According to a S-B story this morning, the Stop Rail Now folks say they’re going back to court to argue against the city’s requirement that they have about 44,000 signatures to get their question on the ballot.

Stop Rail Now contends it needs about 30,000 signatures, an amount equal to 10 percent of the number of votes actually cast in the last mayoral election.

“We’ll try to get the court to reconsider or get a final judgment to go to the Supreme Court,” Partington said yesterday. “It says very clearly that we only need 10 percent of the voters that voted in the last general mayoral election, not 10 percent of those registered.”

Clearly? When I looked up the relevant provision of Honolulu’s City Charter, this is what I found:

Section 3-402. Procedure for Enactment and Adoption –
1. Petition. An ordinance may be proposed by petition, signed by duly registered voters equal in number to at least ten percent of the total voters registered in the last regular mayoral election.

So where is the confusion? I really don’t know.

Could this be true? Attorney Mike Nauyokas, on Howard Dicus’ PBS Hawaii program last night, said the Honolulu Advertiser layoffs were made while there was no contract in place because the existing contract expired last year.

That’s contrary to my understanding that the Advertiser has been operating under an extension of the prior contract, a extension provided by a contract clause.

I don’t think the Hawaii Newspaper Guild and the other ‘Tiser unions would be so mellow if there were no contract in place.

I’ve emailed Nauyokas for clarification and hope to have a reply soon.

Now that Sen. Biden has been selected as Obama’s vp, things may be a bit more active in our hotel way down in Littleton, where the delegations from Hawaii, Arkansas, and Delaware will be staying.

My sister is sending me off to Denver with the name of my cousin’s son, who is believed to be a Denver police officer. I have never met the man, and hopefully I won’t have an occasion to seek him out next week.

On the other hand, a comment here yesterday by Larry Geller linked to a story noting Denver’s police have been advised to keep an eye out for people with potential terrorist materials such as maps (guilty!) because they are “frequently used by violent protester [sic] to plan direct actions against conventioneers.”

From the blog Fire Dog Lake, a few more questions about Orson Swindle.

If you missed yesterday’s long profile of Obama and his Hawaii roots by David Maraniss, read it now.

The piece takes a bit of thunder away from the new book by Jerry Burris and Stu Glauberman, “The Dream Begins: How Hawaii Shaped Barack Obama”, being issued by Watermark Publishing.

Burris is scheduled to sign copies of their books next week at the convention, according to a press release from the publisher.

Jerry Burris, Hawai‘i’s foremost political analyst and co-author of The Dream Begins: How Hawai‘i Shaped Barack Obama, a new book that examines the impact of Hawai‘i’s unique culture on Obama, will sign advance copies of the September release at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colo. A limited number of copies will be sold, with Burris on hand to sign them, at the Denver Convention Center on August 28, from 11 A.M. until noon. The book signing booth will be located across from the convention center’s main merchandise sales area.

The word from Manoa is that UH has outsourced campus towing services, according to an email notice from the UHM Parking Office.

The Parking Office has closed the impound lot at 1980 East-West Road. Beginning with the Fall 2008 semester, all campus towing will be sent to an off campus site managed by a towing vendor. The University will not be involved with the towing process once the vendor has taken control of the vehicle. The Parking Office will utilize more boots to immobilize illegally parked vehicles on the upper campus.

At the same time, several parking zones have been consolidated and the so-called “overflow” system, that a back-up if your assigned zone was full, has been eliminated.

It sounds like there are going to be some surprised students (and faculty, most likely) next week who will rudely discover that they’ve got to bail out their cars from an off-campus tow lot run by a surly contractor.

I fly out this evening to Denver with a stop on the west coast. I’ll do tomorrow’s entry while I’m waiting in LAX between flights, and will tweet from time to time where possible. Here we go!