This page is a sequel to another page that was published on the same day. Sometimes, when I have a lot of material for a page, I put it all on one page, but this time, I decided to make two pages. Here is a link to the first page, which can also be found in the archives on the right.
This is the first sentence of a page on the website of the Department of Interior's Office of Native Hawaiian Relations.
This is the rest of that paragraph.
.
Below are links to seven YouTube videos of these typically divisive meetings.
Any "community" is welcome to organize themselves in a semi-governmental fashion, by choosing a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, and so forth, but the land that these "communities" are based on is still an integral part of the United States.
These are the first five paragraphs of a February 24, 2000 New York Times article.
The same author also published the same article, with the same headline, in the Jewish World Review on the same day. Link to that story.
Link to the text of the legal case, Rice vs. Cayetano, decided February 23, 2000 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
These are the first four paragraphs of an April 1, 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times.
This unanimous legal decision has been the basis for healing any fading hurt feelings since Hawaii became a state in 1959.
The people who lived on that group of islands have many similarities. As a group, they are all descended from other countries that were able to travel across the largest ocean in the world. Some came from Japan, some came from the islands in the South Pacific, and some came from other places.
Small tropical islands are an environment that makes shared intimacy (and shared D.N.A.) not only possible but likely. It is a very different situation than the fact that Russia and Alaska are located physically close to each other across the Bering Strait, pictured below.
These are the first five paragraphs of a November 13, 2015 commentary on the Daily Signal.
"It’s bad enough having a state hold an election that is racially discriminatory. Now we have a judge willing to allow it to move forward."
Racial discrimination is expressly forbidden by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The "equal protection" clause has been cited in several Supreme Court cases, including the one that decided that two people of the same sex had the same legal right to marry as two people of the opposite sex.
These are the first five paragraphs of a November 28, 2015 article in The Hill. The link in the first paragraph was in their story. This story doesn't state the legal reason for this decision, but other stories, linked after these quoted paragraphs, do show the basis for this court action. There is a hint of the justice's reasoning process in the last sentence in these paragraphs.
These are similar stories (in chronological order, oldest first)
The Huffington Post, November 27, 2015, linked by the first paragraph of the story in The Hill.
The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2015
The New York Times, November 27, 2015
NBC News, November 27, 2015
Fox News, November 30, 2015
These paragraphs are part of an Associated Press story. It appears on the ABC News website, and it is dated November 27, 2015.
This "election" is an unconstitutional process because the U.S. Department of Interior, which arranged for this vote, considers "native Hawaiians", the only group of people who are eligible to vote, to be a racial group.
August 21, 1959. Link to that page on the History Channel website.
Justice Kennedy fulfilled his duty by protecting the right of the "non-native Hawaiians" to vote in that election. These people cannot legally be denied the right to vote in any election "on account of race", which is precisely the qualification that was used to determine whether people could vote or not in this election. Being a "native Hawaiian" meant, to the U.S. Department of the Interior, being a member of a separate race, and so, it is a status that cannot be used to deny voting rights under this Constitutional amendment.
If I and a small group of my friends, acting privately, voted for our favorite movies, our favorite foods, or our favorite music, by talking about those choices and even by writing those choices down on paper, those private votes would not violate any law. In contrast, the outcome of the "native Hawaiian" vote could result in the loss of American sovereignty over land that is currently part of the State of Hawaii.
That outcome would require the participation of many more people besides anyone who calls himself a "native Hawaiian".
That outcome would require, at the very least, the participation of the United States Congress, which voted to accept Hawaii as our 50th state in the first place.
This is part of the first sentence in the November 28, 2015 story in The Hill, quoted and linked above.
"The month-long selection of delegates for a constitutional convention ...."
If a Constitutional Convention is held that has the legal authority to change the State Constitution of the State of Hawaii, then every legal resident of the State of Hawaii must be eligible to vote in that process. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits any racial group from being excluded from this vote.
This vote, whose only eligible participants are called "native Hawaiians" by the U.S. Department of the Interior, is a threat to a free and fair political process.
Note: The words of America's Declaration of Independence were discussed and composed by a community of highly-educated men who met and talked for days before Thomas Jefferson put a single word on paper. They had read scholarly works about political science. They knew a lot about history, judging by the many historical references in the Federalist Papers.
