Remember that scene in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith when the Galactic Senate votes to give all-encompassing emergency powers to Emperor Palpatine?
That’s basically what will happen in Hawaii if a pair of emergency powers bills are passed. State lawmakers have advanced two bills that would empower the governor to declare an emergency and then order quarantines, enter private property, suspend existing statutes, regulate and seize firearms, and completely exterminate the Jedi order.
Okay, I made that last one up, but the fact remains: These bills are some of the scariest I’ve seen at any level of government lately.
House Bill 2236 and Senate Bill 2151 are moving through the state legislature at the same time that Gov. Josh Green is still ruling under a longstanding housing emergency proclamation that suspended land-use and transparency rules to fast-track home construction, Hawaii Public Radio reported.
The bill would grant the governor the authority to “require the quarantine or segregation of persons who are affected with or believed to have been exposed to any infectious, communicable, or other disease” and to “authorize without the permission of the owners or occupants, entry on private premises for any of these purposes.”
The state would also be empowered to “authorize that public nuisances be summarily abated and, if need be, that the property be destroyed by any police officer or authorized person.”
Those opposing the measures point out the impact it will have on constitutional rights. Advocacy group Hawaii Capitol Watch warned that the bills “would ensure that executive branch leaders do not arbitrarily call long-standing and complex societal challenges, such as unaffordable housing or illegal activity, as ‘emergencies’ in order to suspend our environmental, cultural protection, good governance, procurement, and labor laws indefinitely – as the Governor attempted to do with his emergency proclamation on (un)affordable housing.”
Hellbound and Down 