San Bernardino Press MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2014 - JANUARY 4, 2015
sanbernardinopress.com
Leondra Kruger Becomes Youngest Supreme Court Judge in 100 Years By JENNIFER SCHLUETER Last Monday, Leondra Kruger was unanimously approved as the youngest justice of the California Supreme Court in almost a century. The 38-year old had been nominated by Governor Jerry Brown in November, and will be sworn into office by him on January 5, along with Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who was confirmed as justice in August. Cuellar will replace retiring Justice Marvin Baxtor and Kruger will fill Justice Joyce Kennard’s seat, who had retired in April. Kruger was appointed by California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye; Attorney General Kamala Harris; and Joan Dempsey Klein, “presiding justice of the second appellate district division three,” who rated her “‘exceptionally well-qualified,’ [which is] the highest ranking a judicial candidate can receive,” according to Courthouse News. Patch.com quoted former Assistant U.S. Solicitor General Benjamin Horwich, who had worked with Kruger: “She listens, she thinks, she listens, she thinks and then she listens some more.” Cantil-Sakauye, chair of the San Francisco-based court,
“called Kruger’s credentials ‘truly stellar,’” according the website. Following an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a law degree from Yale University, Kruger worked as an assistant law professor at the University of Chicago, and practiced privately. The website also reported that she then went to Washington, D.C., where she became “assistant to the U.S. solicitor general and acting principal deputy solicitor general,” and later deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Kruger was born and raised in Glendale; however, has never practiced law in California nor been a judge. Thus, CantilSakauye questioned Kruger about these two lacking fields to which Kruger answered that her work with the Justice Department has exposed her to a variety of legal principles and that she hopes to continue learning and “draw on the expertise of her colleagues on the court,” as Patch notes. According to the LA Times, Kruger told California Attorney General Kamala Harris that she was excited “to have the op-
study by scientists from the San Bernardino County Museum. The Tule Springs site in the upper Las Vegas Wash has long been known to contain fossils of dating to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch – the “Ice Ages”. But most early studies in the region focused on finding proof of Ice Age humans. When this evidence never materialized, studies ceased, and the area lay fallow for
BBQ food truck goes brick and mortar By Vickie Vértiz
decades. Eric Scott, San Bernardino County Museum curator of paleontology and Kathleen Springer, the museum’s curator of geological sciences, recognized the paleontologic and geologic potential of the region. Over two decades, under permit from the Las Vegas District office of the Bureau
Many food trucks aspire to turn their businesses into permanent events. In San Bernardino, the steady flow of ravenous customers flocking to downtown farmers market and to food truck festivals convinced at least one owner to open a lasting space. According to the San Bernardino Sun, the owners of Smoke’em if you Got’em BBQ are planning a “downtown brick-and-mortar restaurant” to open next year. Owner Jeff McCurdy spoke to the Sun and said that the goal is to open in summer, although it’s not definite and they haven’t found the perfect storefront yet. “We’ve had huge success on food truck days,” McCurdy he said to the paper last week during the latest Third Thursday Food Fest. “And more and more people on regular Thursdays, so I think we could get a good mid-morning-to-late-lunch crowd down here.” Every Thursday, McCurdy and other vendors sell food at the Court Street Square for the San Bernardino Downtown Farmshare and Market, which is a partnership with Chris Peterson of the Smokey Pits BBQ. The paper also spoke to market staff manager Sandra Olivas who said that the event has gone on nearly every Thursday since July, with solid business results. The only exceptions include the next two Thursday which happen to fall on Christmas and the first day of the new year. Business really picks up on the third Thursday of every month, said the paper, “when
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Leondra Kruger
-Courtesy Photo
portunity to come back home” to California. “It is where I was born and raised and where my family still lives,” she added. On the seven member court, Kruger will be one of three Democrats. Additionally, she will be the only African American member. Her colleague Cuellar, a law Professor at Stanford University, who also went to Harvard and Yale, will be the only Latino justice. He grew up in a border town in Mexico and, according to several sources, legally walked across the border every day to attend school on a scholarship in Texas. After his father was granted green cards, Cuellar became a citizen in 1994.
County Museum Research Informs New National Monument America’s newest national monument was signed into law on December 19, 2014. Located north of Las Vegas, Nevada, the newly-designated Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument is the first national monument in America dedicated to fossils from the Ice Ages, and the nation’s first such monument in an urban setting. The new designation marks the culmination of years of
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