Free Republic

The Democrats pushed too far and now they are left to turn on one another for political survival. That’s the landscape in New York where an ugly civil war has erupted thanks to the party’s epic failure in gerrymandering congressional districts for partisan gain that were overturned by the courts and order redrawn by a special master. “I thought it was disrespectful. We’ve served together a long time. He’s running in my district,” Upper East Side congresswoman Carolyn Maloney told The Post of her longtime fellow House member Jerrold Nadler’s sudden announcement that he’d be challenging for her long-held seat...

After last election cycle, when Colorado House Republicans received 189,000 more votes than House Democrats, we began to highlight how grossly gerrymandered the statehouse has become. Now, even the liberals at the Daily Kos blog are acknowledging that the Colorado House is the Democrats’ “best chamber” in the entire nation. It favors Democrats even more than California’s general assembly. The reapportionment process is obviously deeply flawed ... Democrat obstructionists in the House should be careful. While they may think they’re the party of the people, they’re not actually representing the majority of people who voted in the last election. And...

Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) looks mighty good for a woman who has to be at least 148 years old. My take on her age is based on a statement the Congresswoman made today while objecting to impending spending reductions relating to sequestration in which she characterized herself as "a freed slave." Slavery as a legal institution ended in the U.S. in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Here is what Ms. Jackson Lee said, in context (HT Rush Limbaugh): We are at the bone almost. And sequester that is across-the-board cuts will literally destroy us and put us...

(In the first half of this essay, Gerrymandering 101, I explained how gerrymandering works and why it’s so ubiquitous. Here in the exciting conclusion I name and shame the ten most gerrymandered districts of the current 111th Congress — plus 20 bizarre bonus districts not mentioned in the title.)(10.) North Carolina-12 This is what most people imagine when they think of a gerrymandered district — what I call “Gerrymander Classic.” NC-12 looks very much like the gerrymandered districts of the 19th century, but taken to extremes. As bad as it is, NC-12 at least looks like a congressional district, with...

Lust for power has made lawmakers forget responsibility to public TOM ASHCRAFT, Special to The Observer (In 2002 Tom Ashcraft, a NC attorney, won the Pope Award from the John Locke Foundation for his efforts that resulted in the demise of forced bussing.) Politics brings out the best and worst in human beings. When Ronald Reagan lost the GOP presidential nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976, he was the epitome of graciousness and magnanimity. Among other things, he made a warm and rousing convention speech, apparently impromptu, at Ford's request. By contrast, almost any day the N.C. General Assembly is...