The Center for Investigative Reporting has a new report out that says some female prisoners in California were sterilized without consent. San Diego Mayor Bob Filner apologizes and vows to seek help amid sexual harassment claims. Georgia is set to execute killer Warren Hill, despite his lawyers' claim that he's 'mentally retarded.' California bobcats are dying off because of mange, plus much more.
Report: Female prisoners in California sterilized without consent
The Center for Investigative Reporting recently found that nearly 150 women were sterilized without required approvals.
Former inmates and prisoner advocates claim that prison medical staff coerced many of these women, especially those considered likely to return to prison. Reporter Corey Johnson has been looking into this story. He joins the show with more.
SD Mayor Bob Filner apologizes, seeks help amid harassment claims
The mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, has been under fire recently after being accused of sexually harassing several female staffers.
Filner has not publicly spoken on the matter, but released a video late yesterday where he apologized to the public and promised to change his behavior.
Mark Sauer, the Senior News Editor at KPBS in San Diego, joins the program with an update.
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner issues statement regarding sexual harassment allegations by scprweb
Friday Flashback: Edward Snowden, Janet Napolitano and more
It's time now for our end of the week analysis of some of the big stories in the news. Joining the show from steamy Washington, DC, is Nancy Cook of the National Journal, and here in foggy Pasadena, Jim Rainey of the LA Times.
We start with the ongoing saga of Edward Snowden. The NSA leaker has been holed up in a Moscow airport transit lounge for three weeks now trying to find a country that will give him political asylum. He's renewed his request to stay in Russia, and also released an email accusing the United States of an "unlawful campaign" to deny him the right to asylum. It's not easy being Edward Snowden.
Meanwhile, there were a few more Snowden related bombshells, including a pretty detailed report on the spying the NSA does on the citizens of Brazil, and another on how Microsoft cooperated with the spy agency. Countries in our "sphere of influence," like Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered him asylum. What should the U.S. government do?
Another bit of end of the week news. Janet Napolitano is stepping down after five years as Secretary of Homeland Security to take on running the University of California system. Any indication that this is anything more than Napolitano stepping aside to take a nice, academic position?
In some ways fixing the UC system might be worse than trying to fix the TSA. What does our panel think of Napolitano administering this giant university system? Are there any obvious candidates to replace her?
The fight between Senate majority leader Harry Reid and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell over stalled nominations is heating up. Reid says he's going to push to change the Senate rules so that a simple majority can approve some of the President's nominees.
Meanwhile, over in the House, Republicans managed to get a farm bill passed on a second try, but they did it by stripping out all the money for food stamps. How angry are Democrats and the White House over this?
House Republicans say they won't even consider the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Why couldn't — or didn't — John Boehner and the House leadership pressure members to get behind this reform, since the national party leadership sees it as a priority?
Mentally disabled killer to be executed unless Supreme Court intervenes
The state of Georgia plans to execute convicted murderer Warren Hill on Monda, despite the fact that medical experts agree he has an IQ of 70 and is mentally retarded.
The only thing that can save Hill now is intervention by the Supreme Court.
More than a decade ago, the high Court ruled that mentally disabled people could not be executed. With more is Erwin Chemerinksy, founding dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on constitutional law.
LAPD changing approach to limiting gang violence
When it comes to street gangs, times are different today that they were in the 1980s and 90s, when cops and gangs had tense relations in neighborhoods like Watts.
Police now rely on gang interventionists, members of communities fighting gang violence that cooperate with police to help reduce crime, among other local groups.
Gang killings aren't going away, but there's now a new dynamic and approach L.A. police employ to combat the violence. John Buntin wrote a piece on this in this week's New York Times Magazine, and joins the show today to discuss what he found.
How increasing demand for copper can threaten the environment
Americans hear a lot about green alternatives to traditional and polluting energy sources like oil and coil. One of these traditional resources that is essential to modern society yet goes mostly unnoticed is copper.
Demand for the element has skyrocketed over the past decade, and extracting it from the earth is not an easy or clean process. With more on this unsung issue is Tim Heffernan, who wrote about the issues in the most recent issue of Pacific Standard magazine.
California prison hunger strike continues against long-term isolation
The California inmate hunger strikes continues to make noise. Yesterday, corrections officials confirmed that more than 12,000 inmates have refused meals since Monday.
The prisoners are protesting long-term isolation in special security units, which house many inmates who have been held for decades because of alleged ties to gangs. Leaders of the protest demand strict limits on the amount of time prisoners are held in isolation, while corrections officials say they're already working to move some of those prisoners out to the mainline.
Reporter Michael Montgomery has an update.
National gay blood drive to raise awareness of FDA restrictions
Great strides have recently been made when it comes to gay rights, but there are still plenty of situations in which homosexuals are treated differently from their heterosexual counterparts.
Since 1983, the FDA has rejected blood donations from men who have had sex with other men anytime after 1977. The policy has nothing to do with judgment about sexual orientation, but rather is based on the documented risk of transmissible infections like HIV.
"This regulation was implemented at a time when there was really no good test to detect HIV, and there was a disproportionate percentage of gay men who were infected with the virus," said Dr. Alyssa Ziman, medical director of the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center. "This was really the best means that we had available to us to protect the blood supply and patients who would need these transfusions."
Ryan Yezak, an organizer of the National Gay Blood Drive, and others want the FDA to revise its policy will take part in something being dubbed the National Gay Blood Drive.
"It's basically a way to see how many gay and bisexual men to come out and donate and to show the FDA that this population could be a great contribution to the blood supply," said Yezak. "don't write them off as diseased, lift the blanket ban."
Across the country otherwise eligible gay/bisexual male donors will show up at various donation centers, have their blood tested for HIV and attempt to donate their blood. Yezak explained that as each donor is rejected, their test result will be delivered to the FDA.
