These are my links for March 23rd from 09:13 to 09:44:

• California Prison cell phone bill? Wimpy – State Sen. Alex Padilla, flanked by law enforcement officials, stood on the Capitol's steps Tuesday before an array of cell phones confiscated from prison inmates and declared that smuggling had become an epidemic.

  It is, Padilla said, a "clear and present danger to public safety" as inmates use smuggled phones to harass victims and witnesses and plot other crimes. He called to the podium a woman who said she received harassing calls from her husband's murderer.

  Padilla et al. made a compelling case for a crackdown on smuggling cell phones – nearly 11,000 were confiscated last year. But the bill that cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee two hours later is rather wimpy. It makes smuggling nothing more than a misdemeanor, even for prison employees who are the sources of many illicit phones.

  Last year, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar Padilla bill – the first anti-smuggling bill to reach his desk after several died in the Legislature – on grounds that it was too weak and that smuggling cell phones should be a felony.

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  Of course, this should be a felony. But, do you really expect any public safety laws to pass while Jerry I appointed Rose Bird Chief Justice Brown is Governor?

  I mean really.

  Brown will start letting felons out of the prisons to balance his budget in order to pay of his union cronies.

  And, when these criminals start reoffending, Brown will either shrug it off or blame the Republicans.

• The Koch Brothers: Anatomy of a Smear – The Center for American Progress is generally regarded as a front for the Obama administration. Its President and CEO is John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and the chairman of Barack Obama's transition team. CAP is lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires. It runs, among other things, a web site called Think Progress, which cranks out a steady stream of slimy hit pieces for the benefit of the Obama administration and the far left.

  Soros apparently believes that only left-wing billionaires should be able to participate in public discourse, so his Center for American Progress, through its web site, has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. The Kochs are two of the very few billionaires who are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side, a phenomenon that apparently drives left-wing billionaires wild with rage. I'm not sure why; maybe they think the Kochs are traitors to their class. In any event,Think Progress has stalked the Koch brothers with video cameras and produced one false, over-the-top attack on the Kochs after another, some of which we have had fun dissecting here.

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  Read it all