Blank page

News and Opinion for Democrats Against Bush - Part I b

Tom Delay Pushes Texas Redistricting to Increase Republican Seats in Congress

"Texas Republicans, egged on by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, violated a longstanding tradition by redrawing the map in the middle of a census cycle. ... And their plan is designed to wipe out moderate and white Democrats from the Texas congressional delegation.

We don't know whether the plan violates the Voting Rights Act or will survive legal challenge. What is clear, however, is that it will aggravate the triumph of extremes in Washington while further sovietizing America's already-fixed electoral game."

-- Washington Post editorial

washingtonpost.com

The Soviet Republic of Texas

Editorial - Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A22

To read the complete article, click on-http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21839-2003Oct13?language=printer [This link was found on the Washington Post website through a Google search on 3/23/04]

Excerpt--

YOU MIGHT THINK America's rigged system of congressional elections couldn't get much worse. Self-serving redistricting schemes nationwide already have left an overwhelming number of seats in the House of Representatives so uncompetitive that election results are practically as preordained as in the old Soviet Union. ... Yet even given this record, the just-completed Texas congressional redistricting plan represents a new low. ...

...Redistricting -- quite the inverse of elections -- is a process in which politicians get to choose their voters. It is a process that a healthy democracy would seek to reform.

________________________________

Austin Chronicle (Texas)

Here We Go Again
The redistricting case resumes: one battle in a protracted war

BY MICHAEL KING
DECEMBER 5, 2003:

To read the complete article, click on-- http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-12-05/pols_capitol.html [This link was found on the Austin Chronicle's website through a Google search on 3/23/04]

Excerpt--

Next week, in what may prove the decisive battle in the seemingly endless Texas congressional re-redistricting war, a federal court will convene in Austin to consider the case of Walter Session et al. v. Rick Perry et al., the omnibus lawsuit brought by various groups of voters, Democratic officeholders, and minority rights organizations against the new map installed by the Republicans after months of Texas political bloodshed. There is, in theory, a phantom's chance that the court will meet Monday and, with the wisdom of Solomon, throw out the baby, the bathwater, and all the assembled supplicants with an invocation to go and sin no more. But few judges ever made history by driving away business.

There is an even more remote chance that the Civil Rights Section of Attorney General John Ashcroft's U.S. Department of Justice will somehow locate its backbone, defy the boss and prevailing political winds, and rule that a congressional map that idly juggles and scatters minority communities as if they were billiard balls is an insult to democracy, let alone the Voting Rights Act.

We should live so long. ...

Austin Chronicle (Texas)

Here Come the Judges

BY MICHAEL KING

DECEMBER 12, 2003:

See this article for an excellent map of the redistricting of Travis County-- http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-12-12/pols_feature3.html [This link was found on the Austin Chronicle website hrough a Google search on 3/23/04]

Excerpt--

This morning (Thursday, Dec. 11), formal proceedings finally opened in the congressional re-redistricting trial brought in federal court by a host of plaintiffs against the state of Texas. ...

Enter supporting content here

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.