There's a line that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney must know well, the one about the vast difference between campaigning and governing.

He's in ''campaigning'' mode now. In a speech at the University of Chicago on Monday, the Republican presidential candidate was seeking his inner Ronald Reagan when he cited supply-side Nobel economist and University of Chicago legend Milton Friedman:

"Milton Friedman knew what President Obama still has not learned, even after three years and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending: The government does not create prosperity; free markets and free people do."

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

Well, after a fashion.

Regulations, he said, ''erode our freedoms.'' Yet much of the "freedom" he talks about for business and markets can't exist, much less thrive, without government.

Businesses don't want to do business in countries that don't have the government structures in place to protect them -- look at Iraq, for starters.

Businesses want to do business in nations that have law enforcement that isn't corrupt and court systems that can guarantee that contracts are enforced by laws, not by guns.

Businesses want a culture and a legal climate that operate by the rule of law, not by bribery or nepotism. They want a government that enacts and enforces regulations and laws that guarantee and protect intellectual property, patents and copyrights laws, and thus make it easier for enterprise and creativity to flourish.

Businesses also enjoy the advantages of publicly planned and publicly built and publicly maintained railroads and harbors and roads and highways that make the movement of goods and services and workers and customers possible. I don't see Wal-Mart constructing its own ports and railroads.

Businesses depend on deep-pocket, government-created, reliable infrastructure networks and systems like sewers and electricity and water. It's hard to do business in a place where power and water sources are haphazard, available for just a few hours a day. Businesses need to know that when a client or employee or they themselves flip on a light switch or flush a toilet or turn on a tap, the light comes on, the sewage is processed and cleaned and not dumped raw into the water supply, and the water that comes out of the faucet is potable and free of diseases that can weaken the health and therefore the buying power of consumers and workers alike.

Schools -- good schools -- can provide a competent workforce to businesses and prosperous customers to buy their products.

Business and government work hand in glove; good government is one big reason that business can work. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney crafted a climate protection plan, and he praised a regional greenhouse gas initiative as "good business."

Government can be the safety net for business at its best -- and its worst, protecting business from its own excesses and pitfalls.

Regulations can help to keep the public's -- meaning the customers' -- faith in business. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt created the precursor to the FDA, which gives consumers the confidence to buy the products, to eat the food and to  take the pills that businesses produce.

"Caveat emptor" only goes so far. If you choose an airline flying planes whose standards of construction and material quality are not quality-inspected, and the plane crashes, then you, the passenger, never get the chance to make the consumer's choice to fly another airline.

When tainted food gets into the food chain and people die (it's happened, from fast food beef burgers to spinach) people stop buying it until they hear reassurances -- not from the food producer but from federal inspectors -- that the problem has been found and addressed, and the food is safe to eat.

And business and consumers are the beneficiaries. People make choices about what restaurants are safer to eat in, what cars are safer to buy, even what amusement park rides are safe enough to put their kids on, in part because someone who doesn't work for the company that made those products -- a government inspector or regulator -- set some quality and safety standards, and enforced them.

There are similarities here to what I wrote when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger inveighed against taxation "in principle" -- and presumably the things taxes pay for. I suggested that if he really wanted to do without taxes, he, like all of us, would be faced with paving his own roads, pouring his own sidewalks and digging his own sewers. In which case, I said, I'd be over to borrow a shovel.

ALSO:

Romney's car problem

McManus: Will Romney be the GOP's Dukakis?

Americans Elect -- bring democracy into the digital world

--Patt Morrison

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks on economic freedom and the threat the U.S. deficit has for future generations at the University of Chicago on March 19. Credit: Tannen Maury / EPA

Why, yes, he can. On Saturday night, a cast that was repeatedly called "star-studded" performed a dramatic reading of the play "8," which is more or less an excerpting of the transcripts of the federal trial on Proposition 8. Star-drenched would be more accurate.

