The End Is Near: Jimmy Swaggart’s Judgment...

The End Is Near: Jimmy Swaggart’s Judgment Day may come sooner than he thinks. Three years after Swaggart’s tearful confession of sin, a judge in Baton Rouge, La., may decide if the televangelist has to pay the $213,500 that seven stations and a contractor claim he owes them. Swaggart is selling off ministry land to raise money.

Smart?: Jurors Monday viewed the condominium in Derry, N.H., where a young man was shot to death allegedly in a plot hatched by his wife so she could further her affair with a teen-ager at the school where she worked. Pamela Smart, 23, is charged with plotting her husband’s death with three teen-agers, including her lover. Prosecutors said Smart also wanted to collect on her husband’s life insurance policy.

Book of Rights: Visits to Arizona’s Death Row, to sacred Indian lands and to Ku Klux Klansmen in Kansas City helped Caroline Kennedy put a “human face” on the Bill of Rights. So she and colleague Ellen Alderman pulled together “In Our Defense,” a book that couples the Constitution’s first 10 amendments with people’s problems, causes and rights. “We would like people to realize that the law has a human face, and that (rights problems) could happen to you and that you should know what to do about it if your rights are violated,” Kennedy said.

Eat My Exhaust: General Motors, which claims it is the world’s top vehicle producer, actually gets run over every year. By a toy. Mattel Inc.’s Hot Wheels division recently assembled its one billionth really subcompact car and claims more vehicles off the assembly line than Detroit’s Big Three auto makers combined. But like the big boys, Mattel imports its products after assembling them overseas.