Wednesday’s Fresh Picks

I’m buried in work right now reading (very good) student stories, but here are a bunch of issues that are worth our notice and/or attention.

(NOTE: For one week out of the year the mountain lupine in Topanga are in fullest bloom. This year, this is the week. I snapped the iPhone photo at the side of the road this past Saturday.)

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9TH CIRCUIT JUDICIAL NOMINEE TO BE KICKED & PUMMELED QUESTIONED VIGOROUSLY AT SENATE HEARING WEDNESDAY.

James Oliphant for the LA Times has the story.

Senate Republicans are preparing to mount an assault against one of President Obama’s federal appeals court choices, offering a preview of a possible Supreme Court fight this summer.

Goodwin Liu, the president’s pick for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday in what promises to be a contentious hearing.

[SNIP]

The Obama White House generally has shied away from the kind of incendiary and partisan fights over appeals court judges that were a staple of the George W. Bush administration, preferring moderate nominees with extensive experience in the federal courts.

Even his Supreme Court nominee last year, Sonia Sotomayor, was widely viewed as a legal centrist with a nearly 20-year record as a judge.

But Liu, 39, is seen by opponents as a game-changer. By all accounts, he is an opinionated and intellectually fierce academic with no judicial experience. Given his relative youth, an appeals court post could serve as a launching pad to a Supreme Court nomination.

Read on.

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BRUCE LISKER GETS TRIAL DATE FOR CIVIL SUIT AGAINST LAPD

Neon Tommy’s Kevin Grant has the story. (Another one of my smart students. Wooo-hooo!)

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CALIFORNIA PRISONS BUDGET RESISTS THE CHOPPING BLOCK

The San Jose Mercury News had this overview of some of the reasons that chopping money out of the state’s corrections has been a troublesome matter. Here are some clips.

The billions of dollars that California pours into its troubled prisons — a number fattened by court-ordered medical spending and sky-high personnel costs — have become an increasingly attractive target for leaders desperate to trim the state’s $20 billion deficit.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January called for a constitutional amendment that would cap prison spending and put the savings toward public universities. And since last summer, lawmakers have tried to wring more than $2 billion from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, once budgeted for $10 billion.

But despite officials’ attempts to clamp down after watching costs double over the past decade, some corrections spending is proving impervious to the budget ax.

{SNIP]
And more than two-thirds of the department’s budget goes to thousands of correctional officers earning salaries locked in during California’s last boom. The state must employ all those officers because of tough sentencing laws that increased the inmate population more than fivefold over the past 20 years.

The challenges only add to a portrait of crisis for California’s prison system, beset by high recidivism rates and dilapidated facilities.

Paul Golaszewski of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises the Legislature on fiscal and policy issues, says reducing the number of inmates or taking a tougher stand on corrections salaries could save millions, “but they would require difficult policy decisions.”

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JEFFREY MACDONALD SEEKS NEW TRIAL IN “FATAL VISION” MURDERS

The legal team of convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald got 45-minutes in court to explain why MacDonald should get a new trial in the matter of the murders of his wife and two daughters that occurred 40 years ago. MacDonald is serving three life sentences.

ABC has the story.

It’s been 40 years since MacDonald’s wife, Colette, and their two young daughters were brutally murdered in their home in Fort Bragg, N.C., and 31 years since MacDonald, a former army surgeon, was convicted in their murders. He claimed that a group of people, high on drugs, attacked him and murdered his wife and children.

The murders came just six months after the Charles Manson killings and immediately captivated an already shocked nation, spawning the book and TV miniseries “Fatal Vision.”

MacDonald’s lawyer, Joseph Zeszotarski, argued before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., that MacDonald deserves a new trial, based primarily on statements made by people tied to the case that had not previously been heard and new DNA findings that MacDonald’s team wants submitted to the court.

“MacDonald asserts that evidence submitted shows that he is actually innocent, and shows that his trial was infected with constitutional error,” his appeal says.

Read the rest. It’s a troubling tale

To make matters more confusing, Joe McGinnis, the veteran journalist who wrote Fatal Vision, the famous book about MacDonald, the murders and the trial, is the husband of one of my close pals, and I know that, in the course of researching the book, Joe reluctantly came to believe that MacDonald likely committed the murders.

Now it looks like the prosecutor might have had his finger on the scales.

It is all very curious and, as I said, troubling. And it’ll be worth watching the outcome.

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SUNDAY CLOSURES & MORE FOR LA’S LARGEST LIBRARIES?

Maeve Reston at the LA Times describes a grim picture of what the budget cuts are doing to the city’s libraries.