1. Ivey convenes prison study group.

• Gov. Kay Ivey convened the first meeting of her newly-formed Study Group on Criminal Justice Monday and charged them with finding solutions to the state’s prison problems.
• Overcrowding, under-staffing, and unsafe conditions inside Alabama prisons have the state facing dual threats from the federal government: a U.S. District Court directive to increase corrections officer levels and the Department of Justice threatening to sue the state over its findings that inmates’ 8th Amendment rights are being violated.
• Alabama prisons in April held about 20,000 inmates in facilities originally designed to house about 12,400. That puts the state at about 165 percent of capacity.
• The Governor’s Office is working with DOJ to develop a plan to prevent a lawsuit. It will likely require legislation, thus the purpose for the study group meeting ahead of the 2020 legislative session.
• Former Supreme Court Justice Champ Lyons, Ivey’s representative on the panel, said the state needed smarter policies on sentencing and recidivism.
• “I respectfully submit we need to be tough on crime, but I also submit we need to be smart on crime,” he said.
• Read the full story from Kim Chandler HERE.

 

2. RIP Jake.

• Speaking of Corrections officers, sad news to report: Jake, the prison search dog injured in a weekend contraband raid, has died.
• Jake developed pneumonia after sniffing synthetic marijuana at Stanton Correctional Facility.
• He was sent to Auburn University’s Veterinary Clinic for treatment and Corrections officials were hopeful he would recover, but his condition eventually deteriorated.
• DOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn said Jake likely saved the lives of Corrections officials conducting the raid.
• “With Jake’s training and ability to find the narcotic, he saved other lives by giving his own in the line-of-duty… Jake’s heroism and ultimate sacrifice will never be forgotten,” he said.
• Jake could have another legacy: finally getting people’s attention on the need for prison reform.
• Read more HERE.

 

3. No leniency for licking larceny.

• Recent viral videos of people opening and licking containers of ice cream and then returning them to store shelves have an Alabama lawmaker looking at possible harsher penalties for those who mess with consumer goods.
• “I don’t like being reactionary, but given the lack of specificity in our current law, I think it  needs to be addressed and other states have already plowed some ground,” state Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said recently.
• Earlier this month, police in Texas identified a teenager suspected of taking a tub of ice cream from a Walmart freezer, removing the top to lick the ice cream and returning it to the freezer. Video of the act circulated on social media.
• Then, a 36-year old Louisiana man posted a video of himself on Facebook opening a Blue Bell ice cream container, licking it, poking it with his finger and putting it back on the shelf.
• Orr said he is drafting consumer product tampering legislation for the 2020 legislative session and will talk to prosecutors about whether a violation of the law should be a Class A misdemeanor or a Class C felony, either of which would carry more severe punishment than the current law.
• Read the full (and see the video) story from ADN’s Mary Sell HERE.

 

4. Spending deal reached.

• President Donald Trump and congressional leaders have announced a critical debt and budget agreement to avoid political and economic tumult over the possibility of a government shutdown or first federal default.
• The deal, announced Monday by Trump on Twitter, will restore the government’s ability to borrow to pay its bills past next year’s elections and build upon recent large budget gains for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.
• “I am pleased to announce that a deal has been struck,” Trump tweeted, saying there will be no “poison pills” added to follow-up legislation. “This was a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!”
• The agreement is on a broad outline for $1.37 trillion in agency spending next year and slightly more in fiscal 2021. It would mean a win for lawmakers eager to return Washington to a more predictable path amid political turmoil and polarization, defense hawks determined to cement big military increases and Democrats seeking to protect domestic programs.
• Nobody notched a big win, but both sides view it as better than a protracted battle this Fall.
• At issue are two separate but pressing items on Washington’s must-do agenda: increasing the debt limit to avert a first-ever default on U.S. payments and acting to set overall spending limits and prevent $125 billion in automatic spending cuts from hitting the Pentagon and domestic agencies with 10 percent cuts starting in January.
• The threat of the automatic cuts represents the last gasp of a failed 2011 budget and debt pact between former President Barack Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that promised future spending and deficit cuts to cover a $2 trillion increase in the debt. But a bipartisan deficit “super committee” failed to deliver, and lawmakers were unwilling to live with the follow-up cuts to defense and domestic accounts. This is the fourth deal since 2013 to reverse those cuts.
• Full story HERE.

 

5. The Mueller hearings.

• Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow (Wednesday), and it’s sure to be a big event.
• House Republicans are pledging a tough questioning of Mueller and will cast the hearing as the “final episode of the Russia investigation.
• House Democrats plan to air evidence of wrongdoing by President Donald Trump in a potentially last-ditch bid to impeach him.
• Read more about what to expect HERE.
• ADN Columnist Matthew Stokes has a take on all this. He’s been intently following the Mueller saga.
• He also did what too few of us did: he actually read the full Mueller report.
• If you really want to be prepared to watch the hearing on TV, Stokes suggests taking time out to actually read the report for yourself.
• Here’s an excerpt of his column:

• Read Matthew Stokes’ full column HERE.

 

AP News Briefs.

 

• Brexit hardliner Boris Johnson has won the race to lead Britain’s governing Conservative Party, and will become the country’s next prime minister.
• He defeated his rival Jeremy Hunt overwhelmingly in a vote of Conservative Party members.
• He will be installed as prime minister in a formal handover from Theresa May on Wednesday.
• The victory is a triumph for the 55-year-old Johnson, an ambitious but erratic politician whose political career has veered between periods in high office and spells on the sidelines.
• Johnson has vowed that Britain will quit the European Union, “come what may,” on the scheduled Brexit departure date of Oct. 31 even if it means leaving without a divorce deal. But he faces a rocky ride from a Parliament determined to prevent him from taking the U.K. out of the bloc without a withdrawal agreement.
• Read more HERE.

• President Donald Trump claimed Monday he could end the nearly two-decade-old war in Afghanistan in a matter of days but that it would kill millions of people and wipe the country “off the face of the earth.”
• The president made the statement at the White House as he praised Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and sought his help in negotiating a peace deal in neighboring Afghanistan.
• “I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone. It would be over, literally, in 10 days.”
• Warming up to Khan marked a turnaround for Trump, who has been sharply critical of Pakistan and now hopes Khan’s government will use its influence with the Taliban to advance a peace deal and help the U.S. withdraw from the war.
• Full story HERE.

• Millions of people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack may need to rethink the pill-popping, Harvard researchers reported Monday.
• A daily low-dose aspirin is recommended for people who have already had a heart attack or stroke and for those diagnosed with heart disease.
• But for the otherwise healthy, that advice has been overturned. Guidelines released this year ruled out routine aspirin use for many older adults who don’t already have heart disease — and said it’s only for certain younger people under doctor’s orders.
• How many people need to get that message?
• Some 29 million people 40 and older were taking an aspirin a day despite having no known heart disease in 2017, the latest data available, according to a new study from Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. About 6.6 million of them were doing so on their own — a doctor never recommended it.
• Full story HERE.

 

 

Headlines.

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