It looked like rain, and we carried our umbrellas when we went walking this morning. But the rain never appeared, and we never had to deploy the umbrellas.

A couple of photos follow.

Top photo: It took about 6-8 minutes after sunrise for the sun to break out from behind Koko Head and the layer of clouds along the horizon. A few minutes later, a faint rainbow could be seen ahead, and reflected in the shallow water.

Meanwhile, two updates.

The House Judiciary Committee filed Senate Standing Committee Report No. 295 on SB 686 regarding the legalization of recreational use of cannabis which spells out the committee’s findings.

Your Committee finds that ten states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of cannabis by adults, and that others are in the process of considering legalization. Your Committee further finds that legalization in these states has avoided the criminalization of thousands of people, reduced opioid overdose deaths and untreated opioid use disorders, and lowered the number of arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. Your Committee additionally finds that recent polling indicates broad public support in Hawaii for the legalization of cannabis.

The committee amended SB686 to use the existing network of licensed medical marijuana dispensaries as providers of recreational marijuana, rather than requiring a second, parallel administrative bureaucracy for recreational sales.

You can keep up with progress of the recreational marijuana bill by using this link to its status.

And the House Judiciary Committee recommended that HB1311 be deferred, effectively killing it for now. The bill would have given the Senate veto power over the reappointment of judges and justices. Testimony opposing the bill came from the Judiciary, the board of the Hawaii State Bar Association (which voted unanimously to oppose the measure), the Judicial Selection Commission, Office of the Public Defender, American Judicature Society, League of Women Voters, State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, Japanese American Citizens League, and many other organizations and individuals.

The sharpest criticism of the bill came from Honolulu attorney Tom Farrell, whose testimony traced the legislative attacks on judicial independence back to the case of Nelson v. Dept. of Hawaiian Home Lands, which concerned when the Legislature was complying with the state constitutional provision requiring sufficient funds to be appropriated to the department. The Legislature retaliated with what Farrell calls “a campaign to degrade Hawaii’s judiciary and destroy judicial independence.” This is the fourth year that such bills have been filed.

We know exactly what will happen if our judges have to come before the Senate periodically in order to keep their jobs. If ever there was a living example of why the legislative branch should not be given the power to reconfirm judges, her name is Margery Bronster. She had to come back to the Senate to keep her job when Ben Cayetano was reelected and wanted to keep her as his Attorney General. She had the temerity to take on the Bishop Estate in Ben’s first term, and the Senate refused to reconfirm her in retaliation for it. That’s what we can expect the Senate to do with judges and, over time, the corrosive effect will be that no judge who wants to keep his job will dare to make a politically unpopular decision.

You can review all of the testimony presented to the House Judiciary Committee on HB1311 here.

Anyway, back to Sunday morning calm.