Read Rich Lowry about what a travesty the Akaka bill would be. That is the bill that proposes to give descendants of native Hawaiians the right to create a “Native Hawaiian governing entity” that will then negotiate with the federal government on possession of land.

Here is Senator Akaka’s description of his bill. Is it any surprise that Senator McCain supports this? Does he like the idea of special committees of genealogists to decide who would qualify as a Native Hawaiian. Senator Akaka anticipates that this might create a burden on birth certificate offices, but otherwise he seems perfectly okay with the idea.

What I see as one of the biggest challenges in implementation will be the establishment of the roll. The roll identifies the Native Hawaiians who meet the definition of Native Hawaiian in the bill and choose to participate in the reorganization of the Native Hawaiian government. The bill establishes a certification commission to be composed of Native Hawaiians with expertise in genealogy to certify that those individuals who are applying to be on the roll meet the definition of Native Hawaiian. I anticipate that this process will have a tremendous impact on the state offices that handle birth certificates, marriage certificates, and death certificates.

So, he looks to the Hawaiian State Legislature to provide increased funds to process all those requests for documentation of one’s status as a Native Hawaiian. The recordkeeping aspect of this bill concerns him much more than the idea of dividing people up by their race and then giving some favored racial group more voting rights than others.

Michelle Malkin has blogged extensively on this bill. Check here, here, and this column in which she looks at what exactly a Native Hawaiian might be.

What is a “Native Hawaiian” anyway? It’s not a Filipino-American whose family has lived in Maui for three generations. Or a Japanese-American whose family migrated to Honolulu before World War II. Or a white American from Kealakekua Bay whose ancestors include 18th-century explorer James Cook. Natives of Hawaii are defined not by state citizenship and residency, but by blood relation to the islands’ original Polynesian inhabitants.

Local government forms ask residents of the Aloha State to calculate and document the amount of Native Hawaiian blood they and their children possess. Those with the proper “blood quantum” receive special housing privileges, employment consideration, retail discounts, and exclusive schooling. The “right” kind of Hawaiians proudly carry racial passports that recall apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the antebellum South. Under Sen. Akaka’s bill, members of the bogus Native Hawaiian “tribe” would be allowed to create a race-based voting registry of citizens and to investigate individuals’ backgrounds to verify their blood purity.

Are senators really that comfortable with the idea of a birth certificate check or blood test becoming a necessary requirement for voting in an election? Perhaps they could take a remedial course in American history to understand why we should be moving away from this sort of thing rather than endorsing it.

Rich Lowry believes that the bill is clearly unconstitutional.

It is spectacularly unconstitutional. The 15th Amendment forbids racial restrictions on voting. The Akaka bill is wholly dependent on such restrictions. The Supreme Court in 2000 struck down an arrangement that permitted only Native Hawaiians to vote for board members of a state agency providing services to Native Hawaiians. The Akaka scheme takes the unconstitutional principle from that arrangement and makes it the basis for a new government.

The conceit of the bill is that Native Hawaiians will merely get the same status as American Indian tribes, which exist as sovereign, extraconstitutional governments. But such tribal governments weren’t created by congressional legislation. They already existed when territory around them was incorporated into the U.S. Congress can recognize new tribes, but they have to meet standards, including existing as a distinct community and exercising sovereignty. Native Hawaiians do neither.

As Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a staunch opponent of the measure, points out, they are not geographically segregated, but live throughout the state intermixed with non-natives. Indeed, Native Hawaiians live everywhere in the U.S. Intermarriage rates have been high for more than a century, and almost half of marriages in Hawaii are interracial. This is one reason the Akaka bill would create chaos, with neighbors potentially subject to different governments and rules based solely on their race.

The Hawaii Reporter says that Bush would support this bill and is actually lobbying in its favor, perhaps becauase of the deal that was worked out for the Hawaiian senators to vote for drilling in ANWR in exchange for support for this travesty of a bill.

In 2000, in the case, Rice v. Cayetano, the Supreme Court ruled that a law in Hawaii restricting the right to vote for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to native Hawaiians violated the Fifteenth Amendment. We may hope that the courts would find this new bill unconstitutional. I wouldn’t put my faith on that. I remember another bill that everyone assumed the Supreme Court would strike down as an unconstitutional limitation on free speech - McCain-Feingold. I’d prefer to have legislators and a president who would stand up to such an abominable bill. Rice v. Cayetano was a seven to two decision with Stevens and Ginsburg dissenting. No surprise there. Apparently, they like racial classifications that help minorities and aren’t bothered by Fifteenth Amendment concerns. I don’t want to rest my faith in their inability to convince three justices to go along with them on this new bill.

Rich Lowry wonders where such a movement would stop. Would the next step be a movement to reclaim the American Southwest for Mexican Americans? Let’s stop writing legislation that celebrates and exacerbates divisions among Americans.

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