That's the Native Hawaiian bill, also know as the Akaka bill, also known as the race-based government bill, or the apartheid bill. By any name, it stinks.
The Senate will be taking up the bill right after recess, so we've got to start making some noise about how BAD it is. If not, the senators, as senators are wont to do, will entirely miss the fact that it's a racially divisive travesty of a bill that barely a majority of native Hawaiians support, and they'll end up supporting it in exchange for a History of Antebellum Teapots museum in Pumpkin Patch, N.C.
Ramesh Ponnuru and Sen. Lamar Alexander spoke on the bill at The Heritage Foundation today, in an event you can see over the web, here.
Ramesh posts at The Corner:
A new poll for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii finds that only 56 percent of native Hawaiians—the ethnic group for whom the bill would create a new government—favor the bill. Among all Hawaiians, 67 percent oppose the bill. If Congress enacts this bill, D.C. will be imposing racial separatism on a state that doesn't want it.Most Republican senators will probably vote against taking up this bill. But too many of them are for it. Stevens, Murkowski, Graham, Smith, and Coleman are co-sponsoring it. McCain is said to be leaning in favor. And we haven't heard firm "no"s yet from Allen, Brownback, DeWine, Enzi, Grassley, Hatch, Talent, or Warner. Conservatives shouldn't let their interest in the immigration bill, or the impending vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, to distract them from opposing this bill with the vigor it deserves.
Tim Chapman wrote about the bill when it came up last summer, calling it "The worst bill you've never heard of."
Michelle Malkin also covered it extensively last year.
It's race-based government. The United States of America would be creating a sovereign race-based government, which could operate outside the protections of the Constitution. It really is as nasty as it sounds, and it's one of those things that could just slip by without anyone realizing the damage it will do.
In the words of native Hawaiian Kilikina Kekumano, who was at the event today, speaking out against the bill, "We don't have specific barriers between races..This would cause an incredible apartheid, really."
Keep and eye on this and let the shaky guys you see in Ramesh's post know you're watching.
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