Being shocked not always bad

Do we really want to remove Rep. Faye Hanohano?

It is good that she confronts us, showing us our complacency, even if we are shocked and upset.

The "we" includes me and all the ones who come here and know so well what is right.

Also, the bill that seeks to create penalties for harming sharks and rays needs to include an exception for Hawaiian people.

Hanna Heintz
Makiki

Resentment understandable

When I read and hear of Rep. Faye Hanohano’s tirades, I can only look, feel and think of the history of Hawaiians and the overthrow of their monarchy.

The host culture welcomed and treated with generosity all who came to their land.

Hanohano has resentment she can’t shake. That history is forged in her mind.

I see that resentment in the treatment of Native Americans, "Black History" and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and every other event where the world hasn’t been fair and boundaries were crossed.

I don’t condone Hanoha-no’s behavior but I feel, think and know from where it derives.

What we are witnessing is the history of transgressors.

Michael P. Augusta
McCully

Let’s be honest about Hanohano

How unfortunate that state Rep. Calvin Say chose to call state Rep. Faye Hanohano "passionate" instead of "prejudiced."

Let’s be honest.

She does not belong in the state Legislature.

Barbara Krasniewski
Kailua

Hawaiians MIA on palace harm

Where is the outrage over the Iolani Palace vandalism?

Where is the Hawaiian community and its demand for respect for its culture? Why is there only silence? It is a shame that an irreversible cultural atrocity goes quietly into the back pages.

If King Kalakaua were alive today, would he release the vandals, "pending further investigation"? Certainly not.

If the vandalism had been perpetrated by a visitor or a drunken soldier from one of the military bases, this event would have been blown into international news, followed by mobs of protesters and angry demands for immediate justice on a scale that would fit the crime.

Paul A. LaPage
Kahala

Stop protecting smokers’ rights

Every citizen deserves the same protection from second-hand tobacco smoke that is in the bill passed by the House Higher Education Committee, prohibiting smoking on all University of Hawaii premises.

Committee members recognize that there is no safe exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke, anywhere.

Indoors or outdoors, if someone smells tobacco smoke, they’ve inhaled a class A carcinogen, which has no safe level of exposure. This cannot continue.

The only right cigarette smokers have is that of detrimentally impacting their own health, and no one else’s. This means anywhere — parks, beaches, stadiums, street corners.

Our state lawmakers must stop protecting the rights of smokers — who make up less than 20 percent of the population — and fully protect the rights of everyone who breathes.

This means no exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke (or e-cigarette vapor) anywhere.

Jerome Kellner
Kahului

Obama library best in Chicago

It is nonsense to suggest that Barack Obama’s presidential library should be in Hawaii.

That he was born here and attended high school here are tenuous connections indeed.

His political base and initial service to the nation are in Chicago, Ill., which also is his home and the home of his immediate family.

From Massachusetts to California, there are currently 13 presidential libraries. They are highly visited as museums and monuments to the presidents, but they are not just museums. They are repositories of the National Archives and Records Administration, holding historical and political and administrative records of each president.

Access to the libraries should be reasonably available to all.

School children come in droves to visit presidential libraries.

Considering the cost and the distance, how many mainland school children would have the chance to visit the library if it were located in Hawaii?

Norman MacRitchie
Kakaako