Debra Saunders, the resident person of sense at the San Francisco Chronicle, has this column today.
Earlier this month, three federal judges - Stephen Reinhardt, Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson - ordered the release of more than 40,000 of California's 160,000 inmates. No lie: They claimed that releasing one-quarter of state inmates would not have "a meaningful adverse impact on public safety."They also wrote, "Evidence shows that mentally ill inmates who are released do not, by virtue of their mental illness, present any higher risk than other released inmates."
These three must live in an alternate universe - one where a quarter of California inmates, many of them mentally ill, can be freed and no one gets hurt in a meaningful way.
Just goes to show that a judge's promise in an opinion is even less binding than a politicians. What was it some Ninth Circuit judge said in an opinion about getting to the bottom of Kevin Cooper's claims--that it would be quickly done. When was that, five years ago?