This is the first paragraph of a page on the website of the U.S. Department of State.
That means America receives an economic benefit (income from tourism) by having Hawaii be our 50th state.
However, there is another reason to keep our sovereignty over Hawaii. If the United States lost control over the naval base at Honolulu, we would have much less ability to protect the American mainland against an attack.
In December 1941, Japan showed its' military muscle by attacking the naval base in Honolulu. They didn't attack the California coastline, not even any of the military bases in California. They attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu.
This documentary film is one of the few that was filmed in color.
Today is the 74th anniversary of the 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor. This is the complete text of an article dated December 2, 2015 in the New York Times. The two links in this paragraph were in their article.
As long as this document doesn't make any changes to the Hawaii State Constitution, I'm not opposed to it or to any other document that is written by any group of people who live in Hawaii.
Any document that does make changes to the Hawaii State Constitution must, of course, be approved by the Hawaii State Legislature, under the terms and conditions of their current State Constitution.
My home state of Massachusetts has a constitution that has been amended more than 100 times since it was ratified in January 1788, half a year before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
These are the first five paragraphs of a December 15, 2015 Maui Now story.
Al-Jazeera published a similar story the next day. The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
A convention was held for every Hawaiian resident. They adopted a compromise document that, if ratified, would be a new Constitution for the State of Hawaii. Link to a short February 26, 2016 article in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. It is noteworthy that according to the unratified document, citizenship in any new nation would depend on proof of a bloodline from people who lived on those islands before 1778. This is an impossible standard of proof of citizenship, and it is a statement that a radical racist would make. Expect this document to fail in every ratification attempt.
The need for unity
| The American motto is written in the Latin language. When you translate "E pluribus unum" from Latin into English, it means, "Out of many, one." America is many people. It began with 13 states. Every state had a different set of interests, but all of them agreed in 1776 on the need to be one nation, under God, and free from the British king. |
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The attack on American unity
The U.S. Department of the Interior is proposing to create an administrative procedure and criteria that the Secretary of the Interior would apply if the Native Hawaiian community forms a unified government that then seeks a formal government-to-government relationship with the United States.The U.S. President at that time was Barak Hussein Obama.
This is the rest of that paragraph.
Under the proposal, the Native Hawaiian community — not the Federal government — would decide whether to reorganize a Native Hawaiian government, what form that government would take, and whether it would seek a government-to-government relationship with the United States.The U.S. Department of the Interior held meetings with the group of people they called "native Hawaiians"
Below are links to seven YouTube videos of these typically divisive meetings.
Any "community" is welcome to organize themselves in a semi-governmental fashion, by choosing a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, and so forth, but the land that these "communities" are based on is still an integral part of the United States.
A legal battle was won in the courts in 2000
Declaring that ''it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit,'' the Supreme Court today overturned a provision of Hawaii's Constitution under which only descendants of the original Hawaiians may vote for the leadership of a state agency that administers programs and millions of dollars in public money on their behalf.Link to a similar article in the Washington Post, written by George Will, dated March 2, 2000.
The vote was a surprisingly lopsided 7 to 2 to reject the arguments put forward by Hawaii and the Clinton administration that the voting limitation was not essentially about race but about Hawaii's unique history and the historical obligations that flow from it. The limitation on voting for the nine trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was challenged by a Caucasian rancher whose ancestors arrived in Hawaii in 1831.
About 20 percent of the state's residents claim descent from the people living in the islands when Capt. James Cook and his crew became the first Westerners to make landfall there in 1778, an event that led in little more than a century to the end of the independent Hawaiian kingdom.
"Ancestry can be a proxy for race," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said in the majority opinion.
"The ancestral inquiry mandated by the state implicates the same grave concerns as a classification specifying a particular race by name," he said, adding that "the use of racial classifications is corruptive of the whole legal order democratic elections seek to preserve."
The same author also published the same article, with the same headline, in the Jewish World Review on the same day. Link to that story.
Link to the text of the legal case, Rice vs. Cayetano, decided February 23, 2000 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Another victory in the courts in 2009
The United States may have apologized in 1993 for the "illegal overthrow" of Hawaii's native monarch a century earlier, but that congressional expression of regret did not give native Hawaiians a legal claim to state lands, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The 9-0 decision leaves it to the state of Hawaii to decide how to manage the 1.2 million acres in dispute.
