Meda got as far as Denver before United announced a mechanical problem on her connecting flight to D.C. Now it isn’t clear when she’ll manage to get to Washington, but it will almost certainly be considerably later than scheduled. It’s a lot of travel for a 1-day meeting, but such are the ways of federal projects. Meanwhile, I’m at home getting rousted early by the restless cats.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks violent right-wing groups, reports that “Hawaii has a racism problem“, citing examples of violence and threats against haole visitors and residents. The long report appears in the group’s latest “Intelligence Report” along with a feature article on the resurgence of the “Patriot” movement. This is not good company to keep.

The group accuses the state government of minimizing the problem by essentially ignoring hate crimes.

Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn’t begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools.

The report of Hawaii racism is already being noticed by blogs like Instapundit.com.

A coalition of unions representing employees of the University of California system are sponsoring a statewide “no confidence” vote in UC President Mark Yudof.

resident Yudof created the plan that will require most employees to take 4 to 10% cuts in pay in the form of work furloughs, amounting to $184 million in cost savings. At the same time, President Yudof and the regents quietly approved dozens of executive raises and created several new, highly paid positions. In addition, UC agreed to lend the state nearly $200 million so the state could give it back to UC for construction projects at eight of ten campuses. There is something terribly wrong when new buildings and executive salaries are a higher priority than education and research.

Would I be surprised to see a faculty move to censure the leadership of UH Manoa for failing to vigorously defend the university against the huge budget cuts being imposed by Gov. Lingle? Short answer: Not at all.

And my old friend Chuck Smith (“old” referring to the friendship, not his age) looks at the election in Japan and asks, “Could a viable third-party emerge in the U.S.?” He answers in the affirmative. Check it out.