1) Ace education reporter Nanette Asimov reported on Tuesday in the San Francisco Chronicle that the California State University system is withholding around $90 million in cash grants previously allocated to graduate students in the CSU system.

Graduate students across the 23-campus system began receiving financial aid notices this week and were astonished to see that the State University Grant that takes care of tuition for low-income students was missing. In its place was the offer of a federal loan at 6.8 percent interest.

2) Also on Tuesday, University of California officials announced a sharp increase in out-of-state student admissions to the U.C. system:

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The situation became less clear after a recent investigative report from D.C.-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group explained that California has experienced 60 unregulated years of widespread fracking, whose technical methods and geographical locations in the seismically active state exist outside of the public purview. It got darker after Gov. Jerry Brown's administration wiped the state government's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) website of fracking fact-sheets and documents. Good luck finding anything about fracking on the governor's official site either.

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These images, though diverse in many respects, all have one thing in common: the swimming pool. That, and their mid-to-late 20th-century Southern California backdrop.

The exhibition is part of  "Pacific Standard Time," a multi-institutional project devoted telling the story "of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world," sponsored by the Getty Research Institute. Over the phone, curator Daniell Cornell explained the place of the swimming pool in Southern California's cultural history, and discussed the show's principal themes -- from architecture and suburban idealism to the cult of the Hollywood celebrity. Click through the following slide show for a sun-soaked trip back in time.

Had you considered doing a swimming-pool themed photography exhibition before "Pacific Standard Time"?

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Occupy Los Angeles: A group of 10,000 to 15,000 protesters -- not just Angelenos, but Californians from near and far -- marched in dowtown L.A. on Saturday. According to the Los Angeles Times:

Despite the frustration and anger that many protesters expressed, the march took on a decidedly festive atmosphere. Families walked together, with mothers carrying babes in Snuggies and tattooed fathers toting toddlers on their shoulders. One woman twirled a Hula-Hoop around her middle as she walked. A man strummed a guitar. Several people pounded drums.

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Now, with the announcement last week by California's four U.S. attorneys that pot dispensaries will be targeted with harsh criminal sanctions, the shift feared by drug policy reform advocates appears to have come to pass. The rhetoric from candidate Barack Obama about not prioritizing medical marijuana cases now seems a distant memory.

To learn more about what's happening in California, I spoke to Bob Egelko, a veteran reporter who covers courts for the San Francisco Chronicle and has been following the story.

Starting with the basics, what is the medical marijuana law in California and what does it allow for?

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On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento had ruled that the law violated minors' rights under the First Amendment, and the high court agreed.

"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion. "But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

The California law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18. Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $1,000 for each infraction.

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010.

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"We decided we would launch with a controversial ad that would piss a lot of people off," says Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., a conservative filmmaker who has produced unconventional political ads in the past. "If I get dinged a little, then so be it," he adds, acknowledging that he wrote and produced the ad for his new political group, Turn Right USA.

The ad targets Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is running in a special election for an open congressional seat against a tea partyer named Craig Huey. Here is the ad (NSFW):

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On June 7, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian think tank founded and funded by the Koch brothers, released its latest snapshot of liberty in the U.S.A: "Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom."

As is usually the case in studies of this sort, high-population blue states inevitably end up ranking last. The metrics used by the authors of the study penalize high taxes, regulations and, in general, just about anything that restricts the freedom of individuals and corporations to do as they please, from gun control laws and healthcare mandates to rules requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Befitting libertarian sensibilities, the ideological biases in the Mercatus report do not purely jibe with conservative Republican priorities -- states get points for decriminalizing marijuana and allowing same sex marriage or civil unions, for example -- but nevertheless, the political gist is hard to ignore. Blue states cluster at the bottom, while red states are at the top.

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Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware said he would issue a decision within 24 hours after a hearing Monday in which lawyers trying to salvage the ban posed an unprecedented legal argument questioning Judge Vaughn Walker's impartiality when he issued last year's landmark ruling that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional.

The lawyers insisted that Walker, who was chief judge of the Northern District of California at the time, should have recused himself or disclosed his relationship because he and his partner stood to personally benefit from the verdict.

"It now appears that Judge Walker, at the time the complaint was filed and throughout this litigation, occupied precisely those same shoes as the plaintiffs," attorney Charles Cooper said.

Ware, who inherited the Proposition 8 case from the now-retired Walker, asked why Cooper assumed Walker had any intention of getting married, just because he was in a decade-old relationship.

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Johannes Mehserle is scheduled to be set free Monday from a Los Angeles County jail where he served his time after his high-profile trial was moved to Southern California last year.

"We've been informed that he will be released sometime that day," Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Teresa Drenick said Thursday.

Mehserle's attorney, Michael Rains, declined to comment Thursday on his client's pending release. Rains recently said in published reports that Mehserle is ready to move on with his life.

