Women prisoners getting sent home early. Are modern cartoons bad for kids? Tax law vs. the first amendment: should politicking from the pulpit be allowed? Racial politics in a post-racial presidency.
Women prisoners getting sent home early
As part of a new initiative to overhaul the incarceration system in California, prison officials are preparing to release thousands of female inmates from state prisons, given that they were convicted of “non-serious, non-sexual” crimes. The women will serve out the rest of their sentences from home, where they will be required to wear GPS-enabled ankle bracelets and report regularly to parole officers. The publicly released reason for this change in procedure is to combat “the intergenerational cycle of incarceration,” as a mother’s involvement with her family not only indicates her own rehabilitation, but prevents her child or children from engaging in criminal activity in the future. This belief served as the basis for Sen. Carol Liu’s (D) 2010 bill which led to today’s policy change. Detractors of the new proposal claim that these women are not fit mothers, as no competent mother would have committed such crimes, and their children would be better served in foster care. However, a larger issue that may have influenced officials to begin releasing inmates is California’s court-imposed deadline to free up prison space and relieve overcrowding. 4,000 of California’s 9,500 female inmates could qualify for home detention and, due to a constitutional ban on gender-based discrimination, the program could even include men in the near future. As male inmates represent 90% of California’s prison population, it can easily be seen why this potential plan is gaining support from state prison officials as a solution to overcrowding. But will releasing prisoners, male or female, result in a spike in crime? Are women getting special treatment simply because they are mothers? Can a woman in prison who is still serving time also act as a fit parent and role model? Could a convicted man?
Guest:
Donald Specter, Director, Prison Law Office
Are modern cartoons bad for kids?
How much television your child should or shouldn’t watch can cause a lot of hand-wringing, but a new study says to really determine how TV is affecting your kids, get out your stop watch. Researchers at the University of Virginia say faster-paced shows – with numerous scene changes and rapid edits – adversely affect a child's attention span more than the content. Soon to be published in the journal Pediatrics, it is a small study, but some experts are calling the findings "robust." The study authors compared four-year olds who had just watched "SpongeBob," with four year olds who had watched the slower-paced PBS show, "Caillou," and finally a group of children simply asked to draw. They found significant differences in the short-term attentions spans of the three groups, with the “SpongeBob” kids performing the worst. David Bittler, a spokesman for "SpongeBob" broadcaster Nickelodeon, called the study flawed. He said the scale of the study was too small and that the fantastical cartoon is aimed at kids aged 6-11, not four-year olds. Still, a professor of pediatrics says it's not just about Mr. SquarePants. Dimitri Christakis says, "It's overstimulation [from any fast-paced or violent show] that causes the problem." What do your own at-home experiments show? Are your kids affected differently by faster-paced programs compared to an old-school “Mr. Rogers” episode? Why have children's shows – even “Sesame Street” – adopted faster editing and scene changes? Is distraction just a fact of modern times that kids should adapt to? Or does it impair the quality of their thinking?
Guests:
Angeline Lillard, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia; Study Co-Author, “The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television on Young Children’s Executive Function,” Pediatrics, October 2011
Dr. William Carey, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching developmental-behavioral pediatrics and Senior Physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Tax law vs. the first amendment: should politicking from the pulpit be allowed?
As the presidential primary season heats up a growing number of conservative pastors are entering the political fray. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times highlighted the movement, saying that pastors at small, independent churches – mostly evangelical - are advocating for political change from the pulpit.
The problem is current tax law prohibits non-profit groups like charities and churches from campaigning for or against candidates. By doing so they could be putting their tax exempt status at risk…and that’s exactly what they’re hoping for. A well funded Christian legal defense organization called the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is leading the charge to overturn the amendment that bans political speech in churches.
For the last 3 years the organization has sponsored an event in which pastors give a political sermon and send the text of their speech to the IRS, hoping to trigger an audit. The ADF then offers free legal services to any pastor that gets audited. So far, the IRS hasn’t taken the bait. According to the ADF, the first amendment trumps tax law and pastors should be able to advocate for whatever they want.
On the other side groups in favor of a strong church and state division insist that tax exempt status is a huge benefit and the government has the right to put restrictions on that benefit…in other words churches can’t have their cake and eat it too.
WEIGH IN:
Then Senator Lyndon Johnson added the political speech ban to the tax code in 1954, so is it time to take another look? Does the tax code infringe on the first amendment rights of pastors? Or is church no place for politics?
Guests:
Erik W. Stanley, Senior legal counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
Rob Boston, Senior policy analyst, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Racial politics in a post-racial presidency
Even given the progress which has been made in American race relations, there is still a tangible quality which affects not only society as a whole, but microcosmic interactions between members of different ethnic groups as well.
For the first time in this country’s history, the man serving as President has acutely experienced racism both in his lifetime as a private citizen and as a political candidate in the public sphere.
Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law Professor, addresses this issue in The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. This is the first such book to be authored by a major African-American intellectual figure, making it all the more hard-hitting and complex in scope and perspective.
For instance, Kennedy does not simply explore the racial opposition Obama faced as a black man running for president, he also extensively investigates Obama’s relationship with the African-American constituency.
WEIGH IN:
Does Barack Obama have a singular responsibility to African Americans? What exactly characterizes black patriotism in the United States? How close are we to the hypothetical post-racial society we’ve been pursuing since the civil rights movement?
Guest:
Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School professor and author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (Pantheon)