The title to this land transferred to the state in 1959, when it was admitted to the Union. But the historic and moral claims of native Hawaiians were not entirely resolved -- then or now.
In 1893, a group of American businessmen, with the aid of the U.S. armed forces, took power, replaced the Hawaiian monarch and sought annexation by the U.S. government. Five years later, President McKinley signed an order that annexed Hawaii as a U.S. territory.
This unanimous legal decision has been the basis for healing any fading hurt feelings since Hawaii became a state in 1959.
The people who lived on that group of islands have many similarities. As a group, they are all descended from other countries that were able to travel across the largest ocean in the world. Some came from Japan, some came from the islands in the South Pacific, and some came from other places.
Small tropical islands are an environment that makes shared intimacy (and shared D.N.A.) not only possible but likely. It is a very different situation than the fact that Russia and Alaska are located physically close to each other across the Bering Strait, pictured below.
| There is a very small piece of ocean that separates Russia and Alaska, yet Russia and America are two different countries, with two different presidents, two different currencies, two different languages, and two different histories. The U.S. Department of the Interior is trying to declare the "native Hawaiian people" to be a different racial group than all of the other people who live on any of those islands. They are the same people. DNA proves it. |
The Bering Strait
Russia and Alaska
|
A Heritage Foundation activist called out the racism
It’s bad enough having a state hold an election that is racially discriminatory. Now we have a judge willing to allow it to move forward.This is the first paragraph of the Daily Signal article.
That would be federal district court Judge J. Michael Seabright (a George W. Bush appointee, surprisingly enough). He’s refused to issue an injunction to stop an election in Hawaii to set up a separate government that excludes anyone who doesn’t meet the state’s definition of “Native Hawaiian.”
Seabright’s deplorable decision in Akina v. State of Hawaii is on an emergency appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—which, unfortunately, doesn’t always seem to believe in following Supreme Court precedent.
Meanwhile, voting has already started in Hawaii. The election is intended to select delegates to a convention, which will draw up “governance documents” for a Native Hawaiian government. Registration to vote was restricted to “Native Hawaiians,” who are defined as only those whose ancestors lived on the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778—and even then only to those willing to confirm a statement affirming “the unrelinquished sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.” Voting by mail started on November 1 and runs through the end of the month.
The lawsuit was filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of six residents of Hawaii, several of whom actually meet the ancestry requirement. However, they could not register to vote because they refused to agree to the prerequisite for registering—agreeing with the statement about the “unrelinquished sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.” Two of the plaintiffs are also native Hawaiians who were registered without their knowledge or consent.
"It’s bad enough having a state hold an election that is racially discriminatory. Now we have a judge willing to allow it to move forward."
Racial discrimination is expressly forbidden by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The "equal protection" clause has been cited in several Supreme Court cases, including the one that decided that two people of the same sex had the same legal right to marry as two people of the opposite sex.
Divisiveness is ruled illegal
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily halted a controversial election of Native Hawaiian leadership, The Huffington Post is reporting."A lawsuit filed by native and non-native residents in August argued that it is unconstitutional for the state to be involved in a race-based election."
The month-long selection of delegates for a constitutional convention is seen by some as a key step forward for Native Hawaiian self-determination, and by others as a racially exclusive and unconstitutional exercise.
The elected delegates would recommend a form of self-government for Native Hawaiians and determine what relationship that government should have with the United States.
Election results were due Dec. 1, with more than 100,000 Native Hawaiians eligible to vote.
A federal judge in October ruled that the election could go forward because it is a private poll conducted by a nonprofit, not one held by the state. A lawsuit filed by native and non-native residents in August argued that it is unconstitutional for the state to be involved in a race-based election.
These are similar stories (in chronological order, oldest first)
The Huffington Post, November 27, 2015, linked by the first paragraph of the story in The Hill.
The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2015
The New York Times, November 27, 2015
NBC News, November 27, 2015
Fox News, November 30, 2015
One of the Native Hawaiians who sued to stop an election that would be a significant step toward Native Hawaiian self-governance says he's pleased a Supreme Court justice is blocking votes from being counted.
