Reading sometimes helps

In an hourlong interview at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor, Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi commented that President Barack Obama "is a president that we know less about than any other president in history."

Asked to elaborate, Barbour, who has presidential ambitions, said, "There’s just not much known about him, in college or growing up, you know, we don’t know any chop down the cherry tree, we don’t know any of the childhood things we know about Ronald Reagan."

Reminded of the 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," in which Obama wrote of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and his college years at Occidental College and Columbia Uni- versity, Barbour said he had not read it.

Speak out before too late

The window of opportunity to comment on the city’s mammoth settlement of the sewage-treatment dispute will close Wednesday.

All the relevant documents are available online at www.justice.gov/enrd/3284.htm. To submit an official comment, write Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division at pubcomment-ees.enrd@usdoj.gov. Include a reference to: United States of America and State of Hawaii v. City and County of Honolulu, D.J. Ref. 90-5-1-1-09981.

That’s a mouthful, though not nearly as tough to swallow as the $4.7 billion all this will cost.