Do as I say: Attorney General Mark Shurtleff believes everyone on his legal team should agree with him and follow his orders. We understand that philosophy as it applies to his own staff, but his decision to "deputize" the two attorneys hired by the State Board of Education doesn't mean he can demand the same of them. When Jean Hill and Carol Lear disagreed with Shurtleff on whether the state school board should implement a flawed private-school voucher law, he cut off their "deputy" status. That doesn't seem to bother them much, and it shouldn't. They don't work for Shurtleff and never did.

Star-struck: Cindy Foote, an amateur astronomer from Kanab, was part of a team of star-gazers who confirmed the discovery of two exoplanets, which orbit stars other than the sun. The team nailed down the discovery by taking precise measurements of starlight which dims when an exoplanet passes between its star and the Earth. Wow. We knew that the night skies in southern Utah were spectacular, but using them to advance science is, uh, out of this world. But science, even for amateurs, doesn't come cheap. Foote used a research-grade, 16-inch telescope made by the company she owns with her physicist husband, Jerry. The price: $45,000.

Voices heard: State archaeologists didn't mince words when explaining how seven Native American men and boys died 154 years ago. So that, as archaeologist Ronald Rood put it, "the voices of the seven dead people can be a part of the record," he reported that the seven were executed, most likely by Mormon pioneers seeking revenge for an ambush in which four white men died. Ironically, those executed probably were not involved in the ambush. Bones of the dead were accidentally uncovered in downtown Nephi. The archaeologists and a forensic anthropologist laboriously studied them so we can know the sad truth. History laid bare is always better than history left hidden.