the past six years.

The wolf was fitted with a $4,000 collar with GPS tracking technology, which is being returned, said Daniel Stahler, a project director for Yellowstone’s wolf program. Based on data from the wolf’s collar, researchers knew that her pack rarely ventured outside the park, and then only for brief periods, Dr. Stahler said.

This year’s hunting season in the northern Rockies has been especially controversial because of the high numbers of popular wolves and wolves fitted with research collars that have been killed just outside Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming….

Photographer Jimmy Jones has photos of ’06 here.

HELPING GIRLS ENTANGLED IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

A new report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty says that things like diversion programs, staff training, and gender-specific programming need to be developed in order to help the fastest-growing group in the juvenile justice system—girls.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson has the story. Here’s a clip:

Experts say girls make up the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system, with more than 300,000 arrests and criminal charges every year. A new report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy says the system isn’t doing enough to help those young girls.

Most girls who wind up tangled in the justice system have family problems, trauma or a history of abuse, says Georgetown University professor Peter Edelman, who co-authored the report, “Improving the Juvenile Justice System for Girls.”

More than half of the girls detained these days don’t commit big crimes. More often their transgressions are things like skipping school, breaking curfew or running away from home, says Edelman, who has studied justice up close since the 1970s.

“Getting them back into school and getting them back on a path without invoking the sanctions of the juvenile and criminal justice system,” Edelman says, “that is so much better in terms of not leaving those wounds and scars and preserving the possibilities for the future.”

REASONS BEHIND LAPD CHIEF BECK’S IMMIGRATION TACTICS

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck says that his recent immigration initiatives and policy changes are not based on his personal views on illegal immigration or political strategy, but directly related to public safety. (We’re a day late on this story about LAPD Chief Beck and immigration, but it’s important and we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. For background, go here and here…and here.)

The LA Times’ Joel Rubin has the very well-written story. Here are some clips:

A decade ago, Charlie Beck watched as William J. Bratton arrived in Los Angeles and began rebuilding a department deeply tarnished by the Rodney King beating, riots and corruption scandals. Bratton made many changes as chief, but Beck was particularly taken by his aggressive effort to rebuild the LAPD’s broken relationship with the African American community, which over and over Bratton said was a cornerstone to his success.

Beck carried the lesson with him when he replaced Bratton three years ago as chief of the nation’s second-largest police force. With nearly half of the city’s population Hispanic and the federal government’s aggressive efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants sowing fear in immigrant communities, Beck believed that his success or failure as chief rested heavily on whether he could replicate Bratton’s success — but this time with Latinos.

His actions have made him a lightning rod for criticism, even from some of his own police officers. But they have also established Beck as a forceful national voice for a more restrained approach to illegal immigration, a high-profile counterpoint to hard-liners like Sheriff Joseph Arpaio in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

[SNIP]

In an interview, Beck said he was driven to act on some level by his sense that he can and should help level the playing field for illegal immigrants, whom he said have suffered unfairly from crude federal immigration laws. But Beck said those personal views were not as important as his more practical belief that extending an olive branch to immigrants in Los Angeles was vital to the LAPD’s crime-fighting efforts.

“It’s not so much that I am a dove on immigration,” he said. “It’s that I’m a realist. I recognize that this is the population that I police. If I can take steps — legal steps — to make them a better population to police then I will…. I do have sympathy for their plight, but my actions are not based mainly on that. It makes absolute law enforcement sense. Any one of these things I’ve done is directly tied to public safety.”

LA CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS VOTE AGAINST PUPPY AND KITTY MILLS

LA City Council voted Wednesday in favor of banning the sale of non-rescue dogs, cats, and rabbits in pet stores. If it passes with a majority a second time, it will bring about a three year trial run to see if targeting puppy and kitten mills will bring down euthanization rates at shelters.

LAist’s Lauren Lloyd has the story. Here’s a clip:

City News Service explains that the ordinance “is intended to shut down puppy and kitten mills and reduce the tens of thousands of euthanizations performed on unclaimed animals each year.” While it clearly mandates that pet stores cannot sell animals obtained from commercial breeders, pet stores would still be permitted to sell animals from shelters, humane societies and registered rescue groups. Individuals would still be allowed to buy directly from breeders as well.

Penalties for stores caught disobeying the law include misdemeanor charges and a first-time penalty of $250. A third strike would carry a fine of up to $1,000.

The wolves and Pomeranians at WitnessLA approved this message.

SUSPECT PLEADS GUILTY IN MISTAKEN IDENTITY MURDER OF LASD DEPUTY

A 28-year-old LA gang member pleaded guilty Tuesday to the murder of well-liked LA Sheriff’s Dept. Deputy Juan Escalante, who at the time of his death was working at Men’s Central Jail. (For background on Deputy Escalante’s heartbreaking story, go here.)

