ONE MAN, NO VOTE

THE BATTLE AIN’T OVER until one man has his say. Redistricting in Texas got redone until Tom Delay was satisfied with the results.  Call that Texas justice.  The Department of Justice called it something else, but Delay had his say anyway.  Anonymous tongues once again wag.

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

SPEAKING UP IS NOT ENOUGH when one Texas jackass has the power to tell people to shut up.  Delay himself is taking some kicks in the ass.  How many Hispanics feel sorry for him? This is not just a Texas thing.

"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo [pdf] concluded.
The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.
But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress.

WHAT HAPPENS IN TEXAS doesn’t stay in Texas.  Votes denied in Texas ripple across the nation’s political pond.  At the edges we endure endless small wave upon wave of power corrupted, corrupting justice and the law itself.  We are a nation of laws, not men.  But the men who make the law make us shamed at what they do.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
TEXAS AMBUSH [Common Dreams] Led by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Bush political mastermind Karl Rove, Texas Republicans have completed their ambush of congressional Democrats. After Delay spent three days huddled in private conferences with bickering Republican legislators, they gerrymandered U.S. House districts in order to knock off as many as seven Democratic incumbents -- and help secure Republican dominance of the House of Representatives for a decade.
For months, Texas Republicans tried to re-open the can of worms known as redistricting in an unprecedented series of special sessions. Twice Democratic legislators fled the state to block a quorum. But power-hungry Republicans were relentless, and now they've finally crushed Democratic opposition. The battle moves to the courts and the Department of Justice, but it's unlikely that the carefully vetted map will be overturned.
Simply by rejiggering district lines in Texas, Republicans have padded their slim majority in the U.S. House so that they can even more brazenly avoid any need to work with House Democrats -- or even moderate Republicans. Their dominance has little to do with how many votes they win, or how popular Republican candidates are, either nationally or in Texas. It's much more the power of computers and databases to slice and dice the electorate, creating precisely crafted "designer districts" for the candidates of the party in power.

IF YOU FORGOT ENRON [WaPo] In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.
DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson. 

THE HERETIK NOTES for those who haven't noticed.  Less voices in government speaking and less heard are the clarion calling that we may be witnessing the end of any hope of honest democracy and the rise of oligarchs and plutocrats.
 
OTHER VOICES IN THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Dem in CT at The Next Hurrah continues with little daggers that bleed the truth. "Screw the country, this is good for Republicans." It's, of course, the same arrogance that led to this and this. The latter, at least, will be in a venue where spin and 'political theatre' (the dismissive view of Americans who hate politics and see the sides as being equally corrupt) can't be the deciding factors. That honor will go to the justice system. And, no, the sides aren't equally corrupt any more than they will be found equally guilty.

THE HERETIK AGREES and laments the creeping "sense of fairness" used by the foul to suggest both sides are equally to blame, that both sides in a story deserve equal attention even when one side so blatantly lies and manipulates the process of the telling of stories itself. You could call the problem creeping Broderism. Michael Kinsley is a must read: Business As Usual: Corrupt. 

MORE Joe Gandelman snarks: there will surely be plenty of explanations: after all, everyone involved in this case is a lawyer... Blogger Radio broadcasts: In-effect, there are 5 Representatives in the U.S. House, from Texas, whose seats are really illegitimate. Fake Congress-persons, if you will. Illegal even. Gerrymandered into office.

UPDATE
BAD NEWS FOR DELAY [NY Times] With a federal corruption case intensifying, prosecutors investigating Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist, are examining whether he brokered lucrative jobs for Congressional aides at powerful lobbying firms in exchange for legislative favors, people involved in the case have said.
The attention paid to how the aides obtained jobs occurs as Mr. Abramoff is under mounting pressure to cooperate with prosecutors as they consider a case against lawmakers. Participants in the case, who insisted on anonymity because the investigation is secret, said he could try to reach a deal in the next six weeks.
Many forces are bearing down on Mr. Abramoff. Last week, his closest business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in exchange for cooperating in the inquiry, being run by an interagency group, into whether money and gifts were used in an influence-peddling scandal that involved lawmakers.
 
CONVENIENT HERETIK SHORTHAND for how DC works for some and not for all: Special Business Interest>> K Street Lobbyist>> Congress >> Special Business Interest>> K Street Lobbyist>> Congress.  The door revolves until someone grows rich enough and opts out, or gets indicted. Or both.

 

Comments

[Lab Kat]

We here in Texas believe in sharing the madness.

[Stacy]

You know, this just makes me sick. It wasn't enough that the GOP stole the election in 2000 via the SCOTUS and probably stole in 2004 via Diebold but they had to gain control of the House via dirty tricks. His redistricting plan never got enough coverage in the mainstream media other than demonizing the texas democrats, many of whom were black, for high-tailing it out of texas to try to stop the plan from taking effect.

The only way these guys can win is by cheating, plain and simple.

And I posted an update on my blog about a guardian article that said when our token attorney general, Gonzales was confronted with the information in the leaked memo, he basically shrugged it off and blamed it on the senate and house???? I'm not sure how that works since every damn civil rights attorney in the Justice Department said it violated the law so if the AG had really put pressure on delay it never would have gone through and the fact that they hid the memo tells us something, doesnt it.

And who leaked the memo? A disgruntled DOJ employee. Apparently, there are a lot of those these days. Time for Bush to clean house like he did at the CIA and hire some incompetent yes-men.

[Craig McDonough]

The Department of Justice has responded -- The A.G. claims the "court upheld" (even though the court never saw the Justice department memeo) and a spokecritter for DOJ says, essentiasly "We don't play no stinking politics here!"

See Here for more...

(yes, I'm shameless)