NPR's Nina Totenberg did a piece this morning on special interest money infiltrating judicial elections, focusing on the recent report from Justice at Stake on this phenomenon and examing contentious races in Alabama and Georgia. Listen and/or read the transcript of the piece here.

Towards the end, a judge has the opportunity to weigh in on his feelings when it comes to campaign cash and judicial elections:

[T]he trend bothers Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, a Republican, who is the nation's longest serving current chief justice.

"Human nature is that we help people if they help us," Moyer said. "And that's the problem with this system."

Judges like to say that money doesn't matter when they are making decisions, but trying to ignore big money in judicial elections, observed one noted judge, is like trying to ignore the crocodile in your bathtub.