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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (2512)	12/12/2003 2:59:57 AM
From: microhoogle!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Now that Kerry is almost out, I think you will have taken me off of ignore by now :-). I beg to differ yet again about Clark. He will add nothing to Dean ticket.

To: American Spirit who wrote (2512)	12/12/2003 2:17:41 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 90947

Judge Patrick Higginbotham, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and one of three federal judges hearing the case, seemed skeptical of the Democrats' suggestion that redistricting had ever been a scrupulously fair undertaking. He recalled that former Texas governor William P. Hobby, a World War I-era Democrat, once likened redistricting to a "religious experience" in which majority-party lawmakers (then the Democrats) fell to their hands and knees over a state map, and drew new congressional boundaries to reward their friends and punish their enemies. "When did this tradition of fair play across the aisles come to Texas?" the judge asked to scattered guffaws around the courtroom. "Well, judge, I would hope it would start today," said one of the Democratic lawyers, Richard Gladden. "Now that would be a religious experience," the judge said. The Democrats' federal lawsuit is one of two challenges to the GOP-drawn map. The other is in the Justice Department, which is reviewing the map under the Voting Rights Act and is expected to give a thumbs up or thumbs down in the next few days. If the Justice Department finds fault with just one redrawn district, the Democrats said they will move to have the court throw out the entire map, rather than attempt to tinker with it with so little time remaining before the 2004 primaries. The trial is the latest twist in a bitter partisan contest that began last spring when the Republicans, urged on by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and White House political adviser, Karl Rove, launched an extraordinary effort to redraw the state's congressional districts just two years after they had been set by a federal court. In Texas, the nation's second most-populous state, Democrats enjoy a 17 to 15 edge in the 32-member congressional delegation. The Republicans' goal was to capture as many as seven seats, all held by white Democrats, which would give Texas the single largest bloc of GOP votes in Congress. To accomplish that goal, the Republicans fashioned a radically redrawn electoral map, shifting nearly half the state's voters to new districts -- some of them shaped like serpents and running hundreds of miles from central Texas to the Rio Grande -- and scattering minority communities that had favored white Democrats. That strategy has provided the Democrats with their main legal opening to challenge the new map, they say. "Until this year, no one had the audacity to do what the state is trying to do," said Sam Hirsch, one of the lawyers for the Democrats. Many Republicans believe the case will end up in the Supreme Court. In the meantime, they are dismissing the Democrats' complaints as the whining of a party in decline. "There's no doubt, from the perspective of the incumbent, that protecting incumbents is a good thing," said Cruz, the solicitor general. "But it's not in the Constitution." washingtonpost.com