Context on judicial selection

Your paper recently ran a reprint from The Wall Street Journal claiming Missourians are unhappy with our process for selecting judges to our high courts. You've also run a letter and a column from Stan Grimm, a distinguished local jurist.

Unfortunately, your readers are not provided the context. When Missouri lifted all caps for political contributions in 2008, some interesting characters showed up. One of them is David Humphreys in Joplin (who by the way was the first to trash Peter Kinder in his recent "troubles").

Humphreys funds Show-Me Better Courts, whose modest goal is to take over the judicial selection process by returning to partisan elections, in which process he no doubt intends to be both active and generous. The interesting argument on this group's website is that we should have partisan elections because voters don't pay enough attention to recall elections.

Humphreys has also hired Nathan Sprowl, a professional political hit man out of Arizona. Sprowl is no Donald Segretti, but he works with New Times newspaper in Arizona to do his dirty work. New Times owns The Riverfront Times in St. Louis, the paper that broke/got fed the Kinder scandal. So did Kinder say "no" to Humphreys? No one's talking. But when a distinguished jurist has one view of an independent judiciary, and the other side hires dirty tricksters; the path for Missourians paints itself. Besides, who are these Missourians who are unhappy with judges who can't be bought? Know anyone?

JOSH BILL, Sikeston, Mo.