Even the Justice Staff knew the Texas redistricting was illegal
This is a bombshell, but it’s too little, too late to stop the implementation. Now we’ve got a long fight to roll back the unconstitutional power grab by the corrupt bug man and his cronies.
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.
The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.
“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 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.
You’ll remember this as the Delay gerrymandering push. The one where the Democrats left the state so that a quorum could not be reached. The one where the state legislators got the Federal Department of Homeland Security to track down the Democrates who had gone over the border into Oklahoma.
Rule of law? No, the rule of the bug man. The GOP culture of corruption. DeLay’s Power politics. Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts, We, the People, got screwed.
At some point I was going to have a complete sentence there but got sidetracked.
What do I want under my xmas tree? Another Delay indictment and for Abramoff to flip.