Big Island pacifist activist Jim Albertini called my attention to the agenda and supporting information for an item on the agenda of the Board of Land and Natural Resources meeting on Thursday.

Tucked away down in item K-3 regarding an alleged conservation district violation at the Kawaihae small boat harbor is this paragraph in the supporting staff submittal:

A small boat harbor had been planned since 1963, and as an interim measure, small boats were allowed to moor on the South side of the Deep Draft harbor. The South Kawaihae Small Boat Harbor entrance channel and 850-foot West breakwater was constructed as part of Operation Tugboat by the U.S. Army Engineer Nuclear Cratering Group and completed in December 1970. As part of Operation Tugboat, the Army utilized nuclear explosives to create a channel 150 to 260 feet wide at a minimum water depth of 12 feet. Approximately 33 acres of coral reef was destroyed while creating the Small Boat Harbor. [emphasis added]

This certainly needs some clarification. Did staff find information in DLNR files to substantiate the claim that nuclear weapons were used? I’ve seen other references to this project that describe it as using conventional explosives, and I recall that, in that time frame, the military was using conventional explosives to simulate small nuclear blasts and examine the craters that were created.

Hopefully the question will be asked before or during Thursday’s meeting.

Let’s see. A press release from MPA, formerly known as the Magazine Publishers Association, says advertising revenue rose in 2010 after several years of decline.

The consumer magazine media industry capped a strong 2010 by generating an increase of 3.1% in rate-card-reported revenue for the year, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). It was the first time the industry had a full-year revenue increase since 2007.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, consumer magazines recorded a 4.2% revenue increase and a 3.5% page gain compared to 2009’s fourth quarter. It was the third quarter in a row that consumer magazines posted gains in both pages and revenue.

PIB revenue closed the year totaling $20,083,795,460, generating a 3.1% increase against the same January-to-December period in 2009.

I wonder if newspapers are seeing the same trend?

Meanwhile, a Colorado Congressman has introduced a bill to cut off funding for public broadcasting, including NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And Public Citizen calls attention to a Pennsylvania court case upholding First Amendment protections for anonymous online speech.

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania’s ruling this week that a city council president should not be able to learn the identities of her anonymous online critics without meeting strict criteria is the right decision and is a standard that other courts should follow.

If someone wants to use a subpoena to identify his critics, he must first ensure that the critics have notice of the subpoena, then prove that the statements were false and harmful. And even then, the court should consider whether the anonymous critics’ interest in staying anonymous outweighs the plaintiff’s interest in pursuing the lawsuit, the court said.

This ruling agrees with the approach taken by state appellate courts in such states as Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Arizona, while disagreeing with appellate rulings in such states as Delaware, Texas and the District of Columbia, which demand only evidence supporting the claim but not a balancing of the equities.

I wonder how Atomic Monkey would have fared in this kind of balancing test?