Would the early release of about a third of Calfornia’s more than 150,000 prison inmates affect public safety?

That is the question before a three-judge federal panel now weighing a lawsuit claiming that conditions in the state’s 33-facility prison system are unconstitutionally dangerous. Filed on behalf of sick and mentally ill inmates, the suit contends that overcrowding means inmates are not getting the care they desperately need and to which they are legally entitled.

To the casual reader, saving the Groveland Physical Therapy clinic might have seemed like an effortless, fortuitous combination of luck and coincidence: A private provider came forward to assume operation from Tuolumne County, and the Board of Supervisors found enough cash to keep the clinic running until she could take over.

So one more bullet dodged, a sigh of relief, and life south of the river goes on?