Read the following two quotes and see if you can guess who said which:

Quote 1: "Right now, I am running for re-election. But in this business of government and politics, you never say never to the opportunity that may arise."

Quote 2: "Right now, I'm running for mayor. We've got a lot of things going and I want to keep working on them. But does that mean I will rule out running for governor at some future point? No."

The first was Mayor Mufi Hannemann at the opening of his re-election headquarters on Saturday, when asked if he would serve his full term if re-elected and not run for governor or Congress in two years.

The second was former Mayor Jeremy Harris answering the same question in 2000 after his opponent — none other than Mufi Hannemann — attacked him for refusing to pledge to serve his full term and not run for governor if re-elected.

Hannemann 2000, who ultimately lost to Harris, said then of his opponent's answer to the full-term question: "The fact is, Harris is not being truthful."

Now Hannemann 2008 is using the Harris statement virtually as a script for his own response.

Personally, I'd have had no problem with Harris resigning to run for governor back then and I'd have no problem with Hannemann resigning to run for governor in 2010. If voters are OK with it and want to promote him, they have that right.

But they also have a right to judge to the political character of a candidate who will say anything to win — sanctimoniously assailing an opponent's position in one election, then glibly embracing the same position to serve his own purposes in another election.

A final irony is that Hannemann 2000 ripped Harris for not promising to serve a full term after resigning himself from the City Council in mid-term to run against Harris.

Baggage checks and snoozy wrecks lead off as we plant tongue in cheek and "flASHback" on the weekly news that amused and confused:

• Go! airlines plans to ding passengers $25 for their second checked bags. It would be worth it if you could pack an alarm clock loud enough to wake up the pilots.

• Some sleep-deprived O'ahuans are questioning the propriety of the city hiring game breeders to control noisy neighborhood roosters. That's like hiring Barbara Marshall to keep Rod Tam quiet.

• Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who resisted curbside recycling until voters passed a charter amendment forcing it on him, proclaimed tests in Mililani and Hawaii Kai to be great successes. Nobody can run to the front of a parade faster.

• Honolulu commuters rank as the 27th "greenest" drivers in the nation. With all the potholes we have to navigate, we'd be No. 1 for black and blue.

• Gov. Linda Lingle is catching grief for leasing a luxury SUV that gets only 12 mpg after preaching energy conservation. It takes all the fun out of amassing power when you're expected to set a good example.

• Congratulations to Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, who's getting married in the summer and teaching political communication at Hawai'i Pacific University in the fall. Nice convergence. Spouses and politicians both define good communication as you agreeing with them.

• Speaking of agreement, grammar teachers must have been horrified by the lack of such in this sentence from another publication about a police officer kicked in the groin while making an arrest: "He was taken to Wahiawa General Hospital, where they were treated and released."

• Police arrested a suspected highway copper-theft ringleader known as "Freeway Jimmy." If he's found guilty, they ought to make him share a cell with a guy named "Lights-Out Larry."

• A Big Island group is gathering signatures for a November ballot initiative to make marijuana offenses the county's lowest law enforcement priority. Even lower than finding out what happened to Peter Boy?

• Lingle imposed 4-percent spending cuts on all state departments to deal with the soft economy. I wonder if she'll lead the way by downsizing the fuzzy dice in her new $52,000 Infiniti QX56.

And the quote of the week ...

... from former University of Hawai'i football coach June Jones on adjusting to his new job at SMU:

"The first week of spring practice, we got rained out. We got snowed out. I immediately knew we needed an indoor facility."

The first thing he does is gripe about facilities. Anybody see a pattern?

A call by prominent activist Dennis "Bumpy" Kanahele for a native Hawaiian constitutional convention to unify disparate sovereignty groups could be a pivotal development in the native rights movement.

There's no guarantee he'll get buy-in from Hawaiians either on calling a convention or abiding by the outcome, but trying to bring organization to the dozens of sovereignty groups with different visions is the way to go if Hawaiian claims stemming from the 1893 overthrow of their monarchy are ever to be settled.

"We have too many rival groups, and most of them are not even talking to each other," said Kekuni Blaisdell of the Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Komike. "I'm in favor of a meeting and talking, and talking, and talking. We know it's going to be a long and difficult process."

Kanahele heads a group known as Nation of Hawai'i, which supports independence for Hawaiians as opposed to the federal political recognition under the American system advocated by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and other supporters of the Akaka bill in Congress.

Other organizations looking favorably on Kanahele's initiative are also mostly independence-minded, but Kanahele says a constitutional convention would be open to any outcome and that non-Hawaians as well as Hawaiians would be welcome to participate.

He's gathered 20,000 signatures of support in a short time, and says a convention could come together as early as September.

OHA has spent some $4 million over four years trying to organize a Hawaiian government via its Kau Inoa registry, but the effort seems stalled with many Hawaiians balking at the idea of the sovereignty movement being run by a state agency.

Said 'Ehu Cardwell of the Kaua'i-based Koani Foundation about Kanahele's proposal: "OHA will not control the process. The people will control the process. It's from the ground up, not from the top down."

It's not for me to tell Hawaiians what kind of claims settlement they should seek, but I do know they'll have a better chance of getting it if they have a recognized leadership that can take accepted negotiating points to the federal and state governments.

I realized how deep the resentment ran among some women over the media coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton's bid for president when even New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was bashed for sexism in her commentary on Clinton.

I always considered Dowd a fine writer with decent feminist credentials, but the National Organization for Women excoriated her in its ''Media Hall of Shame'' as "a chronic offender who relies on gender stereotypes" by using terms such as "Sci-fi Monster," "Hitlery," 'Billary" and "Terminator" in reference to Clinton.

The Times' own ombudsman criticized Dowd for going "over the top" with a "relentless ... gender-laden assault on Clinton."

Dowd responded, ""From the time I began writing about politics, I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes. You are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I've treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves."

I don't personally think sexism in media coverage, which mostly occurred in cable TV commentary, was pervasive enough to drive the outcome of Clinton's race against Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But I understand the concerns and they motivated me to revisit my own criticisms of Clinton for signs of gender bias. I explore what I found (nothing I was ashamed of) in my column in the Opinion section of today's Advertiser, "Parsing the presidential campaign coverage."

I'd be interested to know what others think: Did Clinton lose because of gender stereotyping in the media or because she was a flawed candidate with a bad game plan? Or was it something else entirely?

Weighted student spending was supposed to be the answer to what ails our public schools, but the Department of Education has gotten so bogged down in internal politics that it has lost sight of the goal.

As the centerpiece of Act 51 of 2004, which was supposed to reinvent public education in Hawai'i, the idea was that instead of allocating the DOE budget per school, money would be dished out per pupil, weighted so that those with the greatest needs would get the biggest share.

Schools with a lot of non-English speakers, kids from poor families and transfer students, for instance, would get extra funding to deal will the challenges.

But instead, the DOE has twisted itself in knots trying to figure out how to divide the money between big schools and small schools, with the original goal of getting the most funds to students who need the most help falling by the wayside.

The Legislature has been appointing special committees to investigate everything lately, and with the fifth anniversary of Act 51 coming up next year, it would be a good time to review whether weighted spending — and other mandates of the act such as school-community councils, more spending decisions at the school level and meaningful performance contracts for principals — have been implemented and achieved their goals.

Student test scores that remain dismal and the bureaucratic thrashing suggest Act 51 hasn't reinvented education, and it's time to either press for better execution or come up with new ideas.