A correction is in order regarding Ka Leo’s report on the theft of Congressman Neil Abercrombie’s car in Manoa.

The “facts” reported by Ka Leo “were not all correct,” according to Captain Don Dawson, current chief of security at the UH Manoa campus.

UH Campus Security knew about the car being parked at College Hill. Mrs. Ambercrombie reported the car stolen to Campus Security who in turned call HPD.

Once HPD were involved they were able to learn that the car had been abandoned at Ward Center. The Ward security tagged the car as abandoned, and had it towed a few days before it was actually reported stolen. It seems that car had been missing a couple of days before the Ambercrombie’s discovered that fact.

While clarifying the circumstances of the theft and subsequent towing, this account still leaves questions about the arrangement for the long-term parking on UH property at College Hill.

In any case, speaking of Neil, a slew of people, including former governor Ben Cayetano, forwarded the link to a poll reported by Daily Koz showing Congressman Neil Abercrombie leading Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann in a “what if the election were held today” poll.

The Research 2000 Hawaii Poll was conducted from June 15 through June 17, 2009. A total of 600 likely voters who vote regularly in state elections were interviewed statewide by telephone.

Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers. A cross-section of exchanges was utilized in order to ensure an accurate reflection of the state. Quotas were assigned to reflect the voter registration of distribution by county.

The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 4% percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the “true” figure would fall within that range if the entire population were sampled. The margin for error is higher for any subgroup, such as for gender or party affiliation.

NOTE: There was an over sample conducted among Democratic primary voters totaling 400. The margin of error is 5%.

Governor Democratic primary matchup:
Neil Abercrombie 42%
Mufi Hannemann 22%
Undecided 36%

The poll also found both Neil & Mufi with strong leads in head-to-head contests against Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona, the presumptive Republican candidate in the gubernatorial race.

Another story forwarded to me analyzes the internal struggle within the American Psychological Association over the role of psychologists in harsh questioning (a.k.a. “torture”) of U.S. military detainees with focus on the role of Senator Dan Inouye’s Chief of Staff Pat DeLeon, a former president of APA.

One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick Deleon, has long been active in the APA and served a term in 2000 as APA president. For significant periods of time DeLeon has literally directed APA staff on federal policy matters and has dominated the APA governance on political matters. For over twenty-five years, relationships between the APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon.

I’m a little wary of the politics and spin of this narrative, especially given the apparently extremely tightly planned release from a variety of directions, and would like to take a little time to compare this to other accounts of the policy debate within APA. But it’s interesting nonetheless, even if not to be accepted as the “truth” of the matter.

A bit more background on the author and his role in the APA debate will be needed to assess the argument.