As Mark Twain might have quipped, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and the Akaka bill.

The legislation falsely likens Native Hawaiians to Indian tribes entitled to a separate race-based sovereignty under the Indian Commerce Clause of the Constitution, as facetious as characterizing an elephant as a mouse with a glandular condition.

According to voluminous decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, Indian tribes have been indulged special sovereignty for three reasons: the absence of Native American citizenship until 1924; an incapacity for mature participation in a democracy; and the oppressions and plunders of state governments and private citizens epitomized by the Sand Creek Massacre and General Phil Sheridan's (often misquoted) ugly remark, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."

The fact that Native Americans were indigenous, without more, did not justify a semi-sovereign tribal status. The United States Supreme Court authoritatively declared in Montoya v. United States (1901): "By a 'tribe' we understand a body of Indians of the same or a similar race, united in a community under one leadership or government, and inhabiting a particular though sometimes ill-defined territory." The court further explained in Board of County Commissioners v. Seber (1943): In the exercise of the war and treaty powers, the United States overcame the Indians and took possession of their lands, sometimes by force, leaving them an uneducated, helpless and dependent people, needing protection against the selfishness of others and their own improvidence.

Of necessity, the United States assumed the duty of furnishing that protection, and with it the authority to do all that was required to perform that obligation and to prepare Indians to take their place as independent, qualified members of the modern body politic ..."

In contrast to Indian tribes, Native Hawaiians have never featured a separate racially exclusive community or government since the inauguration of the Kingdom of Hawai'i under King Kamehameha I in 1810.

Indeed, for two centuries, the shining earmark of the kingdom, the republic of Hawai'i, the territory of Hawai'i and the state of Hawai'i has been the magnificent fusion of many races and ethnicities, including Native Hawaiians, whites, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Thais, Vietnamese, blacks, Hispanics and others. They voted on common rolls. They served side by side in the legislative, executive and judicial branches. They customarily intermarried, which has inched down the number of pure Hawaiians to about 3,000, or 00.75 percent. They lived as neighbors, not in ghettoized enclaves. Sen. Dan Inouye thus exulted on the 35th anniversary of Hawai'i's statehood: "Hawai'i remains one of the greatest examples of a multi-ethnic society living in relative peace."

Unlike Native Americans, Native Hawaiians were citizens of the United States from the moment of annexation in 1898. They were fully equipped to participate in a democratic society. Indeed, they dominated the electorate during the initial decades of Hawai'i's territorial government and continued their prominence in public life after statehood. Think, for example, of former Gov. John Waihee, former Hawai'i Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Richardson and former Justice Robert Klein, Sen. Daniel Akaka, Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, state Sens. Kalani English and Clayton Hee, state Rep. Ezra Kanoho and the director of budget and finance Georgina Kawamura, and a long line of other people of Hawaiian ancestry of high position.

Hawai'i Attorney General Mark Bennett has preposterously relied on the Department of Justice, which features lawyers but not historians, fatuously to associate an alleged horrifying "suffering" of Native Hawaiians occasioned by the 1893 nonviolent overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. According to Bennett and the lawyers in the department, the overthrow caused Native Hawaiians to suffer "mortality, disease, economic deprivation, social distress and population decline." Nothing in logic or principles of scientific causation would associate the overthrow with mortality tables, disease, prosperity or population decline. No Native Hawaiian was either killed or injured or lost an inch of private property because of the queen's ouster for attempting a coup against the Hawaiian Constitution. The Hawaiian language was not outlawed. The Native Hawaiian population did not plunge because of the queen's loss of power.

Annexation to the United States, and statehood in 1959 supported by over 94 percent of voters, have yielded a treasure trove of benefits to Native Hawaiians and non-natives alike.

The 2000 Census reported the median incomes of Native Hawaiian families in the United States as $49,214, virtually identical to the $50,046 of the general population. Indeed, the Census demographics suggest that Native Hawaiians excel if they are allowed to follow the same rules as everyone else. In Hawai'i, with its multiple entitlements, their incomes lag the incomes of Native Hawaiians across the nation. Historic Census reports show the population of Native Hawaiians declined throughout the years of the kingdom and reached a low of about 38,000 in 1900.

Since then, as a territory and then a state, the population of Hawaiians has risen to more than 400,000 in the 2000 Census, a jump of more than tenfold. The Native Hawaiians Study Commission created by Congress in 1980 concluded in 1983 that there was no legal claim and "as an ethical or moral matter, Congress should not provide for Native Hawaiians to receive compensation either for loss of land or of sovereignty (because of the overthrow)."

Genuine discrimination and suffering was inflicted for many decades on the Japanese and Chinese citizens who have never clamored for a separate government, while the United States unvaryingly treated Native Hawaiians as equals or favorites. Privation, whomever it assails, can be addressed by offering a helping hand to all irrespective of race or ethnicity.

Akaka bill proponents generally deny that it is a step towards independence or otherwise dangerous to the United States. But Sen. Akaka and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs have both acknowledged that independence would be an option for the Native Hawaiian entity.

The champions of independence despise the U.S. and its cherished constitutional values for which so many have given (and are giving this moment) that last full measure of devotion in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their large banners proclaiming "We Don't Need No American Government" and "America is a Thief" are regularly permitted at 'Iolani Palace. The bill's philosophical brothers regularly protest the presence of the United States and loudly proclaim with bullhorns that they are not Americans. Their idols are more likely to be Che Guevara and Fidel Castro than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Presiding over an independent Native Hawaiian nation, their hostility to America and its security would be empowered.