Senator DANIEL AKAKA (Democrat, Hawaii): It creates a government-to-government relationship with the United States. KASTE: Democratic Senator Dan Akaka, himself a native, wants Congress to let Hawaiians re-establish their national identity. He says his bill would give them a kind of legal parity with tribal governments on the mainland, but he says this sovereignty could eventually go further, perhaps even leading to outright independence.

Sen. AKAKA: That could be. As far as what’s going to happen at the other end, I’m leaving it up to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

This is sheer insanity, they want to create a race based Hawaiian government and seceed? When the flow of pork stops, then what are they going to do?

Tom Coburn was one of the first people to raise a flag about this craziness, thanks be to Sen Coburn being in the Senate. He may be nicknamed Senator Trainwreck, but he’s our Senator Trainwreck, perhaps one of the few fighting for liberty everyday.

One more thing:

They believe it means the White House is willing to accept some version of native Hawaiian self-government.

If Bush actually were to sign this bill… it would just be mindboggling. The drive for independence is led by a bunch of loonies and regularly polls very low on Hawaiians priorities.

Jonah Goldberg (once again) explains why the left’s charge of chickenhawk is spurious:

What’s interesting, to me at least, is that Mrs. Sheehan represents simply the latest installment in a long, nasty, desperate ideological campaign — and one that demonstrates the logical limits of identity politics.

Anybody who’s been on the receiving end of the “chickenhawk” epithet knows what I’m getting at. Various definitions of chickenhawk are out there, but the gist — as if you didn’t know — is “coward” or “unpatriotic hypocrite.” The accusation is less an argument than an insult.

It’s also a form of bullying. The intent is to say, “You have no right to support the war since you haven’t served or signed up.” It’s a way to get supporters of the war in Iraq, the war on terror, or the president simply to shut up.

But there’s a benefit of a doubt to be given. There are many people — I know because I’ve argued with lots of them — who don’t believe the “chickenhawk” thing is intellectually unserious.

And that is the problem. Anyone who seriously believes that one must fight in the war or be against it can’t be taken seriously on anything at all. The left whines about not getting respect, but do they deserve any? No, not as long as they continue to try and put forward such flaccid arguments as “chickenhawk”.

Cindy Sheehan is a grade A fool, via Hardball.

MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?

SHEEHAN: I don’t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We’re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we’re saying. But they’re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.

MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.

SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al-Qaida and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.

MATTHEWS: But that’s where they were being harbored. That’s where they were headquartered. Shouldn’t we go after their headquarters? Doesn’t that make sense?

SHEEHAN: Well, but there were a lot of innocent people killed in that invasion, too. … But I’m seeing that we’re sending our ground troops in to invade countries where the entire country wasn’t the problem. Especially Iraq. Iraq was no problem. And why do we send in invading armies to march into Afghanistan when we’re looking for a select group of people in that country?

So I believe that our troops should be brought home out of both places where we’re obviously not having any success in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and that’s who they told us was responsible for 9/11.

This is what happens when the Left gets off its meds.

Hat tip: The Corner