Hawaiian Birds In Special Peril

Hawaiian bird lovers have a special reason to vote for a progressive President in 2008. The National Audubon Society reports that, of the 217 threatened American birds listed on their 2007 Watchlist, 39 are native only to the Hawaiian islands.

Right wing politicians lack the resolve to take firm action to confront this crisis. They’re better at coming up with excuses than they are at coming up with solutions. Only a progressive President will permit a concerted government strategy to avert a wave of Hawaiian avian extinction.

(Source: National Audubon Society)

Hawaii ACLU Protects Education Rights of Homeless Children

Sometimes, the value of a progressive organization is relatively abstract, such as in the protection of free speech.  Other times, it is starkly concrete, as in the case of current work of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, which is acting on behalf of the children of homeless families.  The ACLU of Hawaii is working to make sure that these children are given equal access to public education, as is required by the Constitution. 

As we meet with homeless families and social service providers across the state, the number of children who have been or are being denied access to basic public education continues to grow. The State’s blatant violations of federal law have harmed children statewide and must be immediately corrected,” said William Durham of LEJ. “Congress has given the State funds to fulfill an important national mandate. There is no excuse for the State’s negligence – every day that goes by results in more children being denied an education.”The latest round of legal actions includes requests to bar the State from carrying out specific practices that violate federal law such as denying homeless children entrance to school because they lack certain documentation, which has led to children missing school for days and weeks at a time. The State has also failed to provide transportation, which forces families of extremely limited means to fend for themselves and results in children being consistently tardy or absent from school.

Thanks to the ACLU in Hawaii.  When the rights of the least powerful are protected, the rights of the rest of us become stronger as a result. 

Hawaii Humanists To Discuss Repressed Assumptions

The next meeting of Humanists Hawaii will be on Sunday, August 26th, at 10:30 AM, in the room 112 of Krauss Hall at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. At the meeting, speaker Jim Lomont will encourage the examination of unrecognized assumptions that underlie social power structures. The title of his talk will be, Internal Repression among Humanists and other Americans. Repression is, in this sense, internal to the individual, a psychological phenomenon that expresses itself on the shared social scale.

I wonder, though, if one is able to recognize a repressed assumption, whether t can truly be called repressed.

For more information on the program, contact Humanists Hawaii President Andi van der Voort at 261-3452. Also consider volunteering for the position of Program Chair, which is currently vacant.

Why Did Inouye Help Alberto Gonzales?

This August, Hawaiians are scratching their heads, trying to figure out what Senator Daniel Inouye was thinking. In the last hours before the United States Senate’s summer vacation, Senator Inouye abandoned the Democratic majority in order to join the Republican Party in spporting George W. Bush’s plan to give extraordinary new spying powers to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Director of National Intelligence, John Michael McConnell.

It’s a perplexing decision, given that Alberto Gonzales had been exposed as lying to Congress on multiple occasions, and abusing the power of his position as the nation’s top law enforcement official to promote the partisan political interests of the Republican Party. Why on earth would Daniel Inouye reward such outrageous behavior by giving Alberto Gonzales additional powers?

The Protect America Act gives Alberto Gonzales and John Michael McConnell the power to run electronic eavesdropping programs that create an immense dragnet scooping up the private emails, telephone calls, and web activity of American citizens. Essentially, there is no oversight of the spying – not from judges who would ordinarily give search warrants, or from Congress, which is supposed to have the power to conduct oversight of espionage – especially when it is directed against Americans. Only McConnell and Gonzales have the power to ensure that abuses do not occur. They’re given the power by the Protect America Act to be their own supervisors, with no one else able to say no to them.

In fact, the Protect America Act makes it a crime for anybody to deny an order from Alberto Gonzales or John Michael McConnell to join in an electronic spying operation. You can be thrown in prison for refusing their commands. You may not remember when you signed up for the Homeland Security Citizen Spy Brigade, but the Protect America Act doesn’t quibble about such things.

Why would Senator Inouye vote in favor of such a law? Part of the explanation may be that Inouye voted for the law without bothering to read it. After all, the Protect America Act was voted on just two days after being introduced into the Senate.

If that’s not the explanation, then I have no clue why Daniel Inouye would support such an obviously outrageous and unconstitutional law. If you’re one of Senator Inouye’s constituents in Hawaii, why don’t you call his office and ask his staff for an explanation:

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