The Akaka Native Hawaiian bill is up for a vote at 12:45 p.m. They're talking about it on the floor right now.
Tim Chapman has been blogging about it all day.
He reports that sources on the Hill tell him that if Republicans pick up the 41 votes needed to block the vote at all, it will be very, very close.
The administration finally came out against the bill, but it moved awfully late on this. Here's the administration letter to Frist.
Human Events has a map of the lands that might be up for negotiation and transfer to the new Hawaiian government.
RedState says get on the phone: (202) 224-3121
UPDATE: Akaka bill goes down, 56-41. Thanks to Alexander, Kyl, Cornyn, and Sessions for speaking out against it.
UPDATE: As I understand it, this should kill this bill for a while. No one made any promises past bringing it to the floor for this vote.
Bill Frist commented on its defeat, here.
Betsy Newmark follows up with "Akaka Gets Flushed:"
McCain and Kyl reportedly voted for cloture on purely procedural grounds and would have voted against the bill on the floor. Though, even taking their votes out, it seems that Akaka would have passed if it had gotten to the floor for debate. There were enough dodo Republicans to have put this turkey over the top. That's a very depressing thought. I guess this is one time when we can be glad that everything now in the Senate seems to need 60 votes to get to the floor. But no thanks to such weak Republicans as Collins, Hagel, Specter, Smith, and Snowe. I don't know what is up with Cochran, Coleman, Domenici, and Grassley. The Alaska senators voted for the bill as a logrolling effort to get the Hawaiian support for drilling with ANWR. Such is how our Senate works.
I think Kyl had made a deal to vote yes on cloture, but spoke out loudly against the bill, and was planning many amendments had it made it to the floor.
Tim says keep your eye on Akaka and Inouye, who will try to slip this through the Senate quietly:
While this is a great victory, the 56 votes cast today in favor of race-based governing should worry conservatives. Supporters of this bill will be back soon. Watch for Akaka and Inouye to attempt to attach this bill quietly to other vehicles moving through the Senate.
I'm sorry I didn't follow up on this earlier. Frankly, I was stunned we won.
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