Florida is seeking bids from private companies to take over management of 30 state prisons in an 18-country area in South Florida. The “fastest privatization venture ever undertaken by the state of Florida” is an effort by Gov. Rick Scott (R) to save the state money by outsourcing prison oversight to the lowest bidder:

In an effort to cut costs, Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature set a Jan. 1, 2012, deadline to privatize 30 state prisons, road camps and work release centers. [...]

The state will hire only one company to run all those prisons, which sets up a high-stakes competitive battle between the nation’s two biggest private prison operators: Corrections Corp. of America, based in Nashville, and the GEO Group of Boca Raton. Both companies already operate prisons in Florida. [...]

The bidding process is moving ahead despite a lawsuit filed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association, the bargaining agent for unionized correctional officers.

PBA Executive Director Matt Puckett said he had not thoroughly analyzed the bid documents and could not comment on them in detail. But the union leader said many PBA members in South Florida are “devastated” at the prospects of having to find new jobs or move upstate to keep their prison jobs.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, Scott has long advocated privatizing prisons which “could open a lucrative door to politically connected vendors who stand to profit.” GEO Group already manages two of the state’s seven private prisons and is a “prime financier of the Republican Party” that gave more than $400,000 to GOP in the 2010 election cycle alone and gave the maximum $25,000 to Scott’s inaugural fund.

The Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest corrections company, also has close connections to GOP statehouses across the country. The company has spent $373,000 in political contributions in Florida since 2003, over 60 percent of which have gone to Republicans.

And the private prison industry isn’t just lobbying to take over state prisons; it’s also “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), private prisons spend millions on lobbying to put more people in jail, which translates to more profits for them. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group made over $2.9 billion in revenue.

California Gov. Jerry Brown just nominated Berkeley Law Professor and former Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu to a seat on the California Supreme Court. Liu, a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars, was the subject of a blistering smear campaign by conservatives determined to prevent Obama’s youngest and one of his most talented nominees from becoming a judge:

Yet if you spent just a few minutes listening to Liu’s opponents, you would think he was the second coming of Mao Tse-tung. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) literally accused Liu of wanting to make America more like “communist-run China.” Other senators fixated on a pair of law review articles Liu wrote as proof that Liu would use a position on the federal bench to create all kinds of new welfare programs and somehow seize control of America’s schools. [...]

[T]he suggestion that Liu would somehow create massive new welfare programs by judicial fiat stems from an article where he actually called for the opposite. That article explicitly calls for “legislative supremacy” in defining the scope of welfare rights, and it explains that it would have been utterly inappropriate for the courts to second-guess Congress’s decision to roll back welfare rights in its 1996 welfare reform law.

Liu’s article also explains that the Constitution provides certain protections that ensure fair and equal access to welfare—but this view is shared by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia joined the Supreme Court’s decision in Saenz v. Roe, which struck down a California law on constitutional grounds because it denied some California residents a portion of their welfare benefits. In other words, if Liu’s stance on constitutional welfare rights disqualifies him from the federal bench, it also disqualifies Scalia.

Brown’s nomination of Liu will almost certainly receive the same drummed-up outrage from the right that his nomination to the federal bench triggered, but conservatives will likely be unable to obstruct Liu from taking a seat on the state supreme court. Under the California Constitution, Liu’s nomination must be confirmed by a Commission on Judicial Appointments that includes the Chief Justice, the Attorney General and a sitting court of appeals judge. Given Liu’s sterling legal credentials, this commission will have a tough time finding objectionable in Liu’s record.

It’s worth noting, however, that Liu’s appointment is only temporary unless it is confirmed by the electorate in the next general election. So there is a very real risk that wealthy right-wing interest groups will try to buy Liu’s seat on the state Supreme Court with attack ads and other campaign funding just like they dumped money into similar efforts in Wisconsin and Iowa.

ThinkProgress Justice is still accepting applications from law students to fill three one-year research and writing fellowships that commence this fall. Each fellow will work with ThinkProgress’ Justice Editor to produce three or four blog posts a week for publication on their own byline.

The ideal candidate will:

• Be a current law student with strong academic credentials at an ABA-accredited law school (preference to third year law students).
• Possess strong research and writing skills, including the ability to explain complex legal and policy concepts in a short, 300-600 word blog post.
• Have a solid grounding in basic constitutional doctrine. Familiarity with other politically salient legal subjects — such as environmental law, voting law, financial regulatory law, or civil rights law — is a big plus.
• Be able to turn around content quickly to respond to a rapidly changing news cycle.
• Possess a keen interest in the intersection of politics and the law.

The fellowships are part-time and will require 5-10 hours of work per week. ThinkProgress Justice Law Student Fellows will receive a weekly stipend for the year of the fellowship after an initial trial period, and may work from home or from their law school. Fellows need not reside in Washington, DC, and law students from across the country are encouraged to apply.

To apply: please send a cover letter, resume, and a brief (no more than 500 word) writing sample to Ian Millhiser at imillhiser /at/ americanprogress.org. Writing samples should be written as if they were for publication on ThinkProgress Justice and should not be academic papers. Applications considered on a rolling basis.

South Carolina Republican Kershaw County co-chairman Jeff Mattox is being asked to step down after he endorsed a Facebook article titled “When Should You Shoot A Cop.” The article was posted on the Facebook page of the Kershaw County Patriots, a Tea Party group “specializing in maniacal anti-government paranoia” of which Mattox is a proud member:

A South Carolina Republican county co-chair is embroiled in a controversy over “liking” a Facebook article that advocated shooting law enforcement officers.

Jeff Mattox, who is also a tea party activist with the Kershaw County Patriots, gave digital plaudits to an article entitled “When Should You Shoot A Cop” posted on the Patriot’s Facebook page.

“That’s what it means to have an unalienable right. If you have the unalienable right to speak your mind (a la the First Amendment), then you have the right to KILL “government” agents who try to shut you up. If you have the unalienable right to be armed, then you have the right to KILL ”government” agents who try to disarm you,” argued a poster at copblock.org

The article concludes, “The next time you hear of a police officer being killed ‘in the line of duty,’ take a moment to consider the very real possibility that maybe in that case, the ‘law enforcer’ was the bad guy and the ‘cop killer’ was the good guy.”

Kershaw County Republican chair Chris Oviatt told Politico he had asked Mattox to step down from the party.

As a result of the inflammatory Facebook article, which compares American law enforcement officers and agencies to Communist and Nazi regimes, Kershaw county police officers are on higher alert and reportedly wearing body armor. Sheriff Jim Matthews called the posting “irresponsible” and “hateful.” He also expressed concern that the Patriots might be linked to the Sovereign Citizen movement, which the FBI describes as “anti-government extremists who…believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority.”

Mattox defended himself by saying, “Police sometimes do overstep their bounds, but advocating shooting a cop? No. It’s just kind of a conversation.” However, Mattox himself has posted a YouTube video called “End of Liberty,” which lambasts “out of control cops.”