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...