But there could be backlash, as another series of rallies and protests will be held in both Los Angeles and Oakland before and after Mehserle's release.

Mehserle, 29, was convicted last July in the shooting death of Oscar Grant on an Oakland train station platform on New Year's Day 2009. The incident was recorded by bystanders, and video posted online showed the Bay Area Rapid Transit officer firing a single bullet into the back of Grant, 22, as he lay face down after being pulled off a train for allegedly fighting.

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The administration acknowledged in its response to the high court that it might not meet the court's initial goal of cutting the prison population by more than 10,000 inmates by the end of November. But it did not request a delay.

"What we've said is we're going to move forward with this plan and we'll ask for more time if we need it," Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said at a news conference.

The latest count shows California's 33 prisons housing 143,565 inmates in space designed for fewer than 80,000, meaning the prisons are at 180 percent of their design capacity.

In an order late last month, the Supreme Court gave California two years to remove more than 33,000 inmates after the justices ruled easing congestion is the only way to improve unconstitutionally poor inmate medical care.

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Victim Jaycee Dugard was 11 when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido as her stepfather watched her walk toward a school bus. She gave birth to two daughters fathered by Garrido while he held her in a secret backyard compound.

The defendants, both wearing orange jumpsuits, made no eye contact with anyone in the courtroom and kept their heads down as Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, read her daughter's statement at the hearing. Dugard, now 31, was not present in court.

"I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence," Dugard wrote in a portion of the statement directed to Phillip Garrido. "Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that.

"I hated every second of every day for 18 years," she said "You stole my life and that of my family."

It was Dugard's first public statement since she was found 22 months ago.

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With its decision, the Court affirmed that prison overcrowding in the state has had severe repercussions as far as the medical treatment of inmates (for both physical and mental complaints) goes -- leading to conditions that constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," and thus violate the Eighth Amendment.

Unusually, several black-and-white photographs were published with the ruling opinion, to illustrate claims about living conditions in the jails. They were only three of many more submitted to the Court as exhibits in the case. You can see more of the images that convinced the Supreme Court of prison overcrowding's unconstitutionality below.

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The answer is that so-called free trade agreements (i.e., NAFTA, bilateral NAFTA replicas, the WTO regime, etc.) are free only of protections for human beings -- that is, free of provisions that preserve, say, labor rights, human rights and the environment. But those deals' "hundreds of pages" are chock-full of protectionist provisions for multinational companies -- provisions that, for example, allow foreign firms to sue governments for lost profits and empower international panels to unilaterally override a nation's domestic laws if those laws reduce corporate revenues.

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The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the system's designed capacity.

There are more than 142,000 inmates in the state's 33 adult prisons, meaning roughly 32,000 inmates will need to be transferred to other jurisdictions or released.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, wrote the majority opinion, in which he included photos of severe overcrowding. The court's four Democratic appointees joined with Kennedy.

"The violations have persisted for years. They remain uncorrected," Kennedy said. The lawsuit challenging the provision of mental health care was filed in 1990.

Justice Antonin Scalia said in dissent that the court order is "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history."

Scalia, reading his dissent aloud Monday, said it would require the release of "the staggering number of 46,000 convicted felons."

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But it also casts a new light on the biggest favor Shriver ever did for her husband's career, when his effort to claim the top job in America's largest state was in danger of crumbling apart.

It was in the final days of September 2003 that Schwarzenegger deigned to participate in a debate for the first time in his political career. He did it because he had to, not because he wanted to: He had pulled ahead in California's free-for-all gubernatorial recall contest, but doubts about his intellect and basic grasp of public policy remained. He had to prove he could sit on a stage with Serious People and not make a fool of himself.

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Schwarzenegger and Shriver jointly announced May 9 that they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. Yet, Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier in the year after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the child is his, The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger told the Times in a statement that also was sent to The Associated Press early Tuesday. "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry.

"I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time," the statement concluded. "While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not."

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This is the one that has gotten the most attention so far, because it's insane and probably horribly ill-advised!

Ham-handed plays for the votes of large minority populations in urban areas are as American as large minority populations in urban areas, but this might be pitched less at Asian-American voters than at, say, people on the internet? In which case, very nice work with making sure no one is an embarrassing caricature.

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It's not uncommon to read scientists' predictions about rising sea levels and the crises they could cause. But to many non-scientists, the practical consequences of such climate alterations are fuzzy. If the oceanographers cited in the Times are correct, our own American shores face a transformative alteration in the immediate future. But just how dramatic would a 14-inch sea level rise be? And how would we see its effects in our everyday lives?

Salon spoke to professor Peter Ward, author of "The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps" (whom we've interviewed before), who explained that while a 14-inch sea level rise is frightening enough on its own, it's the specter of a resulting "storm surge" -- and the failure of many local authorities to plan effectively for the future -- that actually worries him the most.

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