My mother's theory was that the quality of any dramatic production tends to be inversely proportional to the number of big names in it, and more often than not, I think that holds. Fortunately, from where I sat, "8" was, for the most part, the exception. Not because the acting was necessarily special but because so many of the lines were. What makes that all the more exceptional is that most of the lines were taken straight from the transcript of the trial.

I certainly had read about the trial avidly while it was going on, but there is indeed something different about seeing it played out, even if that's an enactment. I sat there wondering, did that proponent of Proposition 8 really say something so easily picked apart? Or was the play, more likely, playing for cheap shots? After the play, I spent hours checking several out of the play's exchanges on the Internet. Yes, they were real. Perhaps they stood out more because the play only touched highlights -- although if there were any highlights that made Proposition 8's presentation look good, they were omitted.

Thankfully, the actors played it simply for the most part, letting the essential material shine through, and that includes Clooney, playing the celebrated litigator David Boies, who managed to turn the defense's single witness into more of a witness for the plaintiffs.

The least effective scenes didn't come from the trial transcripts. Those were little side dramas between the lesbian plaintiff mothers (played by Christine Lahti and Jamie Lee Curtis) and their two sons.  The scenes rang a little sappy and false to me.

But you can decide for yourself. The entire play is on YouTube for a few more days. (For some strange reason, it starts at 29:51).

ALSO:

California's lone wolf returns to Oregon: Why?

Mitt Romney, the pandering chicken hawk on Iran

Limbaugh drowns out his own message about the pill

--Karin Klein 

Photo: George Clooney, left, Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt are shown in a scene from the play "8," at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Credit: Jason Merrit / Getty Images for the American Foundation for Equal Rights

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Oh, the irony. Is it the hammer of justice? The gavel of comeuppance? Or just another judicial election?

It may be wrong to take satisfaction in the fact that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lynn Dianne Olson drew a rare challenge in the June 5 election (read last week's news story by Metropolitan News-Enterprise reporter Kenneth Ofgang). But if taking satisfaction is wrong, then at least for now I don't want to be right.

Perhaps you remember Olson. She was the operator of Manhattan Bread and Bagel in Manhattan Beach when, six years ago, she filed an election challenge against Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs. And won. Janavs, an experienced and well-regarded jurist, was forcibly retired to make way for Olson, who had not practiced law in years and was patently unqualified to take the bench (she drew a "not qualified" rating from the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and a thumbs-down from the Los Angeles Times editorial page; Janavs was rated "exceptionally well qualified").

Of all the 140 or so incumbent judges who were standing for reelection, why would Olson pick Janavs? Olson explained later that it was because Janavs was a Republican, but there were lots of Republicans to challenge. Janavs was beatable, probably because voters breezing over a ballot and candidate names they don't know are more likely to pick an easy name like "Lynn Olson" over a tough-to-pronounce, foreign-sounding one (it's Latvian) like "Dzintra Janavs."

In California, most trial judges are appointed by the governor, but every two years a few candidates are elected to fill vacancies -- or challenge sitting judges at the ballot box. Challenges are rare. Successful challenges are rarer. And unlike with other political offices, in which voters should have a free hand to oust incumbents for any reason or no reason at all, it's a bad practice to boot out competent sitting judges. Why? Because we want them to remain sufficiently independent in their rulings, and not feel that they have to make popular decisions or to hook up with a political party, fundraiser or special interest just to keep their jobs.

Most judges go unchallenged when they are up for reelection, and their names don't even appear on the ballot. They automatically win a new six-year term.

So Olson ousted Janavs (although then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger almost immediately reappointed her). And now, the first time Olson is up for reelection, she has been challenged. No automatic re-up for her.

The challenger? Perennial candidate Douglas Weitzman. Olson has the edge in campaign and fundraising know-how, but still -- instead of cruising to automatic victory, she will have to campaign and raise money to keep her job.

What's this called? Payback? Turnabout? The hunter becoming the hunted? Divine justice?

Or just a judicial election.

[For the record, 3:12 p.m. Feb. 14: The original version of this post misspelled the word comeuppance in the headline.]

