evolution

Getting rough down under:

SYDNEY (AFP) - Prime Minister John Howard has brushed off an Indonesian newspaper cartoon portraying the Australian leader and his foreign minister, Alexander Downer, as dingoes having sex.

The front-page cartoon in Monday’s Rakyat Merdeka paper reflected anger at an Australian decision to grant refugee visas to 42 asylum-seekers from the independence-minded Indonesian province of Papua.

The cartoon depicted a shaking Howard mounted on Downer with the prime minister saying: “I want Papua!! Alex! Try to make it happen.”

While admitting that the visas had strained ties with Indonesia, Howard was unfazed by the drawing.

“I’ve been in this game a long time. If I got offended by cartoons — golly heavens above, give us a break” he said.

Number of riots and murders blamed on the cartoon: 0.

File this under “colossal waste of time”:

TOPEKA - Adult cabarets would have to keep their billboards at least a mile away from state highways under a bill approved by the House today.

And for those businesses that are located near the highways, only two signs would be allowed –one smaller than 40 feet stating their name, another saying the business is off limits to minors.

Businesses that already have signs would have until July 2009 to remove them.

Lawmakers hope the move will reduce prostitution, crime and juvenile delinquency. They also hope it will help property valuations in areas with sexually-oriented signs and improve traffic safety.

The bill goes to the Senate next.

The Senate debated it today. It’s called SB 253 and was discussed in conference committee over the last few days.

Wouldn’t problems such as “prostitution, crime, and juvenile deliquency” tend to decrease as a result of properly funding schools, more so than by removing a few billboards? I’ve been all over this state, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a billboard where I’ve thought, “Gee, I wish kids wouldn’t have to see that.” I have thought many times, however, that I’d like to see schools funded properly and run efficiently.

It’s party time in my adopted hometown of Manhattan, as the K-State women’s basketball team beat Marquette 77-65 to hoist the WNIT championship trophy at Bramlage Coliseum in front of 14,000 K-State fans. Shalee Lehning dropped a triple-double (14 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists), and Kim Dietz hung 21 points on the Golden Eagles, which committed 19 turnovers.

(Photo credit: AP/WildcatDaily.com)

The Kansas Legislature is talking about authorizing privately-run corrections facilities in the state:

Topeka — The state’s top prison official said Wednesday that he would rather not have them, but lawmakers are poised to approve private prisons.

“I’m not a fan,” said Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz. “I would prefer to operate our own prisons.”

But key lawmakers have been pushing for private prisons for years, and they may have hit a successful strategy by tying the legislation to lawmakers’ desire to increase punishments for sex offenders.

Authorization for private prisons has been folded into a mammoth criminal justice measure that includes a popular proposal to establish lengthy prison sentences without possibility of parole for sex offenders. A House-Senate conference committee is negotiating the bill.

Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, a member of the conference committee, is opposed to the private prisons measure. She said it was “sad” that it was tied to sex offender sentences and should be given “an up or down vote” on its own.

A Google search for “private prisons” turned up some recently-obtained data.

The State of Colorado has had prisoners in privately-run prisons within its borders for twelve years, and had shipped some of its prisoners to private prisons in other states even before that. This 2005 audit (a 73-page PDF) details the performance of those privately-run prisons between September 2004 and March 2005.

At the time of this report, 2,800 of Colorado’s 18,000 prison inmates (16%) were housed in six private prisons. The audit presents several criticisms of the prisons, which are detailed in the report and which I’ve paraphrased here:

• The Colorado Department of Corrections did a poor job of overseeing health care — both mental and physical — for the prisoners;
• Under Colorado law at the time, it was illegal to place anyone classified as “high-custody” — maximum-security — in a private prison, although this was found to have been done on several occasions;
• The private facilities under-staffed their facilities, and hired a few with “questionable backgrounds”, including assault convictions, and allowed staff to begin work before their checks were complete;
• The private facilities did a poor job of screening visitors;
• Both the facilities and the DOC did poor jobs of record-keeping regarding matters like inmate restitution and child-support payments and ensuring compliance with the facilities’ contracts.

That is not encouraging.

Furthermore, this non-partisan research study from 2003 (a 21-page PDF) commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice of private prisons in Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, the three states where the use of private prisons is most prevalent, found that “competition” for private-prison contracts turned out not to be very competitive. In fact, of the 91 such contracts in these three states, only 17 had been awarded following expiration of a previous contract. The others were still under the original (long-term) contract, or were obtained by what the report calls “non-competitive means.” Of those 17 that were awarded following a prior contract, only one of those was not a renewal — 16 of those contracts were “re-upped” with their previous holders. Such things are, as you may well imagine, prime opportunities for political patronage.

What about some other arguments for private prisons? One is that they reduce costs to the states they inhabit and create jobs for otherwise-moribund regions. I uncovered no evidence that they do reduce costs to the state governments; the evidence I did uncover was contradictory at best. (Repeat my Google Search; I assure you that you will find studies which come to one conclusion or the other with roughly equal frequency.) Another is that they provide an easy way to expand prison capacity. Perhaps money spent doing that is money better spent doing other things, like preventing some problems that send people to prison and seriously evaluating other criminals (for example, many marijuana offenders) who ought not to be in prison in the first place.

