« The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. »
They say the haze in the city is Sahara desert sand, I think it is pollution, but whatever, maybe it is a metaphor for the visibility we all have, it is never clear.
If you’ve noticed a green-colored flash with the sun on the horizon just after sunset or before sunrise, consider yourself lucky. What causes these brief, rare and colorful spectacles? They’re the result of sunlight being separated into different colors, an optics researcher at the University of Glasgow explains. Live Science has more, including how and where you will more likely to see a green flash at dusk or dawn. https://flip.it/FDQgx2 #Science#Earth#Color#Sun#Scenery#Sunrise#Sunset
The Supreme Court had severely limited the honest services doctrine in #Skilling v. United States, by deciding that the “intangible” right to honest services required a very
👉tangible exchange of money or property from a person to an official for some precise action as part of a bribery or kickback scheme.
And in United States v. #Sun-#Diamond#Growers,
a case with facts eerily reminiscent of those uncovered in recent Supreme Court ethics scandals,
the justices significantly limited the reach of another public corruption law,
the illegal gratuities statute, 18 USC § 201(c), in similar fashion.
In Sun-Diamond Growers, the Court overturned a conviction against a trade association for giving then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy $5,900 in illegal gratuities–including items such as tickets to the 1993 U.S. Open Tennis Tournament and thousands of dollars of luggage and meals.
The unanimous Court interpreted that statute to apply only to situations where officials accept or are given gifts “for or because of some particular official act.”
♦️Until Sun-Diamond, the government could establish an illegal gratuities violation by showing that a gift was based on the official’s position;
♦️but after Sun-Diamond, prosecutors were required to establish a “link between a thing of value conferred upon a federal official and a specific ‘official act’ for or because of which it was given.”
Based on this analysis, gifts or money,
-- even when they’re given by an advocacy organization to an official explicitly in charge of regulating that advocacy group,
-- are not problems in themselves; rather, they only become problematic when they are linked to a very specific set of actions. @panamared27401