One cannot help but marvel over how a change of seasons can change one’s perspective on photography. Justice Larry Starcher’s for instance.

In January, Starcher was so jacked about vacation pictures of the chief justice, he burned the phone lines on his state-issued cell phone in chats with High Court candidate Menis Ketchum and the incoming honcho of the state’s personal injury bar.

Now, according to the Gazette’s Phil Kabler, Starcher is suddenly camera shy, ducking the annual group photo of the tribunal. A memo Starcher authored, perhaps on the same computer in which he exchanged e-mails with another Supreme Court candidate, explains his “rationale” for the cop out: a rationale that since he was snubbed for the Chief Justice title last year, he was snubbing back.

Even Kabler raised eyebrows over Starcher’s “holding a grudge” and the weirdly-composed third-person point-of-view of the memo. In the end, this may have been Larry’s immature attempt to participate in Justice Robin Davis’ pet project: Year of the Child.

This morning, the Charleston Gazette clearly mischaracterized the circumstances surrounding the 2004 state Supreme Court election. In its editorial on ugly campaigning, the Gazette attempted to downplay the fact that former Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw voted for a plan which would have released a convicted sex offender and placed him to work in a local high school. A court of law later found the telivision advertisements that the Gazette complains of to be factually true.

Click here to read the opinion for yourself!

Also, check out Justice Robin Davis’ critical dissent in the case.