The state Supreme Court refuses to consider an appeal from Gov. Schwarzenegger on his plan to sell off state buildings to help balance the budget. The LA Times' Shane Goldmacher has the story.
"The decision does not officially kill the sale; a state appeals court has scheduled a hearing on the
case next month. But the Supreme Court's decision ensures
that final approval must be made by Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, not Schwarzenegger, who has been the transaction's
biggest booster."
"The deal is now dead with respect to the Schwarzenegger
administration," said Anne Marie Murphy, an attorney
for the opponents. "One of the primary goals has always
been to get [the case] into January and get it into a new administration."
La Nina isn't officially dead yet, but for all those water writers out there who bemoaned a looming dry winter, the Sierra has an answer -- the biggest snow pack in 17 years. The Mercury News' Lisa Fernandez reports.
"State officials delivered the good news for California's water supply Tuesday after the first official monthly snowpack measurement of the season, putting a scientific spin on what skiers and snowboarders have been buzzing about on Sierra slopes for weeks."
"Water content in California's mountain snowpack measured at 198 percent of the average for this time of year. So much snow has fallen that the state has already accumulated 65 percent of its average water content for the entire winter season."
Preventable hospitalizations are on the decline in California, but wide disparities exist among the state's 58 counties, reports Dan Weintraub in HealthyCal.
"The most dramatic progress has come in the reduction of hospitalizations for for chest pain, which declined by more than 60 percent, and for pediatric gastroenteritis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which dropped by 40 percent over the past ten years."
"Hospitalizations for three preventable conditions — urinary tract infections and hypertension and long-term complications from diabetes — have increased during the past ten years."
California's Death Row is getting crowded -- there hasn't been an execution in five years -- and a drug used in lethal injections is getting hard to get because of a nationwide shortage.
From Carol J. Williams in the LAT: "Whether executions will resume in 2011 could be decided early in the new year, when a federal
judge is expected to decide if the state's newly revised
lethal injection procedures conform with a constitutional
ban on cruel and unusual punishment."
"But with 717 condemned inmates on California's death row, the legal
tug-of-war over capital punishment is expected to intensify,
experts say, especially with incoming Gov. Jerry Brown and Atty. Gen.-elect Kamala Harris known to personally oppose executions
on moral grounds. Both politicians, however, have said
they will uphold death sentences in their new jobs."
Meanwhile, California's showman governor exits the stage in a few days and probably will go back to Hollywood to make another flick, says Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star.
"A movie deal would seem to be the most promising route,
although he’s not likely to land another contract like the $29 million deal he
got for his last film, “Terminator III.” Doing the math, that one year of
playing robot offered the same financial reward as
167 years of playing
governor."
"There’s got to be a quick movie deal available in which Schwarzenegger could easily double in a couple months the entire salary that he waived for seven years."
And now we open our "Belly Up to the Bar" file to find out that mead -- that ancient brew, and a favorite of the Vikings and Geoff Chaucer -- is making a comeback. Nobody is quite sure why, though.
"In fact, this most ancient of alcoholic libations hasn't been this hot since Beowulf slew Grendel's dam and Geoffrey Chaucer fell in with the Canterbury pilgrims at the Tabard.''''''
"In the past decade, the number of "meaderies" in the United States has tripled to around 150, says Vicky Rowe, owner of Gotmead.com, which describes itself as "the Internet's premier resource for everything to do with mead."
"I literally get new notifications of meaderies at least every couple of weeks," says Rowe, who runs the website from her home in the woods north of Raleigh. "So they're just popping up all over. And a lot of those are wineries that have decided to add mead to their mainstream product lines, which is just incredible."
Calling Jimmy Buffett...