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We believe you want us to ask tough questions on your behalf. That’s our job. Somebody’s got to do it in Hawaii, don’t you think?

So when we launched our Elections section this week (check out the tab at the top of the page), we decided to put a new “Fact Check” feature at the heart of the service. Critical scrutiny is especially important when it comes to people asking for our trust, candidates for public office.

If you hear a candidate or an advocate for a candidate say something that raises your curiosity, e-mail us at news@civilbeat.com. If it makes the Fact Check cut, we’ll investigate and publish it.

In the end, we’ll publish what we learn, along with a rating. You can already seem some examples in our Election section. We’ve looked into a claim by Acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell about how he’s made government smaller, Congressman Charles Djou‘s use of a $3.8 trillion — you read that right, trillion — tax hike, governor candidate Mufi Hannemann‘s oft-repeated phrase that he’s the only candidate with private sector experience and the blame for the cancellation of a Japanese Chamber debate from his rival, Neil Abercrombie.

We’ll call them like we see them, using a rating system ranging from “True” all the way to “Screaming Lie.” (If you want to read more about how we determine ratings, I’ve explained them in more detail in an earlier article).

The Fact Check feature, along with probing articles you won’t find anywhere else, will be hallmarks of our Elections section, the place we hope you turn regularly to find out about the candidates, the issues and what’s happening in the campaigns.

Lively Debate on “Being Local”

Race is sometimes referred to as the third rail of American politics. Nobody wants to touch it. But this week at Civil Beat we saw how much we can learn when people do speak about the topic honestly.

If you didn’t get a chance to read On Being Local by Lee Hiromoto, I encourage you to take a few minutes this weekend and do so. Hiromoto took on comments Honolulu’s former Mayor Hannemann made trying (ultimately successfully, it turned out) to win the endorsement of the carpenters union.

Hiromoto was in an unusual position to speak directly to the issue of what it means to be local. As he wrote of the similarities in his background and Hannemann’s:

Our respective childhood homes were outside the elite bubble of East Honolulu, his in Kalihi and mine in Wahiawa, and yet we both found ourselves attending two of the most prominent private schools in state, he at Iolani and I at Punahou. After finding success despite humble upbringings, we both went out east to the Ivy League, he to Harvard and I to Yale.

Yet despite these similarities, I found his remarks unsettling. Hannemann’s impressive personal story makes him an inspiration to many across the islands — myself included. And that’s precisely why I found myself especially put off by his playing the “local” card given Hawaii’s complex whirlpool of race relations.

Valuing Hawaii

Finally, it’s important to note the quality of the dialogue that is growing on the site around the publication of a new book, “The Value of Hawaii.” On Monday, we printed the first two excerpts, The Value of Hawaii: Essays About Our Past, Future and The Value of Hawaii: Government by Chad Blair scheduled between now and the election and this Monday we’ll present a third on Hawaiian issues by Jonathan Osorio.

If you’d like to learn more about the book and talk about the issues it raises that we should be discussing before deciding how to vote, you’re invited to come on over to Civil Beat headquarters at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday to meet in person with the book’s editors Craig Howes and Osorio, along with our own Chad Blair. To learn more, please check out our .

That’s it for now. I look forward to meeting some of you next week when I moderate our get-together.