The duck might be lame, but he still wields executive power without regard to the checks and balances of the American constitutional system. Ilya Shapiro details one example of President Obama’s executive overreach at National Review Online.
Like Rasputin, the push for a separate, race-based “native Hawaiian government” refuses to die. As I’ve now written about for almost a decade, it is the fondest dream of some politicians to institute a two-tiered system of law in Hawaii, putting some citizens under the jurisdiction of a wholly separate government based only on their racial makeup.
For many years, this push came in the form of the “Akaka Bill,” named after its primary sponsor Senator Daniel Akaka (D., Hawaii). The Akaka Bill took several forms over the years as it was repeatedly introduced — and rejected — in several Congresses since 2000. But its core goal remained consistent: to create a government within the Hawaiian islands whose membership would be defined not by geography but by blood, which means an exemption from state and federal law for those with enough native Hawaiian lineage to pass the government’s test.
With the retirement of Senator Akaka in 2013, it seemed that the Akaka Bill was on its last legs. But as with so many other issues, the Obama administration is now attempting to achieve through unilateral executive action what it could not pass through the legislative process.
The Department of the Interior recently finalized a rule that would allow the federal government to establish formal government-to-government relations with a native Hawaiian government, if such a government should ever come to exist.
The administration’s justification for acting without congressional authorization comes from a longstanding statute delegating to the Interior secretary the “management of all Indian affairs and of all matters arising out of Indian relations.” But citing this statute simply begs the question, because it assumes that a newly created native Hawaiian government would be akin to the Indian tribes that receive a special status under the explicit terms of the Constitution.
