Law And Justice

A massive expansion of private prisons in Florida collapsed in the Senate as nine Republicans joined a dozen Democrats in handing a setback to Senate leaders and a victory to state workers, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The state will not undertake what would have been the single greatest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history, affecting 27 prisons and work camps in 18 counties and displacing more than 3,500 correctional officers.

Senate leaders said they would have to cut education and health care programs by $16.5 million, the amount supporters had said privatization would save in the first year.

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New city firefighters would earn a pension stripped of some current benefits deemed “unaffordable,” according to two bills championed by Mayor Francis Slay and to be introduced Friday to the Board of Aldermen.

The bills, ready after months of preparation and debate, would essentially close the current Firemen’s Retirement System of St. Louis, which is partly controlled by state law, and start a new, city-governed fire pension plan.

The bills, if passed, will not change benefits already earned by the city’s 600 firefighters, according to copies obtained by the Post-Dispatch.

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The State of the Union speech itself may not have the same grand aura of addresses of old, but at least the crowd sitting with Michelle Obama is turning out to be an interesting bunch. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve, will be with the first lady, and the White House bio stresses her own accomplishments, notes the San Francisco Chronicle. That includes her work as founder of the Emerson Collective, which is “focused on harnessing the potential of individuals from underserved communities to help them build a better life,” says the White House.

Also there will be the guy who co-founded the photography app company Instagram, Mike Krieger.

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Following in the footsteps made popular by Republican Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s supporters, Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren and her campaign have coordinated a money bomb fundraising event to take place on Jan. 19, the same day Republican Sen. Scott Brown is holding an event in Worcester to kick-off his bid to keep his Senate seat.

The date is symbolic to Brown as two years prior, it was on that night Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley conceded defeat, paving the way for a Republican to hold the seat previously held by Democrat Edward Kennedy for 46 years.

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The first national decline in prison populations in nearly four decades was even smaller than was announced by federal officials last month.

Georgia has corrected its 2010 decline to 848 inmates from an initially reported 4,207. That means the decline in the number of prisoners nationwide initially listed by the U.S.

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