It’s the day referred to as First Crossover at the Legislature, the deadline for any bills to get final approval in the originating body and be sent on for further consideration on the other side of the building. So both House and Senate are taking final action on the rest of the pending bills. If bills haven’t passed by today, they are dead, absent heroic and usually controversial measures to resuscitate them.

The Senate majority blog highlighted a list of bills that have already passed, while the House majority blog called attention to upcoming public hearings on grants-in-aid applications, with the first hearing on Saturday. The hearings are a reaction to stories by Honolulu Advertiser reporter Rob Perez highly critical of the process used to review these grants in the past. So it’s another instance of policy changes stemming from good investigative reporting.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported earlier this week that a state DOT crew over the weekend took down a campaign banner on a roadside fruit stand put up by Senate candidate Ted Hong. He’s a Republican in Democratic territory and believes it was an intentional bit of political game playing. I’m not so sure, but its hard to swallow DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa’s statement that it was “an unintentional mistake”.

Hong is running against Rep. Dwight Takamine for the open Senate seat created by Sen. Lorraine Inouye’s decision to run for Hawaii County mayor. Looks like its going to be a high profile race.

Reported from a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Hilo from Honolulu:

The captain made the normal announcement that the flight was passing Maui (at whatever altitude it was), then added, “I just wanted to let you know that we’re all wide awake up here.”

This drew laughter from local travelers who knew about the recent Go! Airline flight during which the crew fell asleep in the cockpit and flew on past their destination in Hilo.

It’s been a week of fine mornings, and this is another one of our Kaaawa dawns.

We were just a minute or two late and missed the most intense colors, but it was still quite a sight.