AKAKA BILL JAMMED THROUGH HOUSE - ALL FOR ABERCROMBIE

Wall Street Journal - February 27, 2010

As farewell presents go, few lawmakers get to redistribute an entire state's wealth based on race. That was the send-off for Representative Neil Abercrombie, who is retiring this week to run for Governor of Hawai`i. For his campaign literature, he'll take the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, which was whooped through the House on Tuesday 245-164.

The bill would create a sovereign tribal entity made up of some 400,000 Hawaiians. Supposedly designed to mimic the legal structure created for Native Americans, the bill breaks new ground—requiring the federal government to create a tribe based on a loosely defined racial identification. Not yet scheduled for a vote in the Senate, the bill may face opposition from Republicans, including a filibuster. South Carolina's Jim DeMint says he'll use "all the tools possible" to prevent the bill from becoming law, and we hope he does.

This wasn't the law's first trip around the Hill, though it was the most outrageous. The version passed Tuesday includes last-minute changes by Mr. Abercrombie to evade normal legislative vetting. In a letter to House leaders, five members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expressed their "profound disappointment" at a bill that was "negotiated behind closed doors" and "released less than 48 hours prior to the expected House vote...."

WALL STREET JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS HAWAI`I STOLEN LANDS

WSJ - March 12, 2009

WASHINGTON - Lawyers typically warn clients never to apologize for anything, since a plaintiff could seize upon the remorse as an admission of liability. But what happens when governments apologize?

A century after a cabal of American sugar planters, financiers and missionaries overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai`i, Congress said it was sorry. The U.S. Supreme Court soon will decide whether that apology meant anything - from a legal standpoint, at least.

The Hawai`i Supreme Court thought it did. Last year, that court cited the 1993 Apology Resolution to block the state from transferring any of the 1.2 million acres of land - some 29% of Hawai`i's total - received from the federal government upon statehood in 1959. Those lands once belonged to the Hawaiian crown or its subjects, and were confiscated by the Americans without compensation....

...The Americans eventually forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate and declared themselves rulers of a new Republic of Hawai`i.

The indigenous population soon was swamped by settlers from the mainland....

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