Kelii Akina is part of a group of Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians challenging the election. They say it's racially exclusive and unconstitutional.
The ruling is a victory for Native Hawaiians who don't want to be turned into a "government-recognized tribe," Akina said.
Justice Anthony Kennedy's order on Friday also stops the certification of any winners pending further direction from him or the entire court.
This "election" is an unconstitutional process because the U.S. Department of Interior, which arranged for this vote, considers "native Hawaiians", the only group of people who are eligible to vote, to be a racial group.
This is the reason why the Hawaiian vote is illegal
This is the complete text of the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Section 1.The phrase "citizens of the United States" includes people who live in the State of Hawaii, which has been the 50th state, and thus part of the United States, since
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Justice Kennedy fulfilled his duty by protecting the right of the "non-native Hawaiians" to vote in that election. These people cannot legally be denied the right to vote in any election "on account of race", which is precisely the qualification that was used to determine whether people could vote or not in this election. Being a "native Hawaiian" meant, to the U.S. Department of the Interior, being a member of a separate race, and so, it is a status that cannot be used to deny voting rights under this Constitutional amendment.
If I and a small group of my friends, acting privately, voted for our favorite movies, our favorite foods, or our favorite music, by talking about those choices and even by writing those choices down on paper, those private votes would not violate any law. In contrast, the outcome of the "native Hawaiian" vote could result in the loss of American sovereignty over land that is currently part of the State of Hawaii.
That outcome would require the participation of many more people besides anyone who calls himself a "native Hawaiian".
That outcome would require, at the very least, the participation of the United States Congress, which voted to accept Hawaii as our 50th state in the first place.
This is part of the first sentence in the November 28, 2015 story in The Hill, quoted and linked above.
"The month-long selection of delegates for a constitutional convention ...."
If a Constitutional Convention is held that has the legal authority to change the State Constitution of the State of Hawaii, then every legal resident of the State of Hawaii must be eligible to vote in that process. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits any racial group from being excluded from this vote.
This vote, whose only eligible participants are called "native Hawaiians" by the U.S. Department of the Interior, is a threat to a free and fair political process.
Other editorials on this topic
In chronological order, oldest first:- If at first you don't secede . . ., written August 18, 2005. This writer is in favor of a separate status for "native Hawaiians", and for the reversal of the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War, and the Gadsden Purchase (along with a general apology and, of course, restitution to all American Indians). This writer has transcribed onto the page part of an interview between a man who was a Hawaii State Senator at the time and a reporter from National Public Radio. This blog page hasn't been updated in ten years. The home page of this blog has a recent article dated
December 8, 2015 with the title Does zombie equity lead to blasphemy diversity? - The Obama Administration’s Attempt to Balkanize Hawaii, dated August 18, 2014, written by Hans A. von Spakovsky, a staff member of the Heritage Foundation.
- This Obama Administration Proposal Would Effectively Authorize Some Americans Seceding, dated August 26, 2014, also written by Hans von Spakovsky. This editorial is on the Daily Signal website.
- Obama wants to unilaterally allow Hawaii to secede, on the Red State website, written by Steve Berman, dated August 27, 2014. Link to other articles written by Steve Berman.
Note: The words of America's Declaration of Independence were discussed and composed by a community of highly-educated men who met and talked for days before Thomas Jefferson put a single word on paper. They had read scholarly works about political science. They knew a lot about history, judging by the many historical references in the Federalist Papers.
Reasons why the Hawaiian vote is a real threat
America's annexation of Hawaii in 1898 extended U.S. territory into the Pacific and highlighted resulted from economic integration and the rise of the United States as a Pacific power. For most of the 1800s, leaders in Washington were concerned that Hawaii might become part of a European nation's empire. During the 1830s, Britain and France forced Hawaii to accept treaties giving them economic privileges. In 1842, Secretary of State Daniel Webster sent a letter to Hawaiian agents in Washington affirming U.S. interests in Hawaii and opposing annexation by any other nation. He also proposed to Great Britain and France that no nation should seek special privileges or engage in further colonization of the islands. In 1849, the United States and Hawaii concluded a treaty of friendship that served as the basis of official relations between the parties.America's 50th state gives it tremendous military and political benefits. Any action that is taken, including the actions that are being taken in 2015 by the U.S. Department of the Interior to reduce those benefits, is a threat to America.