The LA Times’ Richard Winton has the story. Here’s a clip:

Carlos Velasquez, 28, pleaded guilty to murder and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the Aug. 2, 2008, slaying of Dep. Juan Abel Escalante, right. The plea was accepted by Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen.

Velasquez was originally charged with capital murder and could have faced the death penalty. He admitted he killed the deputy as he was leaving his parents’ Cypress Park home to head to work at the Men’s Central Jail.

Escalante was shot in the back of the head as he reached into his car to adjust a child’s car seat.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Phillip Stirling and John Colello say Velasquez wrongly believed he was killing a gang rival and shot the deputy numerous times.

SANITY PREVAILS! JUVENILE LIFE-WITHOUT-PAROLE BILL SB 9 PASSES CA STATE ASSEMBLY

EDITOR’S NOTE: Since I’ve been tracking this issue for quite a while, the first item is from me. Then I’ll pass you over to Taylor for the rest of the post.

At around 10 am on Thursday morning, juvenile justice advocates across the state were frantically sending out texts and emails urging everybody—anybody—to call a particular shortlist of California State Assemblypersons—or email them, fax them, or walk in their damned offices if need be—and tell the three to please, PLEASE vote for SB 9, Senator Leeland Yee’s bill that, if signed into law, would allow kids who have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, to have at least a tiny outside possibility of one day being freed from prison.

The bill was just one measly vote short, the advocates’ messages said. Just one.

As close as the proposed legislation was to passage, however, a lot of those tracking the matter were too jittery to hope for a victory.

After all, twice before over the past three years, a form of Yee’s bill had passed through the state senate only to die a disheartening death in the assembly because a cluster of moderate Democrats were made so jumpy and spineless by the threats and dark predictions of victims lobbies and the state’s district attorneys’ organizations, that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the bill.

(WitnessLA covered 2010′s ignominious defeat of the bill here.)

On the other hand, many advocates believed that this time the hoped-for miracle might happen, mainly because of the June ruling by the US Supreme Court, Miller v. Alabama, which stated that LWOP—life without parole—could no longer be a mandatory minimum sentence for kids.

The court avoided banning juvenile LWOP altogether. But it took a big step in that direction by making clear, as it had begun to do in an earlier ruling, that kids are different than adults. Thus, SCOTUS implied, we need to consider their actions—even their worst possible actions—- in a different light than we do those of adults.

Juvenile advocates hoped that the Miller ruling would give the nervous assembly members the political cover to finally stand up straight and do the right thing.

Now here it was, do or die time. The advocate emails named Assemblypersons Alejo, Campos, and Mendoza as the three Dems who hadn’t yet voted. Call them now! urged the emails. All we need is one!

A few minutes later, the needed vote arrived. State Assemblyman Tony Mendoza was the breakthrough lawmaker.

Within seconds, a new set of email and text announcements flew around the Internets, and this time they were nearly ecstatic in tone: SB 9 had been passed by the California State Assembly.

Not a single Republican assembly member voted in favor of the bill.

Yes, the proposed legislation still needs to be passed by the state senate. But versions of this bill have made it through the state senate twice before without too much trouble. So with just a modicum of luck, and the added impetus of June’s SCOTUS ruling, SB 9 could be on Governor Brown’s desk before Labor Day.

To get an idea of the uphill battle that has taken place to get SB 9 to this point, take a look at Rob Greene’s LA Times editorial from this past January, in which he quoted with sorrow and fury from all the other editorials he and the Times had written on the topic over the past 3 years—to no avail.

Until now.

But first clip from the story by Human Rights Watch, which has been a strong advocate for the bill from the beginning.

The vote came just weeks after a United States Supreme Court decision barring the mandatory sentencing of juvenile offenders to life without parole. The Senate and governor should now act to bring California in line with the Supreme Court ruling, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Supreme Court decision highlighted the need for the California leaders to act,” said Elizabeth Calvin, senior children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch, based in Los Angeles. “Laws now on California’s books allow youth to be condemned to a lifetime in prison, with no hope or possibility of release. The bill that the assembly just passed finally recognizes children’s capacity for change and would enable California to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling.”

The bill, Senate Bill 9, is to go to the state Senate for a vote. If the governor signs it into law, it will allow people who were under age 18 at the time of their crimes to ask the sentencing court to review their sentences after serving up to 25 years in prison. The passage of time puts the court in a better position to assess whether the person merits the possibility of parole, Human Rights Watch said.

Here how Robert Greene’s January editorial opens:

We’ve said it before — more than a dozen times. A child, even a bad one, should not be sent to prison for life without any chance at parole. It’s a mark of societal fear and a lust for revenge. Some younger criminals may indeed be so incorrigible that they should never go free, but after he or she has been behind bars for a quarter of a century, a judge, and a parole board, should be able to consider release.

On Tuesday, the state Assembly is reconsidering SB 9, a bill to put California among the ranks of civilized societies by ending juvenile life without parole sentences. Finally, Assembly, put this matter to rest, pass the bill and send it to the governor.