ALSO:

L.A.'s bike lane blooper

L.A. DWP's gold-plated jobs

Carmen 'I am a liar' Trutanich

--Robert Greene

Photo: No credit. From a 2006 election flier.

In a review last year of Roseanne Barr's new reality TV series "Roseanne's Nuts," Times TV critic Mary McNamara noted that the show sometimes played like a satire of "Sarah Palin's Alaska,"another series following the life and adventures of a larger-than-life heroine. While viewers on TLC could watch Palin butchering salmon in Alaska's bear country, on Lifetime you could see Barr tramping through her macadamia nut farm on the Big Island of Hawaii, blasting away at wild pigs with a hunting rifle -- at least until the show was canceled in September. "Perhaps she is considering a run for president," McNamara concluded about Barr. How right she was.

On Monday, Barr's name appeared on the California secretary of state's list of candidates for the June presidential primary, running with the Green Party. If eye-rolling were audible, the streets of California today would sound like the testing lab at a ball-bearing factory. Nonetheless, Barr's pseudo-candidacy does call for some reflection about the influence of celebrities in politics.

Warren Beatty is the most famous person I've ever eaten lunch with. This notable event happened in 2005, when Beatty was feigning an interest in running for governor. Not that he actually filed papers like Barr, or even came out and said he was running; he simply dropped hints. "I have to give you a stock answer," Beatty said when asked if he were going to challenge then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I don't want to run for governor, but I would have no inhibition at all." Huh? This was intriguing enough for The Times' editorial board to invite Beatty to lunch, where he regaled us with his political views while making it abundantly clear that he had no interest whatsoever in actually doing the hard work of campaigning, let alone governing. Beatty, in other words, had discovered that fame didn't necessarily translate into influence, and the only way to get people and the media to pay attention to him was to pretend to run for high political office.

This kind of thing poses a challenge for the media because it's hard to know how seriously to take celebrity candidates. Obviously, some are real contenders -- Ronald Reagan showed that Americans were willing to elect a movie star as president, and dozens of others, from Schwarzenegger to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, have proved that fame goes a long way in swaying voters. Yet it's still possible to divide these candidates into three categories: publicity hounds like Beatty, satirists like Stephen Colbert, and real political hopefuls like former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who played a tough-guy Southern officeholder so well in the movies that voters awarded him the role in real life.

Pegging a star on this spectrum isn't always simple. How does one assess, for example, the gravitas of a Donald Trump? It would be easy to dismiss him as a pure publicity seeker, but I have to suspect that Trump is just delusional enough to think that he would be a genuine contender if only he could tear himself away from his private sector duties. And, as I discovered after mocking his candidacy in a blog post last year, he actually seems to have a cadre of dedicated supporters who do not appreciate all the "lamestream" media's attacks on their faux-haired boy.

Barr is an easier call. She has no discernible campaign apparatus, zero political experience and very, very little credibility as a policy expert. A talented comedian with a reputation for substance abuse, temper tantrums and bizarre behavior, Barr isn't anybody's idea of a genuine contender, and unlike Beatty, the only lunch invitations she's likely to get as a result of her candidacy announcement will come from the Hollywood tabloids. But she might pick up a few more Twitter subscribers, which may be her real goal.

ALSO:

Hollywood in black and white

A Puritan's 'war against religion'

A new pro-Romney group: Career politicians for Mitt

--Dan Turner

Photo: A publicity still from Roseanne Barr's short-lived series "Roseanne's Nuts." Credit: Lifetime Television.

One of the biggest challenges for California's judicial branch has been the statewide deployment of a computerized case management system that will, it is hoped, make it quicker and easier for the public to file and find documents and quicker and easier for courts to share files and data among themselves and with law enforcement, child welfare and other agencies.

But the California Case Management System is a sore point. Its cost and slow development have angered many trial and appellate judges, who cite it as a reason for local courts needing greater budget and policy autonomy from the state Judicial Council.

A February 2011 report by the Bureau of State Audits sharply criticized the management of the CCMS project. Deployment of the project is on hold due to budget cuts and concerns expressed in the audit.

