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Editorial

Meadows and obstruction

Here’s a question that might make Sen. Richard Burr smile: When will the N.C. Republican Party censure Mark Meadows? The answer, of course, is never. But that won’t hide the embarrassment that Meadows is for his party or for the state he represented in Congress for seven years. He left Congress in March of 2020 to become President Trump’s White House chief of staff. The North Carolina Republican Party’s Central Committee voted unanimously to censure Burr for voting to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection. History may record that vote as Burr’s ...

Investigating UFOs

A few years ago, it would have drawn jokes and scorn. But given the continuing mystery over what, exactly, U.S. military pilots are seeing in the skies, a congressional proposal to create an “Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office” —” an office to investigate what used to be called UFOs —” makes sense. This is no laughing matter. In 2017, The New York Times reported that the U.S. military was gathering data from pilots who had reported unexplained encounters during their flights. Recently released video of some of those encounters defies conventional explanation —” ...

At the mercy of the storm

The tempest that walloped Maui this past week had old-timers casting back to “The Storm of 1980,” an epic Kona low-pressure system that hovered over the island, battering property, infrastructure and beaches with torrential rains and winds of more than 100 mph. Two men were killed, one when his car was washed into the ocean and another whose Haiku house collapsed. Power was out in some areas for two weeks. West Maui and Kihei were cut off due to washed-out roads. Homes and businesses lost roofs. Thirty boats sunk. Damages were listed at $16 million, which was a fair chunk of ...

Putin and Ukraine

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a long-winded treatise on Ukraine — the country’s history both medieval and modern, its kinship with the Russian Motherland, and its latter-day relations with the West. Mixing truths with half-truths and outright falsehoods, it rested on the dominant theme that the notion of Ukraine as its own nationality, ethnicity, culture and language is a figment, and that Ukrainians and Russians have always been, and always will be, “one people.” The document was more than a monograph in need of a heavy edit. It serves as a veiled ...

Money laundering in dirty industry

Felman Production is one of the few plants in America that produces ferroalloys — amalgamations of iron and other metals — that are essential to the steel-making process. It’s one of those hard, hot and dirty industries that feels like a blast (furnace) from the past, but it is still necessary to having a thriving domestic manufacturing sector. The plant is located in rural Mason County, West Virginia, along the Ohio River between Parkersburg and Point Pleasant. And, according to federal prosecutors, it is the keystone of an international money laundering scheme emanating from ...

A crisis of care

Alongtime Maui resident we know has been trying to find a doctor for nearly two months. Her previous physician retired and the one before that moved away. Though she is hurting and needs help, she has been told time after time that the doctors she would like to see are too busy. The physicians are either not taking new patients or their earliest available appointment is deep into next year. A Physician Workforce Assessment released a year ago by the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine reported that Hawaii was short more than 1,000 doctors. Maui County was ...