Or, as we have said previously:

Jan. 16, 2008:

But of all the inequities of a dysfunctional penal system and harsh state laws, few can touch our predilection for discarding the lives of children who commit crimes before they’re old enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions….

And he goes on from there with nine more snippets of nine more Times editorials on the topic—all of them impassioned and all particularly satisfying to read today— in the light of Thursday’s good news.

Obviously, we’ll be tracking this bill the rest of the way—with our fingers firmly crossed for a sane outcome.

Okay, now back to Taylor for the rest of today’s postings.

NO MORE LETTERS TO SD JAIL INMATES

A new policy to extend to all seven San Diego jails bans inmates from receiving letters. Inmates will be restricted to postcards and email communications beginning September 1st.

CBS has the AP story. Here’s how it opens:

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore has a message for jail inmates: No more letters.

The sheriff announced Wednesday that letters for inmates at the department’s seven jails will be returned to senders starting Sept. 1. It is an effort to prevent contraband from entering cells.

Cmdr. Richard Miller says drugs, weapons and needles have been hidden in letters. He recognizes that letter-writing is an inexpensive way to communicate, but says safety concerns prevailed.

CA REALIGNMENT UPDATE: NINE MONTHS IN….SOME INTERESTING QUESTIONS ARISE

A new report by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reported that in the first quarter of realignment there were 39% less prison admissions than when realignment began, and 26,480 fewer total prisoners. However the CJCJ notes that, in the second quarter, things begin to get more complicated as, in some counties. admissions rose—with the biggest increase in non-marijuana drug offenses.

Here’s a clip that describes what they found:

New quarterly figures released by CDCR show that during the first 9 months of realignment there has been a 39% overall reduction in new prison admissions as of June 30, 2012, and a drop of 26,480 in the prison population as of August 8, 2012, compared to October 1, 2011. Realignment was designed to redirect non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders from incarceration in state prison to the supervision of local jurisdictions. Within the first 9 months of realignment, CDCR has already progressed two-thirds of the way toward the goal of reducing inmate populations by 40,000 by 2017.

However, the initially steep reductions in prisoners may be almost over, and further cuts may prove harder to achieve. The second quarter of 2012 actually brought an increase in new admissions. From March through June 2012, 8,352 inmates were admitted to California prisons, an increase of 306 over the 8,046 admitted in January through March. A contributing factor to the increase was an additional 2 days in the 2nd than in the first quarter.

[SNIP]

The biggest increase in admissions, by far, was in new felon admissions for non-marijuana drug offenses, which rose by 22%, while property offender numbers rose by 6% and violent offender numbers remained the same.

So how to account for those admissions increases?

In the report’s conclusion, CJCJ explores possible explanations for this small but curious reversal of trends, and offers one explanation that their analysts believe is the most plausible—and that assuredly deserves further investigation:

Here’s a clip from that section:

….prosecutors in certain jurisdictions could be exploring
ways to avoid realignment mandates by charging more defendants with those offenses still eligible
for state imprisonment. For example in November 2011, Los Angeles District Attorney, Steve
Cooley, announced he was teaching his staff “to ‘scour’ criminal records to make sure they note any
prior offenses when they file new charges, and to make sure that new charges include offenses
categorized as serious, violent or sexual when possible” (Lagos, 2011). Whether as a result of
deliberate policy or for other reasons, Los Angeles’s prison commitments rose by 135 from the first
to the second quarter of 2012, reversing the county’s previous decline.

Definitely worth exploring further.

GRAY WOLVES MAY RECEIVE PROTECTION AS A CA ENDANGERED SPECIES

With the arrival (and extended stay) of OR-7, the lone wolf who wandered into CA from Oregon in December, has come concern that gray wolves need to be given California endangered species status. The Department of Fish and Game commission will vote on the issue in October, and hopefully pave the road for future CA wolves.

Summit County Voice’s Bob Berwyn has the story. Here are some clips:

Responding to a petition from wildlife conservation advocates, the California Department of Fish and Game last week recommended the endangered species status to the state’s fish and game commission, which will vote on the issue in October.

California is grappling with the issue against an interesting backdrop. A lone wolf that wandered from Oregon continues to roam the wild northeastern quadrant of the state, and wildlife advocates say there’s room for more. At the same time, the federal government is considering removing wolves from the endangered species list on other parts of the country.

[SNIP]

“We’re glad the Department of Fish and Game agrees that the gray wolf deserves consideration for protection under the California Endangered Species Act,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center’s endangered species director. “California has hundreds of square miles of excellent wolf habitat, but if wolves in the state are going to increase from one to many, they need the protection of the California Endangered Species Act.”

“California needs a road map for recovering wolves,” said Greenwald. “Wolf populations in neighboring states will continue to expand, and more wolves will almost certainly show up in California. These wolves will need protection when they arrive.”