Last fall, the Judicial Council considered an offer from a charitable foundation to make a grant that would pay to deploy CCMS in San Luis Obispo, Fresno and Ventura counties. After examining and discussing the offer from Patrick Soon-Shiong, chairman of the Chan Soon-Shiong Foundation, the council shelved the plan.

The Times' editorial board asked Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, during a Jan. 6 visit, whether court resources were so strapped that she and the rest of the Judicial Council should entertain offers from charities to fund essential court functions. Click to hear her response, and read it below:

Listen: Charitable contributions to support courts

I hope on my watch the judicial branch does not go begging. But what you say -- how you characterized it is a fair characterization. There are a lot of different ways to characterize it, but it was a philanthropic effort. We were forced, and I really mean it, forced to think differently about how we could bring technology to the  branch.

Is it in our future? I hope not. Are we novel thinkers? Yes. Will we think of different ways if we can't get general fund funding? Yes. But that will be transparent and everyone will know and everyone will get a shot at us. That's what we're doing.

We asked Cantil-Sakauye about closing courtrooms that deal with lawsuits and other non-criminal matters due to budget cuts. Listen to her response:

Listen: Courts are closing non-criminal courtrooms

Courts have tried to prepare the best they can…. We've also heard other courts say … and other courts have reduced the courtrooms that hear civil cases because they have to use their reduced staff, and reduced hours, to hear the constitutionally obligated cases, which are criminal cases.

We asked the chief justice about whether courtroom closures could affect public safety. Listen to her response:

Listen: Impact of backlogs

You're talking about a potential backlog of people who have a proclivity or have driven under the influence and they get a court date somewhere out there and we're just going to take it on faith that they're not going to do it in those intervening months before they come back. There's definitely a public safety factor with the courts being backlogged.

RELATED:

Chief justice: "Worst possible option"

Chief justice: "Life without means life without"

Chief justice: "A hammer over my head"

--Robert Greene

Photo: California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye speaks with the editorial board on Jan. 6. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

So the "stupor committee" failed.  Surprise.

Democrats wouldn't budge on cuts to social programs without tax hikes. Republicans wouldn't budge on raising taxes. Voila: A no-budge(t) collapse.

Where have we seen this before?

Oh, right: California's Legislature.

The "super committee" was supposed to make the hard choices that Congress couldn't.  The nation's future was at risk, our political leaders warned.  This time it's serious. We can't kick this can down the road any more.

Oh yes we can.  Heck, we've been kicking this can down the road in California for years.

Remember all the brinkmanship during Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration?  How many times did we hear that we had to get our fiscal house in order?  How many times did someone say "it's now or never"?

But it wasn't.  And it isn't. 

California did what Washington is about to do:  Take the meat-cleaver approach.

Our state budget  calls for automatic cuts if revenues don't come in at a certain level.  And guess what? Revenues aren't keeping up.

So the cuts are coming -– but only to stuff we don't need, like schools. That allows the politicians to point fingers -– while the arms and legs of our kids' futures are being lopped off.

It works so well, Washington has basically agreed to do the same thing:  The super committee couldn't come up with a plan, so automatic spending cuts will kick in.

But wait, there's more: Things are so messed up that, because the committee failed, the average American may see a tax increase of nearly $1,000 in January.  Oh, and unemployment benefits for about 2 million people may run out. (Not to worry, though: The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are safe!)

Good plan.  Thanks, Congress -– now that's leadership.

Still, there's one bit of  good news for California. At least we won't be the butt of all those jokes about how screwed up our state has become.

Because now the whole country will be as screwed up as we are.

RELATED:

Brown polishing his tax plan

Some delight in demise of 'super committee'

Obama says Republicans to blame for 'super committee's' failure

Super-committee failure may be new blow for unpopular Congress

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is co-chair of the congressional "super committee." Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images

On Sunday, Times staff writers Shane Goldmacher and Patrick McGreevy reported that members of the state Senate had treated themselves to taxpayer-financed lunches, in addition to their $95,291 salaries and their $143 per diems. We followed up Tuesday with an editorial ridiculing the senators and calling on them to pay back the money. As McGreevy reported Wednesday, the Senate Rules Committee, chaired by President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat, met by phone late Tuesday and voted to start billing themselves, and not the taxpayers, to stock the lunchroom.

