Bruce Reilly: Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are expected to live under a regime of total authority, and simply go about their business when 90% of the time the police find no illegal behavior.
Sheila Kuehl on Prop 35: Sex Trafficking
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Sheila Kuehl: Prop 35 would also define crimes related to the creation and distribution of obscene materials with minors as a form of trafficking, including duplicating or selling such materials.
Progressive Groups Seeking to Sway LA County’s Next District Attorney
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A coalition of groups working on criminal justice reform has been running a signature campaign to try to move the LA County district attorney candidates their way.
Sheila Kuehl on Prop 34
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Sheila Kuehl: This measure comes at the same time as a growing interest in the effects of solitary confinement in small, windowless, cells, on prisoners in state prisons.
Amnesty International Denounces Torture in California Prisons
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Angola 3 News: Amnesty International considers that the conditions of isolation and other deprivations imposed on prisoners in California’s SHU units breach international standards on humane treatment
Shiela Kuehl on Prop 38
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Shiela Kuehl: Proposition 38, which amends state statutes (not the Constitution) to increase state income tax for any Californian earning more than $7316 a year, and allocates the increased revenues to K-12 education, state debt and early childhood education.
Sheila Kuehl on Prop 30
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Sheila Kuehl: The approach adopted by this measure is like holding a gun to your head and shouting “Stop me before I hurt somebody!”
The Unrelenting Spirit of Cherise Rogers
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Dan Bluemel: Because Rogers had been tackled, roughed up and pepper-sprayed by several officers on the night of her arrest, she and her attorney believed the DA aggressively sought the resisting arrest and battery charges to make it more difficult for her if she later sued the Sheriff’s department.
A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Anglola 3 News: We interview Noelle Hanrahan and Stephen Vittoria about their new film examining Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life and work as a revolutionary journalist.
AB 2530: California Must Stop Shackling Pregnant Women
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Carolyn Sufrin: Despite its unanimous passage in the legislature two years in a row, Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown have vetoed the bill, disregarding the recommendations of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association.
Why Death Row Inmates Oppose Life Without Parole
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Jonathan Simon: People on death row, not just folks in an abstract all night dorm room discussion about whether death or LWOP is worst, but folks actually condemned to die, prefer to continue with their death sentence.
Safer Foods, Saner Prison Sentencing, No Death Penalty Vie for Voter Attention
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Dick Price: At the American Civil Liberties Union’s Pasadena/Foothills Chapter forum this past Tuesday, September 11th, advocates made their case for three particularly contentious initiatives on California’s November ballot:
California Prison Guards Treatment of Visitors
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Cayenne Bird: The prison guard Brassiere Brigade at Sierra Conservation Center went to great lengths to deny me an important visit for no valid reason and construed my informing them that I intended to report the events that transpired in my columns as a “threat” to the guards who oppressed me.
What Would Be Gained by Executing Terry Williams?
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David Love: No one stepped in to help this traumatized boy deal with the anger, shame, confusion, paranoia and self-hatred he experienced from years of manipulation and abuse.
Ohio Burning: Of Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman and Hursted
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Robert Illes: And so we come to Mitt and mini-Mitt’s last chance to win in 2012: stopping enough potential Democratic voters from voter. Or make it incredibly confusing just to register.
Voter Suppression: One Man, One Picture ID?
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Vivian Rothstein: That was a fight we won, right? Not exactly. In 2011, more than 30 states introduced legislation to once again restrict the access of regular people to the voting process.
Will AB 2530 Unshackle Childbirth in California?
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Angola 3 News: With Governor Brown’s decision expected anytime, local activists are urgently mobilizing to stop him from vetoing this important bill once again. AB 2530 supporters have created a webpage for the public to contact the Governor.
California’s Death Penalty: 366 Days Down, 68 More to Go
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Jeanne Woodford: Support for Prop 34 continues to grow because people understand that California’s death penalty is broken beyond repair. California has only executed 1% of those sentenced to death in 34 years.
Good People Standing Up to Save Sacred Lakota Lands
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Georgianne Nienaber: The moral line has been drawn in the sand because of the IDEA that good people can stop this and return the land to the Lakota.
Do US Prisons Violate European Human Rights Law?
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Angola 3 News: In this interview, Ahsan and Stahl discuss the extreme importance of the upcoming Grand Chamber ruling on a personal level for the six appellants fighting their extradition.
The Politics of Marriage
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Steve Hochstadt: Our marriage debates show that electoral politics is not the only politics, that it reflects the broader and deeper, and much more interesting, politics of the whole American people.
California: The Thrill Is Gone
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Jim Rhodes: The police, an institution I was so proudly once part of, has, in some cities, degraded to tools of the ruling elite.
Baffled, Befuddled, and Bamboozled: Penn State Trustees and NCAA Are Sinking
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Walter Brasch: When we last left the baffled and befuddled Penn State trustees, they were trying to figure out what happened in the Great NCAA Sanctimonious Sanction.
Time to Impeach Justice Scalia
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Alan Singer: We can no longer afford to tolerate Scalia as a conservative curmudgeon; he is a right-wing ideologue who is in a position to threaten constitutional government in the United States.
Retirement Golden for the Rich, Ominous for the Rest
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Michael Sigman: Most Americans — for whom the phrase “retirement package” is a cruel joke — have watched their net worth collapse while CEO payouts have reached heights far beyond the reach of mortal men.
Progressives Debate Death Penalty: How Can We Win By Losing?
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Dick Price: In question was wether a soul-killing sentence of lifelong imprisonment with no chance of ever being released is any more humane, any more decent, any more sensible than the uncertain prospect of eventual execution on Death Row.
Sunshine Still Blocked at Penn State
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Walter Brasch: Apparently, the Board believes that “discussions” without a vote aren’t covered by the Sunshine Act, so it was free to hold yet another unpublicized secret meeting. The Board, as has been so often the case, was wrong.
California’s Death Penalty: What Prop 34 Actually Says about First-Degree Murder
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Chris Stampolis: Proposition 34 simply strips out the statutory references to a “death” option for convictions of first degree murder that carry a separate finding of special circumstances.
Traditional Marriage
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Tom Hall: Most references to Traditional Marriage today are made by for-profit businesses and televangelists, who use the phrase to raise millions of dollars in support of business plans based on promoting discrimination against people who want to get married.
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Occupy LA Confronting City Hall on Police Chalk Abuse
Cheryl Aichele: Chalk Walk activists say they want to know why LA City Council ignored their requests for help with chalking arrests before the Council went on recess.