WOLF-DOGS PATROL LOUISIANA PRISON IN LIEU OF HUMAN GUARDS

Amid hefty budget (and personnel) cuts, Angola Prison has employed 80 wolf-dogs to patrol parts of the facility at night. (We at WitnessLA are in favor of full employment for wolf-dogs, as illustrated by the photo above.)

The Wall Street Journal’s Gary Fields has the story. Here’s a clip:

The wolf dogs, as they are called here, are the brainchild of Warden Burl Cain and his staff, and they were brought in last year in response to a steady decline in the prison’s annual budget from $135 million five years ago to $115 million today. The prison, which is known as Angola, has laid off 105 out of 1,200 officers, and 35 of the 42 guard towers now stand empty on the 18,000-acre prison grounds.

The animals regularly guard at least three of the seven camps that make up the complex.

Mr. Cain says the wolf dogs are a strong psychological deterrent. “The wolf ate Grandma,” he said.

They also save money. The average correctional officer at Angola earns about $34,000 a year, a prison spokesman said. By comparison, the canine program, which includes about 80 dogs—the wolf hybrids along with other breeds for other tasks— costs about $60,000 annually for medical care, supplies and food.

GOLDMAN SACHS TO INVEST ALMOST $10M IN NYC JAIL PROGRAM TO REDUCE RECIDIVISM RATE

Leviathan investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs, is investing $9.6M in Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience a program aimed at reducing the recidivism rate of male youth at Rikers Island. Goldman use of the new “social impact bonds” means the company will only break even if the recidivism at Rikers drops by 10% at the end of the four-year program. Critics worry that the program will give an incentive for people to cook the stats.

The NY Times’ David W. Chen has the story. Here’s a clip:

The city will be the first in the United States to test “social impact bonds,” also called pay-for-success bonds, which are an effort to find new ways to finance initiatives that might save governments money over the long term.

First used in Britain and now being explored in Australia, the bonds are rapidly capturing the imagination of some public officials in the United States: on Wednesday, Massachusetts announced that it was completing negotiations with two nonprofit groups to finance juvenile justice and homelessness programs, with the promise of repayment only if the programs work.

The federal government, Connecticut, New York State and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, among others, are at various stages of considering using the bonds to harness new funds for human-services programs.

In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans to announce on Thursday that Goldman Sachs will provide a $9.6 million loan to pay for a new four-year program intended to reduce the rate at which adolescent men incarcerated at Rikers Island reoffend after their release.

The money is not a huge amount for Goldman, which last month reported over $900 million in second-quarter profit, and the investment promises a public-relations benefit for the Wall Street bank. For the city, the money allows the Bloomberg administration to demonstrate, and test, several of its priorities: enlisting private sector help in financing public needs, and tying program money to rigorous outcome evaluations.

The Goldman money will be used to pay MDRC, a social services provider, to design and oversee the program. If the program reduces recidivism by 10 percent, Goldman would be repaid the full $9.6 million; if recidivism drops more, Goldman could make as much as $2.1 million in profit; if recidivism does not drop by at least 10 percent, Goldman would lose as much as $2.4 million.

Check out Mayor Bloomberg’s press release and briefing to learn more about Social Impact Bonds and ABLE.

“UNINTERRUPTED SCHOLARS ACT” TO ALLOW FOSTER CARE AGENCIES ACCESS TO STUDENT RECORDS

The Uninterrupted Scholars Act, a new bill introduced Wednesday by Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, aims to give social workers access to the school records of kids in foster care. The bill addresses a snag in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that makes it hard for those acting as guardians of foster kids to access school records. (WitnessLA has previously posted about a similar bill—the A+ Act.)

Foster care journalist/advocate Daniel Heimpel has the story in his publication, The Chronicle of Social Change. Here’s a clip:

Yesterday, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) introduced the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which would amend educational privacy law to allow foster care administrations’ access to student records. The bill was co-sponsored by Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects students’ records from most parties other than parents or schools. A broad array of advocacy and other groups from around the country have long argued that an unintended consequence of FERPA is that foster care social workers, administrators and even foster parents have a hard time accessing educational records, which are critical to assisting children successfully navigate school.

“There are some real horror stories from the field that we have heard about how this is really impeding our ability to help nurture and love these children and get them to a safer place,” Landrieu said in an interview.

HUNDREDS PROTEST THE UNWISDOM OF LAUSD’S PLAN TO ELIMINATE ADULT ED—COMPLETELY

In the budget presented to the LAUSD board last month, the $$ allocation for Adult Education was not just slashed, it was eliminated altogether.

On Tuesday afternoon, around 300 adult ed students demonstrated to protest the proposed vaporizing of the classes that more than 300,000 adults in Los Angeles County depend on for a multiplicity of reasons—highest among them, affordable job training and/or retraining for those out of work.

LAUSD has 35 adult education centers, which include 24 community adult schools, six regional occupational centers, and five skills centers, which offer hugely popular skills and jobs training courses.

