In an online request to the Wall Street Journal to reprint the piece, the Star-Bulletin was told that the author must be asked for permission. The Wall Street Journal identified the author as Dick Rowland with the Grassroots Institute of Hawaii.

Grassroots also has hired Bruce Fein as a spokesman and general counsel who is scheduled to speak as an opponent of the Akaka Bill in forums that will be televised tonight and tomorrow night.

I'm pleased to see all the recent discussion of how the GIH disseminates its views via the "vast right wing media conspiracy," but it doesn't change the fact that outside of Hawaii (and inside of Hawaii, except among some on the right wing) few of the public know (or care) that a small group of people are skillfully manipulating the whole discussion. People can believe what they want, but they should at least know when they are dealing with a biased source. The wider GIH casts its net, the harder it is for media consumers to see the connection to GIH. They are doing a great job of staying under the radar outside of Hawaii, and a fair job inside of Hawaii. They are kicking the collective ass of the proponents of the bill because GIH plays the media game at a level where they are basically unopposed on this topic.

What a bunch of crap you recently spewed forth in your diatribe against Hawaiian nationalists, painting us as anti-Americans and wanting to "rid the state of nationalities not ethnically Hawaiian."

I am neither anti-American nor pro-American. I am a supporter of human rights and fundamental freedoms, in line with the basic principles of where you have chosen to repose your citizenship and loyalty, the United States of America. Those basic principles are that of the right of all people to choose for themselves how they unfold into their future, known as the right of self-determination. Leaders of your United States of America failed, at crucial points of history, to abide by those basic principles, 1893 and 1959. Yet, you call us anti-Americans for wanting the U.S.A. to abide by those principles. I don't understand. No, I take that back. I do understand. You are not an American citizen who believes in American principles. You are an American citizen who believes instead, in American interests. A huh!!!

When U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, addressed the issue of independence during his recent National Public Radio interview, he inadvertently exposed the true implication of creating congressional actions to address injuries stemming from the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. When it comes down to it, all federal programs, entitlements and allowances to “native Hawaiians,” are but ploys to avoid the real issue: The restoration of Hawaii as an independent nation.

It appears you have the U.S. Akaka-Stevens/Danner Bill confused with the struggle for Hawaii's independence which is under the continuous U.S. belligerent occupation. [...]
What you neglect to mention was the massive political campaign to push statehood in all medias and in schools. Many Hawaiians were barred from voting; military and their families were allowed to vote; and only about 37 percent of the registered voters participated in the vote.
There were many objections except U.S. Americans were all for it. The campaign was taxation without representation and the fact that we were second-class citizens. We questioned the irregularity of the choices, but were suppressed. Only two choices were given: to remain a territory with no say as to what happens in Hawaii, or to become a state and be first-class citizens with representation in Congress.

There is something decidedly, um, European about the notion of some faraway islands, annexed under dubious imperialistic circumstances (which the U.S. officially apologized for), taking up a star on the American flag in these post-colonial times. If the historical relationship with America is indeed built on a stack of lies and unfulfilled promises, and if separatism is truly a growing phenomenon, is it not a matter of basic democratic morality to ask the islanders point-blank whether they want to remain in the union? If the vote is decisive, it may stave off ever-more elaborate (and costly) arrangements on Capitol Hill.

Non-violent political separation is rarely as traumatic as opponents fear. Czechoslovakia, and an impressive amount of the former Soviet Union, devolved into nation-states without a shot being fired or the various predicted economic catastrophes coming to pass. Washington, it's safe to say, has enough economic clout to ensure that American citizens would not be maltreated by any fledgling new country. And there are no analogous admission histories in the continental U.S. (Hawaii shares more in common with The Philippines than the American Southwest), so even if hell were to freeze over and a decisive majority of, say, California residents wanted to secede, there wouldn't necessarily be any legal precedents created by Hawaiian independence.