Swamp Musings

By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

2:57 PM PST, February 23, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today all but overturned California's unique prison policy of segregating new inmates by race, declaring that the practice must come to a halt unless state officials can show it is the only way to maintain safety and security in the nation's largest prison system.

The 5-3 decision stopped just short of saying the state was violating the Constitution's ban on racial segregation by the government.

"We rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal … 50 years ago in Brown vs. Board of Education, and we refuse to resurrect it today," said Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the court.

Send that little white girl to jail for a few days. It's quite an "education".

However, she left open the option for prison officials to separate known gang members or violent individuals from other inmates.

The ruling casts doubt on a 25-year-old California prison policy that was said to be one-of-a-kind in the nation. Bush administration lawyers joined the case on the side of Garrison S. Johnson, a black inmate, and together they argued that the segregation policy was unneeded and unconstitutional. The federal prison system prohibits racial discrimination among inmates, they said.

Bush administration lawyers? Send them and him to jail for a few days. Trust me, they'll get over it quick as a bunny. They'll also hope that AZT will work on the version of HIV acquired.

"I'm elated right now," said Johnson, housed at Corcoran State Prison near Fresno, when informed of the ruling. "It's still sinking in."

He was sent to prison in 1987 for murder, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, and since then, he has been transferred to five facilities. On each occasion, Johnson said he was put in a cell with another black inmate.

A decade ago, he filed his own lawsuit contending that the segregation policy violated his constitutional rights.

Damn. Poor bastard didn't get enough whitey ass to cornhole. Glad to see the murderous psyco has a true friend in airhead O'Connor.

Los Angeles lawyer Bert H. Deixler took up Johnson's case, and despite a series of setbacks in the courts in California, he appealed to the Supreme Court.

"The impact of this decision will be to end the disgraceful practice of racial segregation in the California prisons," he said. "You can look at gang membership as a basis for special treatment, but you can't look at people coming off the bus and say, 'Blacks go through that door and whites go through the other door'."

State prison officials said today they were not ready to abandon the policy. (snip)

Associated Press

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - A college student jailed on marijuana charges was raped by his cell mate who was already being held on sexual battery charges, authorities said.

The 19-year-old student was serving four weekends in jail on charges of delivering marijuana, said Alachua County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Troiano.

His cell mate held a ball point pen to the teenager's neck Friday night, his first weekend of the sentence, and then forced himself on him, Troiano said. A member of the victim's family reported the rape to authorities.

Randolph Jackson, 35, was charged with sexual battery. Jackson has been in jail since July on charges of sexual battery in a different case that is still pending. (snip)

// posted by Bogdaddy @ 8:31 PM 0 comments

China has overtaken the US in the consumption of basic agricultural and industrial goods, a survey has found.

With a booming economy and 1.3bn people, it is now the world's largest consumer of grain, meat, coal and steel, said the Earth Policy Institute.

But China's insatiable demands are putting ever more pressure on the country's natural resources.

Air and water pollution are already serious problems, and there is talk of a looming ecological crisis. (snip)

// posted by Bogdaddy @ 12:20 AM 0 comments

Third National Even Start Evaluation: Program Impacts and Implications for Improvement
Executive Summary

KEY FINDINGS IN BRIEF

* While Even Start children and parents made gains on literacy assessments and other measures, children and parents in the 18 Even Start programs that participated in the EDS did not gain more than children and parents in the control group, about one-third of whom also received early childhood education or adult education services. (snip)

// posted by Bogdaddy @ 5:28 PM 0 comments

NASA -- Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists.

To determine if the Earth is warming or cooling, scientists look at average temperatures. To get an "average" temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the temperature that is exactly in the middle of those high and low values. This provides an average temperature for a day. These average temperatures are then calculated for spots all over the Earth, over an entire year.

Biggest-ever climate simulation warns temperatures may rise by 11 ºC.

The greenhouse effect could be far more severe than experts had previously predicted, according to results from the world's biggest climate-modelling study. In the worst-case scenario, doubling carbon-dioxide levels compared with pre-industrial times increases global temperatures by an average of more than 11 ºC. (snip)

"The melting of these three glaciers alone is contributing an estimated 0.24 millimetres per year to sea level." (snip)

Fifty-fifty chance that warm Gulf Stream may be halted

Paul Brown
Wednesday February 2, 2005
The Guardian

The chance of the Gulf Stream, which brings warm waters around the British Isles, being halted, sending temperatures plummeting by more than 5C, is now more than 50%, a scientific conference on climate change was told yesterday.

The conference, called by Tony Blair to inform world leaders about the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, was told of a series of new research findings which showed that climate change was speeding up and would be worse than hitherto expected. (snip)

Newsweek - April 28, 1975

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale, warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. (snip)

San Francisco Examiner

"In 2001, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg enraged the environmental community by publishing his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," which claims the planet is not in as dire a condition as many would have us believe. With the Kyoto Protocol aimed at curbing global warming set to take effect next week, Lomborg spoke with Examiner reporter Josh Wein to discuss his views on the world's problems. His new book, "Global Crises, Global Solutions," argues there are other, more pressing issues that deserve the world's resources." (snip)

It's a good article. Worth a read. If the book shows up at the flea market this weekend, I'll buy it.

// posted by Bogdaddy @ 1:57 PM 0 comments