The reshaped Hawai'i advisory committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights scheduled hearings on the Akaka bill for Hawaiian political recognition in such a hurry that even some members of the panel had trouble making the first briefing.

The Hawai'i hearings were initiated from Washington, where the Bush administration has loaded civil rights enforcement agencies with conservative opponents of affirmative action, and the national commission sent its chairman to Honolulu to bird-dog the proceedings.

If these hearings were a fair-minded attempt to determine the facts and assess local public opinion on the Akaka bill, they could be of much value.

But since that's so obviously not the case, the pre-ordained findings against the Akaka bill that will emerge deserve no weight whatsoever.

Gerald A. Reynolds, chairman of the national civil rights commission, said when he was here for last week's hearing that there's no chance the Washington panel will reverse its opposition to the Akaka bill.

So what legitimate reason could there be for the rush-rush local hearings if no change is possible?

The play seems clear now that the Bush administration has stacked the 17-member local advisory board with a majority of members on record as opposing the Akaka bill: Hurry to reverse the local panel's longstanding support of the Akaka bill — and validate the opposition of the national commission — before Congress possibly takes up the measure later this year.

The four members of Hawai'i's congressional delegation have rightly questioned whether the reconstituted local advisory panel, which now includes active litigants against Hawaiian native rights, fairly represents the diversity of Hawai'i's population or the range of local opinion.

U.S. Sen. Dan Akaka, U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie and U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono complained in a letter to the commission that the local briefings are "highly irregular and counter-productive."

"It would almost appear that the commission has its own agenda and its own timetable," they said.

The civil rights commission has based its opposition to protecting Native Hawaiian rights on the view that Hawaiians are a racial minority and not an indigenous people like American Indians and Alaskan natives, who enjoy federal political recognition that protects their native assets.

This race-based view is a political choice, not a legal imperative; there is no logical basis for treating Hawaiians differently from other native groups.

If Native Hawaiians were properly recognized as an indigenous people, as the Akaka bill would provide, claims of racial discrimination in Hawaiian programs like the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Kamehameha Schools would become moot.

You don't hear arguments about second-class citizenship for non-natives and "separate but equal" status in Alaska, where the federal government settled claims with the native people in 1971. We haven't seen non-natives in Alaska stripped of their property rights or that state secede from the union, as opponents of Native Hawaiian rights disingenuously claim could happen here if the Akaka bill becomes law.

What have Hawaiians done to deserve being treated with blatant hostility and disrespect in their native land — or be singled out as some kind of evil-doers by the Bush administration in its ideological dismantling of federal programs that once protected minority rights?

What business does the civil rights commission have giving special standing to self-interested litigants seeking to claim traditional Hawaiian assets as their own?

The current hearings are not an intellectually honest attempt to arrive at the facts, but a political power play to find the most-expedient path to a preconceived outcome.

The appropriate response is to ignore the hearings and any findings that come from them.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.