Free Republic

Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison said he has moved his primary residence to Hawaii, becoming the latest Silicon Valley executive to depart the state where they built their fortunes. Ellison, the world’s 11th-wealthiest person, notified his staff Monday of the move. Recode first reported the executive’s decision, which followed Oracle’s announcement Friday that it had shifted the company’s headquarters to Austin, Texas, from Redwood City, California. “I’ve received a number of inquiries about whether or not I will be moving to Texas,” Ellison wrote in a memo to Oracle’s employees. “The answer is no. I’ve moved to the State of...

HONOLULU (KHON2) -- A home invasion robbery on Waialae Iki ridge in East Honolulu has left neighbors shaken. HPD says the victims are a husband and wife in their 70's. They were bound with tape while the suspects looted their home. Police are asking residents to take extra precautions, even when at home. It happened Tuesday afternoon just before five o’clock. HPD says there were two male suspects. One had a gun, the other had a knife. Sources say they were able to get in through a bedroom window. Sources say the 76-year-old man who lives in the house on...

Representative Tulsi Gabbard has called on President Donald Trump to pardon National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before he's set to leave office on January 20, 2021. The Hawaii Democrat took to Twitter to highlight her own video message from October 6 and suggested that Trump use his presidential pardon power to grant clemency to the men, both of whom have been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. The president's recent pardon of former national security adviser and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn appears to have prompted Gabbard's comments. Flynn pled guilty to...

Officials in Honolulu have granted the developers of a luxury, oceanfront estate tied to Barack Obama a major exemption from environmental laws designed to protect Hawaii’s beaches. The shoreline permit, issued by Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting on Monday, clears the way for the controversial multimillion dollar renovation of a century-old seawall in the heavily Native Hawaiian community of Waimanalo. Under state and county laws, such projects are typically banned. Scientists and environmental experts say seawalls are the primary cause of beach loss throughout the state, and officials expect older ones to fall into obsolescence. But the property owners,...

Statewide mask mandate could mean immediate fines for violators HONOLULU (KHON2) — As the state moves toward passing a statewide mask mandate, there’s also a push to change the law so that violators are issued a fine on the spot rather than having to appear in court. State Attorney General Clare Connors says that it would be easier to enforce the mask mandate if law enforcers can issue a fine to violators right away, similar to a parking violation. But that means the state legislature has to change the law, either through a special session or next year’s legislative session....

The state Constitution says emergency proclamations expire after 60 days, but Hawaii now is in its eighth month of lockdown. Groups nationwide have filed lawsuits against the coronavirus emergency orders declared by their governors. Some have been successful. But what about Hawaii, whose governor just yesterday extended his state-of-emergency proclamation by another month, till the end of November? Can Hawaii’s seemingly interminable state lockdown, first ordered in March, ever be overturned in court? The Grassroot Institute webinar held Friday, Oct. 23, discussed the trends of lawsuits across the nation and whether they offer any hope for Hawaii. Our special guests...

California would have the highest marginal state and local tax rate, at 62.64%, according to an analysis by leading free-market think tank the Tax Foundation. After California would be Hawaii at 60.34%, New Jersey at 60.09%, Oregon at 59.24% and Minnesota at 59.19%. New York City would have a 62.03 top rate and Washington, D.C., would have a 58.29 top rate...The foundation said that Biden’s tax plan does not repeal the SALT deduction cap...

Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono said “hell no” while casting her vote against Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the floor of the U.S. Senate. A Republican-majority Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by a 52-48 margin Monday night. While the roll-call vote was being conducted, Hirono could be seen walking up to the table and entering her vote against Barrett by saying “hell no” while putting her thumb down. WATCH:

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, asked a question pertaining to an issue that came up quite a bit during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing but had yet to come up during Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing: whether the Supreme Court nominee had ever sexually assaulted someone. Citing a statement from Chief Justice John Roberts in 2017 in which he acknowledged that the judiciary “is not immune” from the problem of sexual misconduct, Hirono said it is her duty “to ensure the fitness of nominees” for positions that have lifetime appointments.