Still more reasons why the Hawaiian vote is a threat
Hawaii is a popular travel destination for people from all over the United States. It is also a popular travel destination for people from Japan.That means America receives an economic benefit (income from tourism) by having Hawaii be our 50th state.
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First Friday Hawaii
(clickable link) |
However, there is another reason to keep our sovereignty over Hawaii. If the United States lost control over the naval base at Honolulu, we would have much less ability to protect the American mainland against an attack.
In December 1941, Japan showed its' military muscle by attacking the naval base in Honolulu. They didn't attack the California coastline, not even any of the military bases in California. They attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu.
This documentary film is one of the few that was filmed in color.
| Link to the Pearl Harbor attack on The History Channel Encyclopedia Brittanica U.S. History.com America's Library (This website is apparently operated by the Library of Congress.) Wikipedia |
If we lose control over Pearl Harbor, the next attack from an emperor in Asia will be made in California.
That emperor could put his own navy and his own air force in Honolulu.
That emperor could put his own navy and his own air force in Honolulu.
Updates
December 7, 2015
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered officials in Hawaii not to count ballots or name the winners in an election there until a federal appeals court rules on whether it was constitutional to limit voting to people of native Hawaiian ancestry. The Supreme Court’s order, over the objections of its four more liberal members, was a response to an emergency application from Hawaii residents who said the election violated the 15th Amendment, which bars race discrimination in voting. The election, which was to end on Monday, was extended for three weeks after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy issued an interim order on Friday to stop the vote count. The election is for delegates to a convention that would prepare a document on self-governance by Native Hawaiians."... a document on self-governance by Native Hawaiians."
As long as this document doesn't make any changes to the Hawaii State Constitution, I'm not opposed to it or to any other document that is written by any group of people who live in Hawaii.
Any document that does make changes to the Hawaii State Constitution must, of course, be approved by the Hawaii State Legislature, under the terms and conditions of their current State Constitution.
My home state of Massachusetts has a constitution that has been amended more than 100 times since it was ratified in January 1788, half a year before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
December 15-16, 2015
Na‘i Aupuni has terminated the Native Hawaiian election process, but will go forward with a four-week-long ‘aha (constitutional convention) in February. All 196 Hawaiians who ran as candidates will be offered a seat as a delegate to the ‘aha to learn about, discuss and hopefully reach a consensus on a process to achieve self-governance.
Na‘i Aupuni President Kuhio Asam said Na‘i Aupuni’s goal has always been to create a path so Native Hawaiians can have a formal, long-overdue discussion on self-determination.
“Our goal has always been to create a path so that Hawaiians can gather and have a serious and much-needed discussion about self-governance,” Asam said. “We anticipated that the path would have twists and turns and even some significant obstacles, but we are committed to getting to the ‘aha, where this long-overdue discussion can take place.”
Due to the delays caused by ongoing litigation that could continue for years, it was decided that the most effective route at this point would be to offer to convene all of the remaining delegate candidates and allow them to an opportunity to organize Hawaiians and achieve self-governance, Asam said.
Na‘i Aupuni said Election-America has been informed to stop the receipt of ballots, to seal ballots that have already been received and to prevent anyone from counting the votes.
Al-Jazeera published a similar story the next day. The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
A unique election considered a major step toward self-governance for Native Hawaiians was terminated Tuesday because of litigation challenging the process that could take years to resolve.Text
Still, organizers said they plan to press ahead with a convention next year aimed at continuing their cause.
Native Hawaiians were voting to elect 40 delegates to the convention who would come up with a proposed self-governance document.
However, a group of Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians sued to block the election, arguing state residents with no Native Hawaiian ancestry were excluded from it, in violation of their constitutional rights.
The challenge reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently granted an injunction to stop the counting of ballots until a lower court ruled on an appeal. In response, election organizers extended voting by three weeks and asked the lower court to expedite its decision.
But on Tuesday organizers announced they would instead abandon the election and offer all 196 candidates seats as delegates at the convention (aha in Hawaiian), which is scheduled to begin in February and last four weeks.
February 26, 2016
February 16, 2023
The website for the Native Hawaiian Convention was a blank screen on this date.
