Go HERE to find the new blog site as well as archives of some of my previous blogs. Unfortunately, not all the reader comments made the migration, but they remain well-remembered.

Content-wise, the new blog is the same as the old one. Old wine in a new bottle or something like that. So go have a look!

At a dinner the other night during which he was honored by the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, Senior Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye spent a fair amount of time defending, if not bragging about, his record on congressional "earmarks." Those are the special budget items inserted by members, usually in support of projects and programs important to their home districts.

There has been a growing backlash against the earmarking process, fired up mostly by the presidential campaign in which all three major candidates insist they will do away with the process. A number of senators and representatives have joined the bandwagon.

In his remarks, Inouye repeated his well-known claim that many projects vitally important to Hawaii would not survive without the earmarking process. They may be big stuff in the Islands but just don't rise to the top in the regular budget process.

And now, as Washington correspondent Dennis Camire reports, Hawaii's Congressional delegation resolutely declines to say what earmarks it has in mind for the current budget. From a political standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Why would anyone make promises they are not sure they can deliver? It's one thing to over-promise during a campaign, its quite another to position oneself ahead of time in the nitty-gritty of the legislative process.

But there is a growing sense that the delegation will release detailed lists of earmarks once they are approved. It's called transparency, and it is the real cure for suspicions of politics in the process. If every member of Congress produces a complete report on what earmarks were requested and approved, then it is a simple matter for voters to decide whether the money went to good projects or to wasteful pork barrel spending.

Transparency like this is surely a better approach than driving the appropriations game deeper and more secretively into the budget-writing process where politics -- as ever -- reigns supreme.

Republican City Councilman Charles Djou has told friends and supporters he is running for U.S. Congress in 2010 in the district how represented by Democrat Neil Abercrombie. In his letter, Djou sounds as if he has Abercrombie in his sights, declaring Hawaii doesn't need "heated rhetoric." By reputation, if not in fact, Abercrombie is Mr. Heated Rhetoric.

But wait a minute! Who says Abercrombie will even be there in 2010? In fact, that may be part of Djou's thinking.

First, he is term-limited out of his Honolulu Council seat, so he has to do something if he wishes to remain in politics. And Abercrombie has already signaled he might be interested in coming home and running for governor in 2010. Then, too, there is the Barack Obama phenomenon.

If Obama should somehow make it through to the White House, there might be something in the new administration for ardent Obama-backer Abercrombie.

Djou makes a nice contrast to the senior Abercrombie. But bet on this: If Neil is not in the race in 2010, you can be sure the pathway will not be left open for Djou to traipse now alone.

But it became more than clear that, whatever the bill might have accomplished, it fell short of its primary purpose: To put to rest controversy over those ceded lands revenues. Indeed, the mere presence of the bill began to heighten controversy, not still it.

Some Hawaiians felt the amount of money and land in the proposal was not enough. Others were less concerned about the amounts than they were about the possibility that the legislation would stand in the way of future discussions about ceded lands and their revenue should a Hawaiian political entity emerge.

There were strong assurances from the authors that this bill only spoke to past disagreements, not a future discussion between the state and federal government and a Hawaiian entity, should one eventually emerge. But suspicions emerged.

It has become increasingly clear that all these matters: Who owns ceded lands, who is entitled to revenue from them, how much a claim Hawaiians have to the lands or their income and the future political status of Hawaiians are all intertwined. This may never be sorted out until a unified voice, speaking politically for all Hawaiians, finally emerges.

Who knows when that will happen?

(Note: Ceded lands are former Hawaiian government and crown lands --originally around 1.8 million acres on all islands, now somewhat less -- that were ceded in trust to the U.S. government upon annexation and then back in trust to the state upon statehood in 1959. They are supposed to be used for public benefits, including the betterment of Hawaiians. )

Driven in good measure by presidential politics, the Senate took up -- and quickly rejected -- a proposal to ban the process of earmarking, or inserting special spending provisions, into the budget. The vote was 71-29, so clearly a fat majority of senators from both parties see value in the system.

The three major party candidates for president, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain voted for the proposed ban. And no wonder, McCain has made doing away with earmarking a big deal in the Senate and in his presidential campaign. Neither Clinton nor Obama want to be dogged at the heels on this issue should they end up facing McCain.

Hawaii Sens. Daniel Inouye and Dan Akaka voted against the ban. Inouye, in particular, is a skillful user of the earmark process to channel money for a myriad of Hawaii projects, from brown tree snake eradication to support for the East West Center.

And that's why this fight is a bit silly. Most of the criticism of earmarking focuses on projects that are, or at least appear to be, somewhat beneath the Congressional budget process. This is where the Little League parks, museums of the obscure and "bridges to nowhere" sneak in.

But one man's silly is another's serious. Hawaii's leaders like to point out that spending millions to defend against a tiny snake may seem silly to someone from rattlesnake country, like McCain, Not so silly for someone who has seen the destruction left by these snakes on Guam.

Yes, earmarking is "political,"but then so too is the entire Congressional budget process. The plain fact is that most of the earmarked items, important as they might be, are too parochial to get heard in the regular budget. If they are wasteful or unneeded, point that out and eliminate them. But otherwise, the politics is about making a huge fuss over the process when there is so much more to talk about.