Some of the skills center courses, in particular, are so coveted for the quality of their training classes, that they have huge waiting lists.

When I watched the State of the Union during which President Obama harped repeatedly on the importance of job training, I imagined adult ed teachers all over Los Angeles shouting back at their TVs: “Tell that to LAUSD!”

The LA Times has more on Tuesday’s demonstration.

Here’s what I wrote in 2009 about the reasons NOT to put adult ed on the chopping block.

SO FAR THE MUCH FEARED BOGEYMAN OF CALIFORNIA’S REALIGNMENT PROGRAM HAS BEEN “BENIGN,” ACCORDING TO LA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT

KPCC’S “On Central” has the story.

But the bullet points are: crime is still down and the jails aren’t being overrun. Obviously, this is early in the program. However, these are good signs that perhaps the sky isn’t going to come crashing down after all.

IS OHIO KEEPING AN INNOCENT MAN ON DEATH ROW?

The Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Cohen examines the troubling death row case of Tyrone Noling.

Here’s a clip:

….There are several legitimate reasons why Noling deserves a new trial, especially in a state with a long history of wrongful capital convictions. There are a lot of flawed capital convictions all over the country — pick a state, any state, where the death penalty is still a priority for prosecutors and you’ll find such a case. But a closer look at this case reveals virtually all of the system’s main flaws at one time and in one place. The only thing missing from the story is racial bias, which likely would have only made things worse. (As of September 30, 2011, there were 148 inmates on Ohio’s death row, 65 of them white males like Noling.)

UPDATES ON OR7 AKA JOURNEY, OUR NEW LONE CALIFORNIA WOLF

It seems everyone is fascinated with OR7, the young grey wolf who wandered into California on December 28—the first wild wolf to be on California soil in 88 years

Patt Morrison is a devoted critter person, so it was natural that she would do a show on the wolf updating us on his most recent activities.

It seems OR7 has at least two Twitter accounts. (Here and here.)

And now both the New York Times and Time Magazine have done slightly giddy articles on Mr. OR7. (As well they should.)

WASHINGTON STATE AND COLORADO WILL LIKELY HAVE POT LEGALIZATION PROPOSITIONS ON THE NOVEMBER BALLOT

Reuters has the story. Here’s a clip:

Pot legalization supporters have argued for decades that prohibition has failed to curb pot use, and that the policy enriches drug cartels, hurts casual users and deprives governments of a potentially lucrative source of tax revenue.

Now, they see momentum on their side, pointing to an October Gallup Poll that found a record 50 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana use, up from 36 percent five years before.

The poll also found 62 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 back legalization, and that the young are driving the shift in attitudes.

“There’s a set of factors that suggest both the Washington and Colorado initiates have a better chance of winning than any of the initiatives that have happened before,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

“But that said, even with a majority of likely voters in both states saying they favor legal marijuana, we know in the final stretch there’s always a small percentage that get nervous or scared off or fearful of change,” he said.

This week the saga continued of the 2-year-old male gray wolf who wondered across the state line from Oregon into California, on December 28 (last Wednesday), ostensibly looking for a girlfriend—the first canis lupus to show up in our state since 1924. The hopeful wolf was unglamorously named OR7, by Oregon Fish and Wildlife biologists who trapped and GPS collared him last February (The better to keep track of you, my dear). This week he was nicknamed Journey as the result of a naming contest held by an Oregon conservation group, Oregon Wild, which feels that the more the creature is personalized the less likely he is to get shot.

OR 7/Journey’s growing fame was heightened on Wednesday of this week, when a possible photo of him of taken by an unmanned deer hunter’s trail camera back in Oregon surfaced, giving us a first view of our new wolf.

Unlike wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, wolves that return to California are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Nevertheless, ranchers are reportedly already grumbling unhappily at the thought of wolves returning.

As of Wednesday, Mr. wolf was “staying out of trouble in a forested section of the Cascade Range in Northern California and appeared to be heading south,” Mark Stopher of the California Department of Fish and Game told the AP

“From Google Earth, it looks like it is habitat he can find both cover and food in,” Stopher said. “A lot of people would like to see OR-7 become an Oregon wolf again. To me, it’s a coin toss now what he is going to do.”

Evidently wolves usually mate in February (ish) but, according to OR-7′s stalker watchful biologist friends, he has yet to hook up. (Mainly because there are no other California wolves, a fact that no one seems to have mentioned to poor OR7/Journey)

The AP also reports:

OR-7 left the Imnaha pack in northeastern Oregon last September, shortly before the state put a death warrant on his father and a sibling for killing cattle. He is a descendant of wolves introduced into the Northern Rockies in the 1990s, and represents the westernmost expansion of a regional population that now tops 1,650.

Naturally, we will be keeping you up to date on the next installment of OR7/Journey’s journey.

(And, yes, the purposely fuzzy photo of the So Cal wolf taken in the Topanga hills is actually my couch-loving wolf-dog Lily.)