the impact of mandated shutdowns ... In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, widespread lockdown restrictions were imposed, ostensibly to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed and medical resources from being consumed to exhaustion. Whether policymakers purposely or out of ignorance disregarded them, the tradeoffs of stay-at-home orders were immediate and severe: a massive spike in unemployment, rivaling the Great Depression ... Among Mideast states, New York’s GDP declined the most: 39.3%. .. long-lasting nature of lockdowns on New York City. Yet compared against all other U.S. states, Hawaii and Nevada’s GDP plummeted the most: both by 42.2%. ... artificial economic slowdown...

the U.S. is still far from a full reopening. Many states have put a temporary pause on moving to the next stage of reopening, or have even reversed course and closed certain businesses again due to surges in the disease. In order to determine the states with the fewest coronavirus restrictions, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 17 key metrics. Our data set ranges from whether restaurants are opened to whether the state has required face masks in public and workplace temperature screenings. Read on for the state ranking, additional insight from a panel of...

On 24 September 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal heard the oral arguments in a virtual en banc panel to re-hear the case. The three-judge panel had held the Hawaii law violated the Second Amendment of the Constitution because it did not allow ordinary citizens a way to bear arms outside of the home for self-defense.Screen shot of virtual hearlng of the en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit in Young v. Hawaii. Cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten The Ninth Circuit has established a tradition of re-hearing cases favorable to the Second Amendment and not re-hearing cases which...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii Democrat, has gained support from Republican colleagues in calling for the U.S. government to abandon its criminal cases against Julian Assange and Edward J. Snowden. Along with Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, she introduced a resolution Friday urging the U.S. to drop all charges and efforts to extradite Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, joined the Democrat days earlier by co-sponsoring a similar resolution asking the U.S. to drop its case against Mr. Snowden, who is also wanted for leaking. Mr. Assange, who launched the WikiLeaks website in 2006, and Mr....

Two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they will not meet with Amy Coney Barrett -- President Trump’s pick to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Sen. Blumenthal said he refuses 'to treat this process as legitimate.'

Two former Republican lawmakers wrote an op-ed on Friday explaining why they are supporting Democrat Joe Biden instead of President Trump in November, arguing Trump is "an ill-formed man who lacks basic self-control and shows no semblance of inner character." Former Reps. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) and Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) in an opinion for Roll Call condemned Trump's "childish name-calling, crude behavior and immature narcissism.".... Djou and Edwards said the Democratic presidential candidate is "not a perfect man, but he is a man of humble decency."

Tulsi Gabbard is back, looking splendid as ever. And she's got a cause any sane voter interested in free and fair elections can support, sponsoring a bipartisan bill targeting the odious practice of ballot-harvesting. The Hawaii repreentative's bill, co-sponsored with Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, calls for a witholding of federal funds for states that refuse to ban the practice, where sleazy political operatives target vulnerable voters in their homes and "helpfully" collect their ballots for them, doing what they need to do with make sure the vote goes in the direction of their party with the broken chain of custody before turning the ballots...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has put forward a bipartisan bill aiming to improve the security of vote-by-mail. It proposes to incentivize states to ban ballot harvesting.

The Hawai'i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment. The opinion holds that even if butterfly or “balisong” knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion: The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knives—a relatively obscure weapon—the same way the...

By now, you've heard that streaming video giant Netflix is presenting a film featuring 11-year-old girls in a highly sexualized way. The details of the film are so gross .. ... what do we call the people who defend, promote, or even profit from this garbage? Which brings us to Barack and Michelle Obama. In 2018, they signed a huge, multi-million-dollar production deal with Netflix. Their pal and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice sits on the Netflix board. So far, they are silent on the "Cuties" controversy. And, make no mistake, the controversy has been with us for weeks,...

HONOLULU (KHON2) -- A heavy presence of fire trucks and police could be seen at the Daniel K. Inouye airport just after 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5. Residents nearby have reported hearing sounds of explosions. They said that they saw bright flashes of light that may have been fire coming from an aircraft. Video: Heavy police, HFD presence at Honolulu airport after reports of explosive sounds coming from aircraft According to the Department of Transportation, the aircraft is a military chartered jet that flew out of Hickam Air Force Base. Officials revealed that there was an in-flight emergency aboard...