Some readers were unimpressed. YankeeMikeBravo noted that the money spent comes to about 0.001% of the state budget. I haven't pulled out the calculator, but yes, the amount is small by comparison. And tod503 calls it a "non-issue" given too much focus by The Times, and says that we ought to be going after bigger things.

Well, sure, it's a tiny amount of money in comparison with the mess the state is in. But it's important to hold our representatives to account for nickle-and-diming us, and it's not an either/or. This lunch thing was blatant, obvious and easy, so we said so.

By the way, they aren't (yet) paying back what they already spent on "free" lunches, but they've taken a step in the right direction, and good for them. It's good to see elected officials respond to Times reporting and editorializing with such alacrity. Because this worked out so well, we'll update our list of other things we'd like to see them do.

But first a note of appreciation to Julie Sauls, spokeswoman for Republican Sen. Jean Fuller of Bakersfield. Fuller missed the vote due to illness, but her stance toward taxpayer-funded lunches was summed up by  Sauls, as quoted Wednesday by McGreevy: "There is a cafeteria in the Capitol."

As cafeterias go, it's not that bad.

RELATED:

Editorial: About that free lunch

State Senate dines at taxpayers' expense

Take this bullet train. Please.

--Robert Greene

Photo: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg outside then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office during a 2009 budget battle. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

Some of Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s conservative supporters are flocking to his defense over sexual harassment claims against him by two women and the legal settlement that was reached.

"Ladies, lighten up!" is the line they're taking. "Don't take it so seriously! C'mon, it's a compliment, and all in good fun!"

It's not only not flattering, it can actually be frightening. Sexual harassment doesn't even have to be hands-on physical.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said: "There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly."

Glad to hear that, congressman. You should think twice, and then think again, before you tell that vulgar joke. The unwanted sexually suggestive comment, the oppressive workplace climate of permissive sleaze -- none of it is entertaining or amusing to people, men or women, who are afraid of losing raises or promotions or even jobs if they complain or fight back.

That's why they call it sexual harassment, not sexual flattery. It isn't right, whether it's Bill Clinton or Herman Cain.

It would be great if saying ''no'' put an end to this, but saying "no" can put the women themselves at risk. Management may secretly label them as bad sports. If they don't put up with harassment, their prospects for raises and promotions may be damaged. They're not "team players."  Think of the women who say they were harassed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, on a movie set or serving tables at a restaurant. They had no power to complain about the humiliation, and when they did reveal what had happened, they were insulted and further humiliated by people who said it was their fault, or that they were lying or fantasizing. Some women who fear for their jobs or their prospects if they complain are forced to try to avoid their harassers or even rearrange desks or work schedules to keep away from them -- but it's not always possible.

Cain inadvertently made women's best point about unwanted sexual harassment on Wednesday, when he walked away from an event where reporters had been told he would answer questions and found he wouldn't, and they kept asking questions as he left.

He said: "What part of 'no' don’t people understand?"

Exactly.

Some Republicans still are livid at the sexual harassment allegations made in 1991 by Anita Hill and other women against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Those televised hearings 20 years ago changed politics, ushered in the political "Year of the Woman" in the 1992 elections, and gave women the courage to speak openly about something they had just shut up and put up with before. I know they did that for me, and for so many of the women who showed up at the L.A. Central Library last month when I interviewed Hill on the anniversary of the hearings and about her new book.

Conservatives now scrambling to Cain's defense are blowing off sexual harassment claims as just a bunch of women not getting the joke, regarding sexual harassment as nothing more than the routine pleasantries between the sexes. It all just reminds me of something ... let me think ...

... a place where people brush off sexual harassment as flattery ... where male colleagues and bosses act like they're God's gift to women and women are loath to tell them otherwise ... a place where women are given to understand that they should just shut up and enjoy it.

