HERE'S WHY THE AKAKA BILL FAILED
Hawaiians Want Nothing To Do With The US Dept. Of Interior
Washington Post - Wednesday, July 12, 2006
A federal appeals court took the rare step of removing U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth from a long-standing legal battle involving billions in Native American oil and gas royalties, saying the judge appears to be biased against the Interior Department....
The ruling removes a sitting trial judge for only the third time in the D.C. Circuit and provides the latest twist in a contentious decade-long class-action lawsuit filed by the Native American Rights Fund over the trust accounts, which were set up in 1887 to compensate Indians for use of their lands .
Since Blackfeet tribe leader Eloise Cobell filed the lawsuit in 1996, several independent investigations found that the Interior Department had never kept complete records, used unknown amounts of the funds to help balance the federal budget, and let the oil and gas industry use Indian lands at bargain rates....
Lamberth is a sharp-tongued Texan appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan. He has defenders from all points of the political spectrum and has repeatedly been ranked by lawyers as among the most skilled judges on the court.
...Lamberth writes that "the entire record in this case tells the dreary story of Interior's degenerate tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust -- a story shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and outright villainy -- the end of which is nowhere in sight."
