Posted on 06/28/2006 7:14:51 AM PDT by Smogger
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned part of a Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Challengers — Democrats and minority groups — had asked the court to declare the redrawn districts unconstitutional.
Republicans said the new map better reflects the voting patterns of the state and deny minority voting rights were violated.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Yup, that sounds about right to me.
The DNC/DCCC never challenges its own incumbents without a very good reason. The net kooks at Daily Kos sponsored a return by Ciro Rodriguez that flamed out.
Which Democrat Congressman is going to lose his seat thanks to the 23rd district gaining 100,000 Hispanics?
I said 2 based on the very early information we had available at that time, which said both the 24th and 23rd districts might be changed. Since it's only the 23rd, Bonilla is now endangered, and that's the only interesting change. If you can indicate a different outcome and provide details how that would happen, I'm open to hearing it.
I suppose another idea is to give the 25th the Anglo part of Bexar that Bonilla lost, in an attempt to bag Doggett, connected by a strip of real estate a foot wide, and leave the 21st largely alone. There may be a need to switch around some of Anglo Bexas between the 21st and 25th to do that. And of course, if that is done, the Texas Dems in the legislature will be back in Santa Fe, which is a great place to be in the summer.
And the whole idea that this was a "second" redistricting was stupid. STUPID. The legislature couldn't come to a decision so it was decided by a (I believe federal) court. The court (STUPIDly) just modified a heavily gerrymandered map that was in favor of Democrats.
I agree that maps should only be changed once, but anytime a court does the legislatures work, that doesn't count.
I want gerrymandered districts. I don't want to have to hold on to a corrupt Republican because I fear the election of a Democrat.
What's astounding is that Hispanics somehow get protected status. Asians don't. Hispanics (with exceedingly rare exceptions, I suppose) don't have a history of slavery in US territories. And even so, what's a Hispanic? Is a person from Spain Hispanic? Is a legal immigrant from Chile whose parents are part of the ruling class, here on a student visa studying organic chemistry an oppressed minority?
RE-DISTRICTING CAN TAKE PLACE ANYTIME WHEN A STATE CHANGES PARTY COMPLICTION. NO LONGER EVERY 10 YEARS...THIS IS HUGE....THE DIMWITS HAVE LOST BIG-TIME ON THAT DECISION!!!!
BTW, what do you think of my theory that gerrymandering=good thing?
This is a win for the Republicans. At WORST, with good redrawing of the struck-down district (and other districts that will have be redrawn near it to compensate), we will lose one of the seats we gained in Texas. This is clearly not what the DUmmies wanted. (They are freaking out over there. It was quite amusing to see them go "Woohoo" at first when the biased media report first came out, and then as some of the more intelligent DUmmies started to read the decision, they realized that this really is a huge victory for Delay and the Republicans.)
An interesting point is that in addition to losing on the big constitutional questions, the libs won only ONE of the two VRA issues. Kennedy, joined by Alito and Roberts (and by Scalia and Thomas, although for different reasons) upheld the Dallas-area redistricting.
"On a different matter, the court ruled 7-2 that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like — not just once a decade as Texas Democrats claimed. That means Democratic and Republican state lawmakers can push through new maps anytime there is a power shift at a state capital."
IMHO, I think this is even more noteworthy. It has the potential to generate congressional redistricting every time a house in a state legislature changes control from dems to pubbies or vice versa. In states with the right of popular initiatives, that could lead to more states having non-partisan commissions drawing the maps of congressional districts and making many more of those districts up for grabs.
It's not a Constitutional issue, it's a statutory issue. The Congress passed the Civil Rights Voting Act; the Supreme Court is merely determining whether Texas has violated it.
Apparantly, Bonilla isn't, according to the SCOTUS, anyway...
Baker almost provoked a constitutional convention, and in other timw would have. It is revolutionary in its way as Roe was reveolutionary, in that it showed that Warren's Court thought of the states as mere provinces rather than separate republics.
Well, according to this racial stuff, neither is Vernon Robinson black.
This interpretation of the VRA says nothing about the race/ethnicity of the actual representative, but whether or not he is the candidate of the minority community's choice. Since Bonilla's voters are largely Anglo, with Latinos voting Democrat in Laredo, he's not the candidate of the Latino community's choice.
FWIW, it's occurred to me that if the legislature does act on this that they may very well decide to clean up the boundaries in West Texas now that Stenholm is gone. More interestingly, they might also take another shot at Chet Edwards. If they want to revisit those lines, they'd have a lot more leeway now that Turner, Sandlin, and Frost are basically out of the picture.
They probably won't do that if they have to fix the maps this year, however, if for no other reason than that they'll need new primaries in any district where the boundaries change. They might, though, if they want to try to trade Bonilla for Edwards.
And the ultimate irony: If that were their goal, they could easily create a district that DeLay can win. :)
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