Oh my goodness! The conservatives are acting ... French!

[For the record, 2:22 p.m. Nov 5: The original version of this post attributed the quote about workplace jokes to Texas Rep. Ron Paul. It was said by his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, in an interview with National Review Online.]

ALSO:

Cain plays the race card, unfortunately

Battle of the sexes: Where men still win

Are women really victims of the 'motherhood penalty'?

-- Patt Morrison

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain arrives to speak at the Congressional Health Caucus Thought Leaders Series on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

Two attempts by Republicans to challenge an independent commission's district maps were thrown out today by the state Supreme Court. The GOP's last hope for challenging the lines will come in the form of a referendum on the November ballot -- if backers can get enough signatures.

The high court ruling further undermines the hope that many Republicans had to enlarge their presence in the state Capitol.

It was the California Democrats who for years blocked efforts by good-government types to change the state redistricting process. After all, Democrats had the clear majority in the Assembly, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and they had no intention of giving up their power to draw new lines every 10 years after census figures came out. Former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said in 2008 that defeating Proposition 11 -- the measure that put an independent citizens commission in charge of redistricting the Assembly and the Senate (oh, and the state Board of Equalization, but so what?) -- was almost as important as electing Barack Obama president.

But voters adopted Proposition 11 by a hair, and last year added Proposition 20, which made House seats also subject to the independent commission's map-drawing.

Both campaigns were funded largely by Republican Charles T. Munger Jr., and his efforts were cheered and supported by rank-and-file Republicans who argued that finally the Democratic lock on the state could be broken.

It didn't turn out that way. The commission's maps could end up giving Democrats close to the two-thirds supermajority they'd need in the Senate and Assembly to pass taxes without GOP support.

Munger said last month that he had no regrets.

--Robert Greene

ALSO:

Make way for redistricting in California

California redistricting: Don't expect any magic

New voting districts give the GOP that boxed-in feeling

Photo: Former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

Adam Mendelsohn, director of communications under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, responds to The Times' Aug. 14 editorial, "Cut off cellphones in prison cells." If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy. 

The Times is exactly right to point out in its editorial the severe problem of cellphones being smuggled into our state's prisons. In fact, the editorial board may take too light a view of the dangers that can result. It's not just about celebrity inmates and online harassment; it is a matter of inmates planning prison assaults, intimidating witnesses in court cases and orchestrating the activities of criminal street gangs from behind bars.

It's a serious problem that requires a serious solution.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger correctly pointed out the problem years ago, establishing a program within the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to study cellphone jamming and detection, to conduct random searches at prisons and even to use trained dogs to help in uncovering contraband devices. In 2009, his administration also sponsored common-sense legislation to make cellphone smuggling a felony.

However, in years past the Legislature showed it was incapable of real reform, passing only watered-down laws that would have had no noticeable effect on the safety of prison workers or innocent crime victims.

This is a governor who, over his seven years in office, established an incredibly strong record on public safety, on protecting the rights of crime victims and of pushing for reform in our broken state prison system.

So, in this instance, Schwarzenegger made a policy call: He chose not to sign a weak bill that would have provided only a PR opportunity, and to push the Legislature to send to the governor's desk a meaningful bill -- specifically one that included jail time for this offense.

It turned out to be the right call.

State Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) this year crafted a tougher piece of legislation,  one that would put cellphone smugglers in jail for as much as six months rather than just imposing a modest monetary fine like last year's bill.

This new bill is much tougher on this serious crime and shows that Schwarzenegger was right years ago in pushing our legislators toward real reform. The Times ought to take a broader view of this issue, or it risks coming off as shortsighted as the hundreds of ineffective bills produced by Sacramento each year.

-- Adam Mendelsohn

ALSO

Cut cellphones in prison cells

California's hidden hunger strike

Feinstein urges ban on prison cellphones

Charles Manson had a cellphone? California prisons fight inmate cellphone proliferation

Photo: San Quentin state prison. Credit: Ben Margot / Associated Press