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(Murray KY, September 5, 2012) - The Clean Water Act, passed back in 1972, turns forty this year. Like most reaching middle age, the Act is getting a little gray and maybe a tiny bit behind the times, but the Act (known as CWA) is still relevant.

The Clean Water Act is in for a birthday celebration in Murray in October. There will be cake and punch, funny hats, candles and speeches and panels. It's time to celebrate a law that has kept US drinking water safe, allowing Americans to enjoy a benefit that is not worldwide. Potable water is becoming scarcer as desertification takes place across Africa and Asia. Populations, human and animal, are moving to find drinking water.

(August 31, 2012) - On this date in 1862, the Confederate flag fluttered over Frankfort, the only capital of a loyal state captured in the Civil War.

The Unionist government was gone. Gov. James F. Robinson and the General Assembly were safely in Louisville.

Moderately pro-Southern, Magoffin had resigned on Aug. 18, 1862. He had been at odds with the Unionist legislature since the start of the secession crisis that preceded the war. Not until Aug. 16, 1862, did Magoffin hint he might step down, and only then “provided a successor is chosen to suit him, but not otherwise,” Lewis and Richard Collins wrote in their History of Kentucky.

Magoffin, a Democrat, was elected in 1859. He was fiercely pro-slavery and believed states had the ultimate right to secede. But he was unwilling to lead Kentucky out of the Union like Kentucky-born Missouri Gov. Claiborne F. Jackson tried unsuccessfully to do in the Show Me State.