Dr. Ziman says the current regulations have to do with the window period between when someone can be exposed to a virus and when it is detectable. Right now the window period for HIV testing is approximately nine days. For other diseases that can be transmitted through blood transfusion such as Hepatitis C the window period is about seven days.
She says, in addition to the window period, the short shelf life of blood and platelets makes it difficult to test samples and be sure they were free from HIV or other viruses.
"Logistically it would be extremely difficult, you would have to test donors beforehand to make sure that they've had no high risk behavior, and then have them come in and donate and test it again," said Dr. Ziman. "The blood expires, it has a very short shelflife...you wouldn't have time to hold onto the blood and the virus wouldn't replicate in the same way in the sample as it would in the human body."
However, new movement to change the all out ban on gays donating blood has been gaining momentum. Activists hope to allow gay men to donate blood after waiting a one-year deferral period, similar to those who have previously engaged in high-risk behaviors like intravenous drug use.
"You could come up with a really rational, scientifically based approach and definitely decrease the deferral period," said Dr. Ziman. "Organizations that are involved in blood banking across the United States have supported this, and the suggestion has been to reduce it to a 1-year deferral period, which applies to many donor populations that engage in higher risk behaviors,"
Blood Drive info:
When: Fri, July 12,9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Where: Kaiser Permanente Blood Donation Center, 4700 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Preserving the beauty of Yosemite National Park
For years, the National Park Service has been looking for a way to preserve and restore parts of the Yosemite Valley. Planners have discussed doing away with tourist amenities like ice skating and swimming pools to try and restore the habitat of the valley's Merced River.
The National Park Service is under a court order to finalize a plan by July 31st but political opposition is delaying any progress.
Southern California bobcats dying from mange
Now to some wildlife in our own backyard: Bobcats.
These wild felines can be found all over Southern California but over the last decades researchers have noticed a disturbing trend. More and more bobcats seem to be dying from mange, a parasitic skin infection that's usually seen in dogs.
Joanne Moriarty, an ecologist with the National Park Service out in Thousand Oaks, joins the show with more. She's been part of the longest-running study on bobcats ever conducted.
Do female athletes need a better sports bra?
Every year, many young girls enter the sports world hoping to be the next Serena Williams or Lindsay Vonn. They're also becoming competitors in sports that are traditionally played by men, like Mixed Martial Arts fighter Ronda Rousey.
But according to writer Amanda Hess, when women hit the court or the field, one thing is holding back their performance: A good sports bra, or lack thereof.
In her recent article for ESPN the Magazine's Body Issue, "You Can Only Hope to Contain Them", Hess says that the design of the sports bra has failed to keep up with all the activities women now participate in.
"One of the issues is that the exercise science that is focused on breast movement is still in its infancy," said Hess on Take Two. "So the first studies that scientists were doing on these issues started in the 90s, which is pretty late considering how many women have been competing and just exercising for so many years."
A large number of female scientists is necessary to conduct a thorough study of breast movement. Many of the studies require women to run and do various movements on a treadmill while topless, which poses a unique challenge for scientists interested in this topic.
"I think it is an issue of structural inequality in many fields, but its also an issue of access," said Hess. "I think one of the main issues we're seeing is girls dropping out of sports as adolescence comes on. So they will develop breasts, they'll find that they can't perform in the way that they used to, or maybe they don't have the right equipment, or they feel embarrassed so they drop out."
Hess says the real trick is to create a bra that can be comfortable for women with larger breasts. Sports bras compress and separate the breasts, but for a woman with a large chest, compression can be uncomfortable or even painful
Historian Andrew Carroll searches for the 'Great Forgotten History' of America and Los Angeles
Some of the first experiments to invent TV happened in an apartment in Hollywood, but neither the people living there, nor the neighbors had any idea until historian Andrew Carroll knocked on their door.
He's New York Times bestselling author who found the apartment – and other little-known places in L.A. – while working on his new book "Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History."
KPCC's Ben Bergman was with Carroll as he looked for lost sites.
The story behind the Golden State's official song, 'I Love You California'
This summer we've been telling you about a project called Songs in the Key of L.A., the multi-platform collaboration between the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the L.A. Public Library and USC professor Josh Kun.
Kun and his students culled through thousands of pieces of sheet music to find songs about the Golden State. Recently Josh joined Take Two in the studio to talk about one of the songs that they focused on: "I Love You California." Some might recognize the song as the soundtrack for the new Jeep Cherokee ads.
The song, one of California's original anthems, turned 100 years old this year and like so many in Hollywood, it had a winding road to prominence.
Interview Highlights:
On the creation of "I Love You California":
"The official state song was written by a Canadian immigrant, Francis Silverwood, who's best known for owning and opening Silverwood's Clothing Store, which was a flagship clothing emporium originally located on 5th and Broadway in downtown L.A. He wrote the lyrics, and Abraham Frankenstein was the director of the Orpheum Theater Orchestra, and they composed it in 1913."
On how it became famous in California:
"The song was featured in various expositions held in San Diego and San Francisco, and it went 'viral' before things could go viral. Mary Garden, a very prominent opera singer at the time, started to sing the song, made it popular, and there is a version where she appears on the cover of the sheet music and endorses it on the back. It's a note that is reproduced that she wrote in her own handwriting, on stationary from the Alexandria Hotel."
A song...and a sales pitch:
"Much of the early sheet music from Los Angeles and Southern California was in a way less about selling music, and more about selling the city, selling the region, selling the state. Maybe if you sing this song enough, you too, no matter where you are in the country, you too will love these heavenly valleys, you too will love it so much that you have to actually get on the train, head west, and see it for yourself."