THE AKAKA BILL, IT’S BAAACK!!: Out of nowhere, my Democratic colleagues on the U.S. Comm’n on Civil Rights have decided to attach an endorsement of the proposed Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act (formerly nicknamed “the Akaka Bill”) to an unrelated report.  The report will then be fast-tracked.

For reasons you can read about in the testimony I gave several years ago before the House Committee on Natural Resources, the Akaka bill—which would facilitate the creation of what would likely be the nation’s Indian tribe—has always been a very bad idea. During the Bush Era, the Commission’s majority recommended against it.  Fortunately, when the GOP took the House of Representatives in 2011, the bill got shelved.

The Obama Administration tried to achieve the same result through administrative action, but so far, those efforts have not yet borne fruit. It now looks like supporters of the idea of Native Hawaiian sovereignty are hoping for a blue wave that will put the bill back on the legislative agenda.