Bench press: Hawaiʻi Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins generated national attention last month when he accused the U.S. Supreme Court of, among other things, racism and “white sight.”

Eddins, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice Vladimir Devens and Justice Sabrina McKenna, argued that Hawaiʻi’s constitution, with its stronger due process protections, takes precedence over the U.S. Supreme Court’s version of due process when it comes to Hawaiʻi. He used eight pages of a 91-page opinion in a criminal case to lambaste the six conservative SCOTUS justices for, among other things, diluting black votes, “blessing discrimination” and reducing governance to partisan politics.

The unusually strong pushback against the nation’s highest court drew the attention of the national legal community, including the conservative (often referred to as right wing) think tank America First Policy Institute, which was founded about five years ago by refugees from the Trump administration.

The institute is astounded and appalled that three jurists out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would deign to basically tell SCOTUS to go, well, you know what.

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Now the institute is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to discipline the three Hawaiʻi justices for their uppity behavior. Earlier this month, in a letter to SCOTUS, the research institute asks the court to order Eddins, Devens and McKenna to show cause why disciplinary action should not be taken.

“In those approximately eight pages, the Hawaii justices wrote what reads as a sweeping attack on the integrity of the United States Supreme Court and its justices over multiple opinions of the Court bearing no relation to the subject of postconviction relief or false evidence under Hawaii law,” the letter asserts.

“The message conveyed by the Hawaii justices is wholly transparent: this Court’s rulings are illegitimate and should not be followed, and the justices who wrote them acted out of corrupt or bigoted motives,” the letter says.

“Corrosive rhetoric like this collapses the line between disagreement and defiance,” the institute goes on to argue. “Once this Court’s decisions are branded deliberate instruments of racism and partisan corruption, political approval displaces constitutional duty as the measure of compliance. Hawaii justices authoring or joining (the opinion) essentially invite litigants, officials, and other judges to defy this Court whenever they deem one of its rulings similarly illegitimate.”

No word from the high court on what it will do — or not.

Are our three justices worried they might get taken to the woodshed by the high court? The Sunshine Blog asked court officials for comment but they never got back to us with an answer.

Post-mortem policing: Remember the guy from Georgia who was a finalist for Honolulu police chief who insisted he was not under investigation and didn’t know what we were talking about when Civil Beat reporters asked him about it?

Well, it’s official. Scott Ebner was in fact not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Glynn County officials have finally sent reporter Madeleine Valera the records she’d requested about Ebner, who’d been the county police chief there. As she reported back in May — while the Honolulu Police Commission was making its choice about who should run the city’s police department — Ebner had been under investigation for months over allegations he’d engaged in inappropriate conduct with Stephanie Oliver, an assistant chief whom he had promoted.

“That’s not the case,” Ebner told us when asked every which way we knew how about whether he was being investigated.

By then, as we had confirmed and included in the story, someone had filed an anonymous complaint about his relationship with the assistant chief and the county had hired an outside investigator to conduct an investigation. Months before Ebner showed up in Honolulu to interview for the police chief job he — and more than a dozen other police and county employees — had been interviewed by the investigator.

In a memo dated July 16 to the county attorney, the investigator, Sharon Morgan, concluded: “the investigation did not produce direct evidence of a romantic or sexual relationship between the two individuals, and by extension that any County funds were used to facilitate any such relationship.”

So yay. But why didn’t Ebner just say yes, but there’s nothing to it? Sleeping with your assistant chief would not be good but lying about an investigation is worse.

Other questions that remain unanswered: why didn’t the search firm hired by the Honolulu Police Commission to vet candidates figure out there was an investigation (it had been reported in a local news site)? And why did it take Glynn County nearly a year to release a report on the investigation?

Looks like he’ll still get a chance to explain what happened in Georgia. He’s a finalist for the police chief job in Sioux City, Iowa, although now it appears the city council there doesn’t like either of the two finalists and is considering starting the search all over again.

And then there were two: As expected, the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi is backing newly appointed Sen. Danielle Bass as its pick to run in a special election Nov. 3 for the Senate District 18 seat recently vacated by longtime Sen. Michelle Kidani.

Unfortunately, Kidani, who has been ill for some time, did not step down soon enough to allow voters to pick their choices in a primary election. The seat generally represents Mililani Town, Waipi‘o Gentry, Crestview and Waikele.

Instead, Gov. Josh Green picked Bass to fill in temporarily and now the parties (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and Green) each name a candidate to run in the special election which coincides with the November general election. A nonpartisan contender will be chosen by lottery and will also be on the ballot.

The Democrats meet Saturday afternoon to anoint Bass. According to a press release, she was the only candidate who was “qualified” to be placed on the ballot and thus the only one to be voted on at the meeting. Of course, they didn’t say why she was qualified. The Blog will try to figure that out well in advance of the November vote.

Bass has been working as the state’s sustainability coordinator. She is a former neighborhood board chair and legislative aide.

Meanwhile, the Hawaiʻi Republican Party has already chosen tourism executive Kelly Kitashima to be on the ballot. She ran for Honolulu City Council in 2018 and state Senate in 2020 and you can read her Civil Beat Candidate Q&A for that race here.

Political pundits are already predicting that Kitashima will have the edge in the contest.

Solemn ceremony: The late Gov. George Ariyoshi will be honored in community memorial services next month.

Ariyoshi, who was 100, died in April in Honolulu. The Governor George R. Ariyoshi State Services Committee recently announced the plan for his public services.

The late governor is scheduled to lie in state beginning Sept. 18 in the Hawaiʻi Capitol Rotunda, with arrival and an honor guard procession scheduled for 10 a.m. Public visitation begins at 10:30 a.m. and ends at noon on Sept. 19.

The state service is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Rotunda. There is reserved seating for invited guests and the public will be seated on a first-come, first-served basis.

A celebration of life is slated for Sept. 19 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Kawaiaha‘o Church on Punchbowl Street. The public visitation is from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the church prior to the service.

Ariyoshi was governor from 1974 to 1986 and remained active in public life until recently.