Dorothy Samuels, a member of The New York Times Editorial Board, has some trenchant observations about who contributes to to judicial campaigns. In the Tuesday, April 15 edition of The New York Times, she writes,

"The perception that money is corrupting the courts would be damaging enough. But often, it seems, special interests are finding that buying up judges likely to side with them in big-dollar cases is a good investment. . ."

Later in the editorial she outlines the West Virginia State Supreme Court's (mis)handling of a case involving Massey Energy:

"In West Virginia, meanwhile, the State Supreme Court’s handling of a case involving a large coal company, Massey Energy, took on a decidedly farcical flavor. For the second time, the appellate court threw out a $50 million verdict against Massey.

The court decided to rehear the case after photographs publicly surfaced of its chief justice, Elliott Maynard, vacationing in Monte Carlo with Massey’s chief executive, Don Blankenship, in 2006, while the matter was pending in the Supreme Court. The chief justice disqualified himself from the rehearing. So did another justice, Larry Starcher, because he had publicly criticized Blankenship and his company. The 3-to-2 outcome in favor of Massey was unchanged from the first round, which might not have been noteworthy except that the deciding vote was cast once again by Justice Brent Benjamin, who declined to recuse himself despite owing his election to the court to more than $3 million spent by Mr. Blankenship."

Samuels offers a solution from a report by the Brennan Center for justice: stronger recusal rules.

See the complete editorial at
Link...

The earthquake Friday woke is up. A precarious table rattled at 5:40. Anybody else in Blount County? We are far from the epicenter and none of the news that I have seen mentions this area as being involved.

The software, Cartes du Ciel (or Sky Charts) is a fun tool for amateur astronomy.
Available at Link... for free.
You set it up for location with the icon that looks like an observatory.
For Maryville you can use the location of an overlook on the Foothills parkway: N 35° 37.594', W 83° 57.079', Alt. 2406
Use the icon that looks like a clock to set the time. Here in the eastern time zone we are at -4 hours (for Easter Daylight Time)offset from Universal Time.

The big image above is for May 4th facing south at about 10:00 PM
Some easy and familiar star patterns are given names and are called asterisms Link.... They include Orion the hunter who is just setting in the west. Three bright stars make up his belt. Next Gemini, the twins, up and to our left of Orion. Two bright stars mark the heads of the twins and roughly parallel rows of stars descend below towards the west, south west, horizon. Gemini has a wandering visitor this month, the red planet Mars. Mars is marked on the chart with a circle and a projecting arrow. To the south rests the regal Leo- lion and king of beasts. His mane and the bright start at his heart are usually the easiest stars to see in the lion's part of the sky. They look like a big reverse question mark. However, the presence of Saturn near the usually more solitary star at the bottom of the question mark confuses the lion's shape slightly. To the east is a very bright and red star, Arcturus. It can be found by "arcing along the handle of the big dipper towards the south"

From Link...

Arcturus is a ged giant star. Our sun may become like this in about 5 Billion years. One day our very atoms may be touched by the sun!
The moon is nearly full just now and is challenging the stars, but on any clear night the Heaven above Earth can be enjoyed.
Amateure astronomy is even better in person... Link...

Forrest Erickson