WLA STORY ON UNDERSHERIFF PAUL TANAKA GETS MORE SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES AND SUPERVISORS TO COME FORWARD
The 3rd part of WitnessLA’s Dangerous Jails series by the very excellent Matt Fleischer has caused more LASD insiders –many still working now for the department—to come forward with new information. “We want a department we can be proud of,” said one supervisor I spoke with Thursday night.

Yep. Us too. So please keep reaching out with your stories.

MAYOR CAN’T KEEP STORY STRAIGHT ON BIG BUCKS SETTLEMENT DEAL WITH OUSTED HACLA CHIEF RUDY MONTIEL

Kevin Roderick at LA Observed caught these dueling stories.

And, as the mess gets ever worse, we learned Thursday night from the LA Times that the interim chief was just asked to resign too. (Thankfully, no word on a giant golden parachute for this guy though).

Meanwhile, So Cal Connected, which has owned this story, keeps up the pressure, along with Controller Wendy Greuel.

LAPD USING DOWNTOWN PRIVATE SECURITY FIRM TO HELP POLICE OCCUPY PROTESTORS?

The LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero reports that, yes, as a matter of fact, the LAPD has used private security guards in some of its Occupy enforcement, but that it’s not typical. (Good thing, because it’s a sort of cringe-making notion.)

Anyway, read the story. Here’s how it opens.

In video of a police confrontation with Occupy L.A. protesters outside a Bank of America branch downtown over the weekend a few private security guards are seen, batons-in-hand, helping the LAPD form a skirmish line.

In fact officers can be seen pushing security guards into strategic positions as they face off against the so-called 99-percenters. The security employees push people back with batons and aim the business ends of the weapons at citizens. At least one guard even appears to participate in the arrest of demonstrator Anthony Loscano.

What gives? Did the LAPD just deputize a group of civilians? LAPD Lt. Andy Neiman tells the Weekly:

I have no idea why they were with us. Typically we do not integrate and mix resources when we’re in a tactical situation like that because of training issues and stuff like that.

These aren’t just run-of-the-mill security guards though. They’re the notorious “shirts,” employees of downtown’s business improvement districts, organizations that band together to increase security, clean up trash and lobby the city for improvements….

PS: Romero and his colleagues at the The Weekly’s Informer blog, Simone Wilson and Gene Maddaus, have been very much on top of things with their Occupy coverage, so keep an eye on them as the stories continue to unfold.

A WAR ON WOLVES?

In Thursday’s LA Times, sociology professor and author J. William Gibson has an op ed about what he calls The New War on Wolves. In it he gives up to date wolf killing and population stats for the gray wolves that were removed last spring from the endangered species list. (If you remember, the wolves weren’t delisted by the Department of the Interior, but by Congress (that notoriously knowledgeable group of wildlife biologists) that managed to get enough votes for the delisting provision only by attaching it as a rider to a must pass budget package last April.

Gibson explains the results—and also attempts to explain the the absolute blood lustt that seems to motivate certain hunters when it comes to killing Canis Lupus—an enmity that is not present in the attitudes toward other large predators like mountain lions and grizzlies.

Here’s how the essay opens:

As of Wednesday, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reported that 154 of its estimated 750 wolves had been “harvested” this year. Legal hunting and trapping — with both snares to strangle and leg traps to capture — will continue through the spring. And if hunting fails to reduce the wolf population sufficiently — to less than 150 wolves — the state says it will use airborne shooters to eliminate more.

In Montana, hunters will be allowed to kill up to 220 wolves this season (or about 40% of the state’s roughly 550 wolves). To date, hunters have taken only about 100 wolves, prompting the state to extend the hunting season until the end of January. David Allen, president of the powerful Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, has said he thinks hunters can’t do the job, and he is urging the state to follow Idaho’s lead and “prepare for more aggressive wolf control methods, perhaps as early as summer 2012.”

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead recently concluded an agreement with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to save 100 to 150 wolves in lands near Yellowstone National Park. But in the remaining 80% of the state, wolves can be killed year-round because they are considered vermin. Roughly 60% of Wyoming’s 350 wolves will become targeted for elimination.

What is happening to wolves now, and what is planned for them, doesn’t really qualify as hunting. It is an outright war…..

Read the rest.

By the way, as those longtime WLA readers know, I am not the least emotionally objective on the issue of wolf hunting in the U.S. In Montana, I’ve observed wolves in the wild with biologists, and been with other biologists when they’ve tracked radio collared wolves from the air. My son and I shared our home and lives for 16 and a half years with a wolf hybrid, the late great Loup-Loup. Now Lily-the 15 month old rescue wolf dog is at my feet as I type.

Yet, I realize that—practically speaking— predator species like the wolf have to be managed and, as much as I hate it, that sometimes includes hunting. But so much of what drives this issue is counterfactual and just plain ignorant. Yet it’s such a hot button topic that politicians have kowtowed to it.

