California Prison Protest; Too Hot: Weather Guru Bill Patzert On The Southland; Orange County Journalists Roundtable; Kyle Sampson Testimony; U.N. Recommends Circumcision For Heterosexual Men; Mid 19th Century America
California Prison Protest
Prison reform activists came into Sacramento by the busload yesterday. Dressed in orange jumpsuits, they swarmed the Capitol to show their opposition to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to build new jail houses with nearly eighty-thousand new beds, a move they see as a poor substitute for prison reform. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, infuriated Republican lawmakers by declaring a moratorium on bills that would lengthen sentences and worsen overcrowding. Larry talks with Jenifer Warren, LA Times staff writer, Democratic State Senator Gloria Romero, and Republican State Senator Dick Ackerman, about these latest developments surrounding prison reform.
Too Hot: Weather Guru Bill Patzert On The Southland
He's got a reputation for calling it right when everybody else calls wrong. Climatologist Bill Patzert was one of the few scientists to predict correctly the effects of the 1998 El Nino. Now he's concerned about urbanization and its impact on temperatures in Southern California. Larry talks to Patzert about global warming, local warming and his predictions for the Southland.
Orange County Journalists Roundtable
Water in Orange County, or rather the lack of it, is one of the topics Larry Mantle will discuss with William Lobdell, City Editor of the Orange County Edition of the Los Angeles Times, OC Weekly senior editorial writer and columnist Gustavo Arellano, and Orange County Register senior editorial writer and columnist Steven Greenhut, in this edition of the Orange County Journalists Roundtable.
Kyle Sampson Testimony
Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has told a Senate panel that Gonzales was not "accurate" when he said he wasn't involved in decisions to fire federal prosecutors. But Sampson defended the firings, saying they were carried out because the prosecutors did not support President Bush's priorities. Larry and his guests will talk about the latest developments in the firings of eight federal prosecutors. Joining Larry are USC Law School professor Charles Whitebread and Chapman University Law School professor John Eastman who is also Director of Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.
U.N. Recommends Circumcision For Heterosexual Men
The World Health Organization and the United Nations are recommending that heterosexual men be circumcised, to reduce their risk of contracting the HIV virus. Representatives from the agencies said compelling evidence points to a 60 percent reduction in risk for circumcised men. Larry discusses the recommendation with Dr. Thomas Coates, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of UCLA's Program on Global Health.
Mid 19th Century America
In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is being born: the marvels of photography, the telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business spectacles and newspapers; rampant sex, drugs and drink and moral crusades against all three. Wall Street is awash with money. Then, during a single portentous month at the beginning of 1848, America wins its war of manifest destiny against Mexico, gold is discovered in newly won California, and revolutions sweep across Europe, events that effectively birthed our modern world. Kurt Anderson's new novel, Heyday: A Novel (Random House), is a tale of America's boisterous coming of age. Anderson, who co-founded Spy magazine and has been a columnist and critic for The New Yorker and Time joins Larry Mantle to talk about his portrait of an era surprisingly reminiscent of our own.