In the first segment:
Last week the special session of the Texas legislature passed a bill that would institute mandatory minimums for 17 year olds convicted of capital murder.
The state of Texas has mandatory minimums for several crimes including murder, but has avoided some of the most controversial mandatory minimums with nonviolent drug offenses. States like Florida and Massachusettes have seen their prison populations swell with these nonviolent offenders.
At the federal level, the topic has made strange bedfellows of Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democractic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who introduced legislation to overhaul the federal mandatory minimum laws, hoping to give more credence to judges and juries.
The controversial history of mandatory minimums and their uncertain future is the topic of our conversation.
Marc Levin, the director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation joins us along with Molly Gill, the government affairs counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums(FAMM).
In the second segment:
"The Power Surge," a book by Michael Levi details the rise of shale oil and takes readers inside the political ramifications from Qatar to South Texas.
How will shale oil change our communitites, from the price at the pump to the way we live? Levi, who is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations joins us.
*The Source airs at 3 p.m. on KSTX 89.1 FM - audio from this show will be posted by 5:30 p.m.
