Episode 8, with Queena Kim (The California Report), Joshua Johnson (KQED News) and Dan Brekke (News Fix blog guy). We talk about:

A police panel’s ruling in Los Angeles that found an officer’s fatal shooting of a mentally ill man was not justified.

And then: The Berkeley Police Department releases a report justifying its use of force during Black Lives Matter protests last December.

And then: The pros and cons of a San Francisco ordinance that would require health warnings in soda advertising.

Plus: Lightning Round mentions of stories we love:

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KQED’s morning news anchor Joshua Johnson, The California Report host Queena Kim and blog guy Dan Brekke talk about a proposal to freeze new market-rate housing development in San Francisco’s Mission District, the latest news on water conservation efforts amid the drought and an initiative to cut down lots of eucalyptus trees in the East Bay hills.

It’s Episode 6 of KQED’s Smartmouth podcast, our quick review of the week’s top news.

This week, KQED blogger/editor Dan Brekke is joined by The California Report host Queena Kim, producer Guy Marzorati to discuss:

Plus: Love for the Golden State Warriors. And a glimpse into the future of the state’s pot economy.

This week on Smartmouth, we talk about the Santa Barbara County oil spill, the latest twists and turns in the Oakland Raiders’ stadium saga and whether Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who’s squaring off against state Attorney General Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate, will suffer lasting damage from an inopportune utterance.

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After decades of federal and state scientists working on plans to save the Delta smelt — and years of court fights over those plans — the tiny, commercially unimportant fish is on the verge of disappearing altogether from its native waters. And now, yet another threat to the fish has emerged: the dredging that keeps shipping channels open between San Francisco Bay and the ports of Sacramento and Stockton. Now we ask — why the heck should anyone care?

Links

Another story that has been with us and just won’t go away: the $6.5 billion eastern span of the Bay Bridge and its still-unfolding list of construction flaws. Is the bridge going to fall down? Or will we just need to spend a few billion more to make it perfect?

Links

And this week, San Jose residents got the news that they’ll face a new system of water rates designed to enforce conservation during the drought. How effective will that be and will it run afoul of a recent state court ruling that appears to ban conservation rates that don’t adhere to strict guidelines about cost of service?

Links

This week on Smartmouth, KQED’s Queena Kim, Joshua Johnson and I are talking about:

http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/RDnews/2015/04/smartmouth150430.mp3

On this week’s episode of Smartmouth, we talk about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Bay Area, the California state auditor’s report card on BART finances (and who will pay to keep the system going), and new developments in the statewide push to get police officers to wear body cameras.

Oh, yeah — the “we” discussing these stories: Joshua Johnson, KQED News morning anchor; Queena Kim, host of KQED’s The California Report; and yours truly, blogger and chief bottle washer for KQED’s News Fix blog.

Someone with a lot more on the ball than me once described the U.S. Constitution as “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

And that’s germane here because what we’re unveiling is an experiment just a little less ambitious than the Constitution: an unscripted, more free-form approach to discussing the week’s key Bay Area and California news. KQED morning newscaster Joshua Johnson, The California Report’s Queena Kim and I will be chatting about key stories each week, trying to get to some of the details we don’t have time for during our daily newscasts.

This week, we’re talking drought — more specifically, about this week’s court decision on “conservation” water rates. And about the ongoing regional debate about reforming police practices. And about the disappearance of San Francisco’s last lesbian bar. Among other things.