Dancing With the Stars: Bristol Palin says she's going sexy tonight. I'm getting used to her being on the show. So long as there are no more live interviews with her mother, I'll stop complaining about her having been cast and try to focus on on her dancing.

There's also a new episode of "Weeds." On the cop show side, there's Hawaii Five-O, which isn't that bad.

Comcast/Xfinity's "Manage My DVR" went live in Denver this week. I set it up today and it actually works and is fast. I can now set recordings on my three DVR's online in one place, see what's on each at any given time and do mass deletions -- all online. I can also watch on up to three computers instead of tv if I want. If you watch a lot of TV, Xfinity has definitely stepped up its game, in a good way.

BTD is in depositions this week, but may stop by at night. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Kansas has a problem. It's running out of prison beds to house male inmates:

No more. Kansas is officially out of beds for male prisoners, with a population last week of 8,411 — above the system’s capacity of 8,259. In 10 years, the state is projected to be nearly 2,000 beds short.

So Kansas corrections leaders have started talking seriously about two options: Either find millions of dollars to house more prisoners — at a time when the state is struggling to pay for schools and social services — or start letting them go.

One possibility: Follow the lead of Mississippi and grant earlier parole to non-violent offenders. Mississippi now offers parole after serving 25% of a non-violent sentence. This option might have public support:

In a project poll, 91 percent agreed with this statement: “It does not matter whether a nonviolent offender is in prison for 21 or 24 or 27 months. What really matters is the system does a better job of making sure that when an offender does get out, he is less likely to commit another crime.”

Missouri also has advocated less prison time. The Chair of the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission notes:

“People who go to prison learn things in prison,” he said. “It’s time to talk rationally about how much punishment we can afford.”

[More...]

Via the Crime Report:

Violent crime in California dropped dramatically during the same period of intense immigration to the state, found a new study by Barry Krisberg of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, which is based at the School of Law. The study, which disputes the link between violent crime and immigration, also found that the increase in state prison populations is not related to the influx of immigrants.

Here's the full study, Where Is The Fire?

Data obtained from the Department of Finance and the Department of Justice reveal that during a long period of new immigration, crime has shown a large and steady decline in California.

[More...]

BTD is in depositions most of the week. I'll be around sporadically today.

In the meantime, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The 33 miners trapped in Chile are set to be "extracted" and freed on Wednesday.

Here's how the wives, mothers and sisters are preparing. Movie productions are already in the works.

The Chilean government is providing each miner with six months of psychological support to deal with the media attention. They've already had a day of media training.

Only in Texas? Or just more proof probation is no walk in the park? Daniel Mirales and his wife Eloise stole from a crime victims fund. She was a 16 year employee of the District Attorney's office. Is this shaming punishment really going to make a difference? And to whom besides the Mireles?

Daniel Mireles walked back and forth on Westheimer in front of the Galleria holding a sign. It read, "I am a thief. I stole $250,000 from the Harris County crime victim's fund. Daniel Mireles."

Mirales will have to do this for five hours every weekend for the next six years. (The spot is outside the Galleria mall in Houston.) This was his first weekend.[More...]

Both Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton will be coming to Colorado to campaign for Sen. Michael Bennet. No one's saying if President Obama will also be coming to town. after Clinton

Clinton supported Bennet's opponent, Andrew Romanoff, in the primary. But Romanoff has also been campaigning for Bennet since then.

The Ken Buck misconduct charge ad has played three times in primetime tonight that I've seen. I hope it's having a good effect for Sen. Bennet.

In other local news, Prop. 62, the Personhood Amendment seems destined for defeat.

No amount of tea partiers can save Carl Paladino from himself. Now he's attacking gays.

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

The polls had him losing before this. Four more weeks and he will fade back into the obscurity from which he sprang.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over the case of former Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, barred the testimony of Hussein Abebe, a key government witness, because he was identified as a result of statements Ghailani made during secret CIA interrogation using harsh interrogation techniques.

Today the Government announced it won't appeal the decision and will proceed to trial Tuesday without Abebe's testimony. Ghailani is charged with conspiracy in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa:

Hussein Abebe, would have testified that he sold TNT to Mr. Ghailani that was used in one attack, the bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, prosecutors have said. Without Mr. Abebe’s testimony, prosecutors had told the judge, they had “no way of putting such evidence in front of the jury at all.”

In 2001, the Government tried and convicted four other men in the Embassy bombings. All got life and are serving their sentences at Supermax in Colorado. Ghailani was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and moved to Gitmo in 2006.

CNN.com:

Asked about a solution, [GOP House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor replied: "People have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don't need government intervening in every step."

(Emphasis supplied.) Assuming that's true, do you think Cantor will favor requiring the banks to follow the law of foreclosure, which in most states requires that the foreclosing party prove that it does in fact have standing to foreclose? See, there's the problem for Cantor and the bank defenders - if the Feds do not intervene on behalf of the banks, many banks are finding they can't foreclose, because they can't prove they own the mortgages they want to foreclose on. If Cantor believes what he is saying, then he should oppose any breaks being given to banks in the foreclosure process. But we all know Cantor is full of it.

Speaking for me only

I finally got my tax paperwork done and delivered to my accountant. I may sleep until tomorrow.

Since I haven't seen the news in a few days, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

John Lennon would be 70 years old today. A Peace Monument was unveiled today in Liverpool in his honor.

The memories and the music live on.