We’re back from a week in Oklahoma. A snowstorm in Chicago derailed our flight plans yesterday, forcing a rebooking via Denver and Los Angeles, as well as hours of waiting. It ended up taking 18 hours from our arrival at the airport in Oklahoma City to claiming our bags in Honolulu. Whew.

We didn’t get to Kaaawa until nearly 11 p.m., then had to tend to the cats and throw together a couple of sandwiches before heading to bed. We hope to get back on a regular schedule today and jump back into the world tomorrow.

The Star-Bulletin editorialized today on the issue of campaign contributions and demonstrated once again just how confused the issue has become.

The second paragraph leads off:

The 2005 Democratic Legislature imposed limits of $2,000 – $1,000 during the primary and $1,000 in the general election – in contributions by individuals to a particular candidate.

That is absolutely wrong, as in factually incorrect. It misstates what the law currently provides.

Actually, state law (Section 11-204 HRS) currently provides tiered contribution limits, depending on the office sought, that apply across the board to all “persons”, whether individuals, corporations, or “any other entity”.

Contribution limits are $6,000 to candidates for 4-year statewide offices; $4,000 to candidates for 4-year local offices such as mayor or county council; and $2,000 for 2-year offices such as state representative.

The fact that the state’s second largest daily newspaper can lead off its editorial with this kind of error is quite disappointing, and demonstrates a couple of important points. First, it’s an indication of just how far off track the debate on the issue has gone. And, second, it is an example of where editorial writers are failing to clarify important public issues so that readers can responsibly make up their own minds.

The House draft of HB539 and the accompanying committee report, with amendments made by the Judiciary Committee, have yet to surface. More can be said once it’s clear what the committee has done, and how it frames the intent of those amendments.

With Hawaii’s State Senate preparing to take up a civil unions that has already passed the House, this column from the Seattle Times is right on point.

Perhaps I was paying more attention to oil and gas while in Oklahoma, where they are backyard bread-and-butter issues, but I thought this Associated Press story presents a very good explanation of some of the less obvious aspects of the gasoline story.

The story explains that Texas oil is considered a premium product which normally sells for more than other oil on the world market, but now is substantially cheaper than foreign oil. But although it’s now less expensive, it isn’t available to much of the U.S. market because pipelines to move it to other parts of the country don’t exist.

Historically, West Texas International crude has cost more. So nobody bothered building the necessary pipelines to carry it beyond the nearby refineries in the Midwest, parts of Texas and a handful of other places.

Now that the premium oil is suddenly very inexpensive, refiners elsewhere can’t get their hands on it.

“It’s so cheap,” said Lynn Westphall, the senior VP of external affairs at San Antonio-based Tesoro, which owns a half dozen refineries on the West Coast and Hawaii. “But you can’t just build a pipeline to everywhere. We know we can’t get it.”

Tesoro’s refineries in North Dakota and Utah use locally drilled oil and Canadian oil, which also has been running about $10 more per barrel than West Texas crude.

So why not build more pipelines? Because investing billions of dollars over several years makes no sense when the prices could just flip a year from now to where they were before.

Despite the jet lag and 18 hours spent yesterday in and out of airports and planes, we were out of bed this morning and down to the beach as the sun rose.

This was Sunday morning at Swanzy Beach Park.

A long way from Oklahoma, indeed.