I am at least thankful that, as Gibson reports, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has had the good sense to work out some kind of nominal protection for the wolf packs in and around Yellowstone Park, thus protecting the Yellowstone Wolf Project, started in 1994, which is unique in all the world, but was in part destroyed in 2008 when wolf hunting was, at first, clumsily reopened.

60 MINUTES ADDS A LEGAL ANALYST TO ITS ROSTER

Evidently with the departure of the late Andy Rooney, CBS’s 60 Minutes felt it now has room for an analyst who….you know…analyzes things, that, like, matter. So they’ve added legal analyst Andrew Cohen to the mix. This seems like a good thing.

SUPREMES HEAR MONTANA’S WHO-OWNS-THE-RIVERS DISPUTE

The AP has a good report on it. (As does the PBS Newshour actually.)

Here’s a clip from Mark Sherman and Matt Volz writing for the AP.

A Supreme Court dominated by Easterners tried to make sense Wednesday of a Western water dispute.

The court heard arguments in a lawsuit between a power company and the state of Montana over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers.

The state says it’s owed more than $50 million in back rent and interest from the company, PPL Montana.

For an answer, the court is looking back as far as the travels of Lewis and Clark more than 200 years ago.

The outcome could affect property rights, public access and wildlife management along Montana’s rivers, as well as those in other states.

The power company is appealing a Montana Supreme Court ruling that the state owns the submerged land beneath the dams. The decision turned in large part on that court’s findings that the three rivers were navigable when Montana became a state, despite the presence of significant waterfalls on two of the waterways.

The justices were dealing with unfamiliar issues in an area without much in the way of prior decisions to guide them.

Justice Samuel Alito, from Trenton, N.J., repeatedly asked where to turn for help.

“I’m not a sailor,” said Bronx-born Justice Sonia Sotomayor, explaining that she’s not especially conversant in nautical terminology.

Sotomayor was trying to figure out whether it matters in deciding on navigability how far someone has to go to get around a waterfall….

A decision is expected by June.

Still light blogging this week, (although not as light as last week).

Back full force on Monday, Jan 10.

WHAT KILLED AIYANA STANLEY-JONES?

Former NY Times Pulitzer winner, Charlie Le Duff, writes about the death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. But the story is about a zillion more things than the single tragedy of a little girl being killed when Detroit SWAT burst into the wrong apartment and shots for reasons that are still not adequately explained, except that the cops were busy filming a reality show, so maybe got over-hyped up on the Hollywood drama.

Le Duff, who has long been able to write like an angel when he wants to, (and he wants to here), has also woven into the story’s causal threads the multi-leveled miseries of Detroit, as he writes about what one tragedy can teach us about the unraveling of America’s middle class.

Look: you just need to read the thing.

Here is how it opens:

IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the morning of May 16 and the neighbors say the streetlights were out on Lillibridge Street. It is like that all over Detroit, where whole blocks regularly go dark with no warning or any apparent pattern. Inside the lower unit of a duplex halfway down the gloomy street, Charles Jones, 25, was pacing, unable to sleep.

His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones, slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. Outside, Television was watching them. A half-dozen masked officers of the Special Response Team—Detroit’s version of SWAT—were at the door, guns drawn. In tow was an A&E crew filming an episode of The First 48, its true-crime program. The conceit of the show is that homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a murder case before the trail goes cold. Thirty-four hours earlier, Je’Rean Blake Nobles, 17, had been shot outside a liquor store on nearby Mack Avenue; an informant had ID’d a man named Chauncey Owens as the shooter and provided this address.

The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. It was unlocked. They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commando—who’d been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWAT—burst into the house. His weapon fired a single shot, the bullet striking Aiyana in the head and exiting her neck. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

“They had time,” a Detroit police detective told me. “You don’t go into a home around midnight. People are drinking. People are awake. Me? I would have waited until the morning when the guy went to the liquor store to buy a quart of milk. That’s how it’s supposed to be done.”

But the SWAT team didn’t wait. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. This was the first raid on a house since his death……

KPCC REACHES OUT TO INMATE FAMILIES TO EXPLORE THE IMPACT OF LONG AND FREQUENT LOCKDOWNS IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS

This is a chronic problem that has gotten worse with the state’s budget woes, as prison dorms and cell blocks are repeatedly put on lockdown after lockdown as a way of saving money in the face of staff cuts (in addition to all the other reasons that prisons are put on lockdown, sometimes questionably, often for way too long.).

Lockdowns mean no visits from family, no phone calls, restricted movement or activities—meaning little or no yard time or anything else that might be deemed constructive or rehabilitative.

I hear about lockdowns all the time anecdotally from family of inmates or from the inmates themselves (once the lockdown is lifted). But there is virtually no reporting on the phenomenon.