Under Kansas statutes:

• (75-52,133) No public or private entity may build, own, or operate any detention facility in Kansas for the detention of inmates from another state. Of course, there are exceptions for fugitives awaiting extradition and federal prisoners. One private facility in Leavenworth, contracted by the U.S. Marshals, houses federal prisoners awaiting trial and/or transfer.
• No statutory prohibition exists to prevent private facilities in Kansas from housing Kansas’s own prisoners. The Secretary of Corrections may, at its own discretion, “acquire, in the name of the state, by lease, purchase or contract additional facilities as may be needed for the housing of persons in the secretary’s custody.” (75-5210(k)) and “may contract with qualified individuals, partnerships, corporations or organizations; with agencies of the state; or with the United States or any political subdivision of the state, or any agency thereof” (75-5210(m)) to provide work-release and rehabilitation programs.
• Finally, cities and counties may contract to private facilities, and the State of Kansas is party to something called the “interstate corrections compact” (76-3002) by where Kansas prisoners may be housed in private facilities in other states.

I am not convinced that private prisons provide significant cost savings and job creation to justify risks to the State, the public, and the prisoners themselves that are presented by privately-run prisons. In addition, what will happen to these companies and the inmates in their charge when their shareholders withdraw their investments and they collapse is not at all clear. Unless facts come to light that I have not seen, I oppose them in Kansas.

The Legislature, however, in their infinite wisdom decided to tie the initiative in the form of an amendment to the Kansas version of “Jessica’s Law” (HB 2576, an 88-page PDF), the tough new penalties imposed upon sex-offenders in this state. Few people oppose it, and I support it as well. However, many people — especially in the light of what I present here — might oppose private prisons. Jessica Lunsford’s father came to Topeka personally to testify in favor of the original 2576, and he has done yeoman’s work in the face of his unspeakable tragedy to advocate for victims of one of the most egregious violations of civil-rights I can conceive of. It will be a shame if the private-prison amendment kills what I feel is a necessary bill.

Readers of the Lawrence Journal-World took part in a mostly-informative and interesting discussion with State Sen. Phil Journey (R-Haysville), the author of the concealed-carry legislation which recently passed in spite of a Sebelius veto.

Rumors are flying in the Latin American press, says Publius.

UPDATE: Probably a hoax Definitely a hoax, say the Castro-watchers at Babalublog.

The U.S. Probation Office has recommended that former Westar Energy execs David Wittig and Douglas Lake be sentenced to life in prison for their convictions on quite a number of federal charges relating to their maleficient management of the Kansas utility.

The judge, however, has said she plans to depart downward from that sentence. Really, life seems a bit harsh, but I have no problem with these guys going away for a very long time. Their attorneys have asked for ten years. To be honest, I’m having trouble coming up with an appropriate number of years for them to spend behind bars. I’d rather they be hit where it hurts — by ensuring that they pay back every cent they stole from Kansans, and dying penniless at a ripe old age.

Lake and Wittig will be sentenced on Monday.

UPDATE: Ouch. The judge must be an evolution reader. She ordered the two to pay restitution to Westar to the tune of over $50 million.

For sale: One (1) German encoding machine called Enigma.

Pros: A priceless piece of scientific and mathematical history, studied by Alan Turing. German engineering.

Cons: The British cracked the code 60 years ago.

Check out the hook while WIBW-AM’s Raubin Pierce revolves it.

UPDATE: Dude, like, get an editor.

‘”Galileo was wrong,” claims geocentrist writer’ (Newhouse).

The Earth is at the center of Robert Sungenis’ universe. Literally.

Yours too, he says.

Sungenis is a geocentrist. He contends the sun orbits the Earth instead of vice versa. He says physics and the Bible show that the vastness of space revolves around us; that we’re at the center of everything, on a planet that does not rotate.

He has just completed a 1,000-page tome, “Galileo Was Wrong,” the first in a pair of books he hopes will persuade readers to “give Scripture its due place, and show that science is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Geocentrism is a less-known cousin of the intelligent design, or anti-evolution, movement. Both question society’s trust in science, instead using religion to explain how we got here - and, in geocentrism’s case, just where “here” is.

Mention geocentrism and physicist Lawrence Krauss sighs. He is director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University and author of several books including “Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed.”

“What works? Science works. Geocentrism doesn’t. End of story,” Krauss said from Cleveland. “I’ve learned over time that it’s hard to convince people who believe otherwise, independent of evidence.”

Asked to comment, Kansas Board of Education Chairman Steve Abrams said, “I think we really have to keep our minds open. After all, these are theories, not facts. I think all this would take is a little punching-up, and we could seriously consider including geocentrism in the 2008 standards. Now, who wants Golden Corral?”