So to gather information, KPCC’s Sharon McNary is putting out the word on the web to families:

If you live, work or have loved ones in a California state prison, please help our reporters understand the impact of inmate lockdowns from your perspective.

What do you know about the causes and fallout of prison lockdowns? Who is helped or harmed when the movement, phone access, visitation and other activities of thousands of inmates are restricted for weeks, sometimes months at a time?

Your responses are confidential, nothing you share here is aired or published without your permission. A reporter or producer may call or write for more information.

I look forward to the stories that will come out of this reporting.

THE DAILY BEAST MARRIES NEWSWEEK? UM, OKAY, I GUESS.

Here is the wedding announcement issued by DB’s Tiny Brown:

Some weddings take longer to plan than others. The union of The Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine finally took place with a coffee-mug toast between all parties Tuesday evening, in a conference room atop Beast headquarters, the IAC building on Manhattan’s West 18th Street. The final details were only hammered out last night.

What does this exciting new media marriage mean? It means that The Daily Beast’s animal high spirits will now be teamed with a legendary, weekly print magazine in a joint venture, named The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, owned equally by Barry Diller’s IAC and Sidney Harman, owner (and savior) of Newsweek. As for me, I shall now be in the editor-in-chief’s chair at both The Daily Beast and Newsweek….

And so on.

As media theorist and prof Jay Rosen tweeted last night after the announcement: “Still waiting for the media reporter who would explain the logic.”

Yeah, I’m kinda there with Rosen on that matter.

Meanwhile, an amusing trending topic on Twitter Thursday night was #oddmediamergers.

JON STEWART AND RACHEL MADDOW FOR AN HOUR

As you likely know—or at least you oughta know—Jon Stewart was on the Rachel Maddow Show for nearly an hour Thursday night.

The full hour video may be found here.

I found it riveting.

A NOTE ABOUT THE ABOVE PHOTO: After spending nearly four months in a dogless household following the death of my beautiful 16 1/2 year old wolf dog this past July, I decided it was time to add a new four-footed beast to the family before I got too used to clean rugs and not having to wipe off muddy paws during the rainy season. Enter Lily-the-mini-wolf, who is 8 weeks old as of Thursday and has been residing at my house since late Saturday night.

Anyway, so there you have it. Thank you for listening.

ROMAN POLANSKI AND SAMANTHA GAILEY: A GIRL’S STARK WORDS STILL ECHO DOWN THE YEARS

This is exactly why narrative journalism matters. In Sunday’s LA Times, writer Joe Mozingo uses uses his excellent reporting and storytelling skills to unreel an account of the alleged rape of 13-year-old Samantha Gaily by Roman Polanski and the subsequent prosecution, or lack thereof. In a narrative that stretches from 1977 until now, Mozingo’s rigorous yet thoughtful article reminds us that Gailey’s clear, stark account of what Polanski did to her has never been refuted. Then he shows how adults with a plethora of competing interests have done much from the beginning to obscure and blunt the reality of what happened to the young Samantha Gaily.

Read it.

THE UNNECESSARY DEATH OF WOLF 427….AND OF A FIVE YEAR STUDY

As early wolf hunting season approached in Montana, several groups of biologists lobbied the state’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency in the hope of getting the FWP to establish a no hunting buffer zone around Yellowstone National Park in order to preserve the safety of the wolves being studied by well-known wolf biologist Douglas Smith—plus other scientists running related studies at universities such as the University of Oregon and UCLA. (Doug Smith has run Yellowstone’s wolf project since 1995, and his work is known all over the world.)

But FWP refused, saying the hunt was not aimed at the Yellowstone wolf packs, but at other wolves well outside the park that had caused problems by killing livestock.

The biologists were most worried about a group of radio-collared wolves known as the Cottenwood Pack, which Smith and his team had been closely monitoring for the past five years in a unique longitudinal study. FWP officials said all would be fine.

As it turned out, the FWP officials had no idea what they were talking about.

Within three weeks of the launch of early hunting season six Cottenwood Pack wolves were dead, among them the very unique alpha female of the pack known as Wolf 427.

It seems that certain hunters went looking specifically for the Yellowstone wolves, which given their experience inside the park, predictably had no fear of humans. The hunter who shot 427 reported later that when he raised his gun, the alpha wolf made no attempt to run.

“We didn’t think that wolves would be that vulnerable in the backcountry, so the level of harvest there has been a bit of a surprise,” says Carolyn Sime, FWP’s wolf program coordinator in Helena.

Right. (Love that use of the term “harvest.”)

The LA Times Kim Murphy has done a great job in following this story.

In what certainly appears to be a disturbing case of excessive force, San Jose police officers beat and tased a 20-year-old San Jose State University Student named Phuong Ho, after being called to the house shared by several students. The call to police occured after Ho and one of his roommate got into an argument and a steak knife may or may not have been brandished. According to the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News (which first broke the story on Sunday), the knife had long ago been put down.

The alleged beating was captured on the cellphone video above.