Since his first day in office all he has done is shun, ignore, or work to get even with anyone and everyone who did not support him or give him money.
Posted on 09/19/2011 3:11:50 PM PDT by smoothsailing
David Wasserman
September 19, 2011
The Obama administration is issuing its first civil rights challenge to a redistricting plan against Texas, the state that will gain the most congressional seats from the once-a-decade redrawing of the nation's political map.
It marks the first challenge by the Justice Department to a redistricting plan this year and it has major political implications: The fight could determine which party stands a better shot of winning four new Texas House seats, and it potentially represents the opening round of a political fight between the president and the Lone Star State governor who is vying to unseat him, Republican Rick Perry.
Attorneys for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Tuesday said they will fight the Republican-drawn Texas congressional and state House maps in a preclearance trial before the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that it violates Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Latino groups, along with Texas Democrats, had alleged that the Perry-signed congressional map granted Latinos no new net opportunities to elect the candidate of their choice even though Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth that is earning Texas four new House seats. Texas Republicans, led by Attorney General Greg Abbott, foresaw that the Justice Department would deny them preclearance and are currently going to trial against the DOJ in the DC District Court to seek approval for the map.
The Justice Department is expected to lay out its specific objections to the maps and stipulations for fixes tomorrow. So far, the Justice Department has been relatively lenient in clearing state redistricting plans, disappointing some Democrats earlier this summer by approving a Republican-drawn map in Louisiana that denied African-Americans a second majority seat. However, given the Latino surge and high stakes in Texas, Democrats were not surprised that DOJ lawyers found the Texas plan to be discriminatory to Latinos in its intent and effect. Had the Texas plan been okayed, said Democratic redistricting attorney Gerald Hebert, “I would think that there’s nobody home at the Justice Department.”
Given Texas Republicans’ legal strategy to bypass the DOJ, the Civil Rights Division’s stance shouldn’t come as a surprise to the GOP either. But according to one GOP redistricting expert who requested anonymity in order to speak more candidly about the process, the fight over the Texas map is now entering the “kind of worst possible world.” The expert predicts the Justice Department's position and large number of interveners in the case could add up to an extended discovery phase and a long and costly trial at the DC District Court, which could prompt a federal court in San Antonio to “draw a de novo plan using the current plan as a benchmark.”
The Republican map already has taken plenty of hits in this month’s separate trial before a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio. Latino groups ranging from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund to the League of United Latin American Citizens expressed optimism at last Friday’s conclusion of the trial that the judges would rule some of the most blatant elements of the map to be unlawful and discriminatory. “Judges were asking why no new Latino seats were drawn in North Texas,” says Hebert, who participated in the trial.
Another ominous sign for Republicans: the GOP’s defense of the map in San Antonio veered off track when one of their own expert witnesses, Rice University professor John Alford, testified that the congressional map created no new net Latino opportunities.
The San Antonio federal court faces a time crunch: they would prefer to wait to issue their own ruling until the DC District Court rules on preclearance, but Texas’s candidate filing period for the March 2012 primary is supposed to open in November. While the federal court could theoretically delay the date of the state’s primary, it’s unclear how far they would be willing to push back the state’s calendar to give the GOP’s map a chance. “If I were in Democrats’ shoes,” says the GOP expert, “I’d draw [the DC District Court trial] out as long as possible.”
A de novo (from scratch) plan would indeed amount to a disastrous outcome for Texas Republicans, whose line-drawing handiwork would never see the light of day if federal judges impose their own map for 2012. The GOP-approved congressional map created 26 safe seats for Republicans and 10 safe seats for Democrats. Insiders on both sides of the partisan divide a court-drawn map could cost Republicans the West Texas 23rd CD and Dallas-area 33rd CD at a minimum and put as many as three additional GOP seats in limbo.
Is it a coincidence that the DOJ has picked its first redistricting fight over a Perry-signed map that Latino groups allege is discriminatory? Could the GOP have guaranteed more of what it wanted by playing it safe and ceding one of the four new seats as a Latino opportunity district? Those questions, says the GOP expert, may be “imponderables.”
Got all your talking points tonight? Have you at least expanded your talking points? Rinse and repeat was getting old.
DoJ has no business getting involved in this state issue.
You offered nothing but your opinion of ME. While I'm flattered, and while you did prove my point about the anti-Perry people like you, let's try to stick to the actual subject matter.
What is your opinion of DoJ suing Texas over re-districting? Or, did you enter this thread just to post your opinion of me?
I think a strong, but tacit argument can be made that, unlike a certain other minority group, Mexican-Americans neither need nor will be assisted by ethnic gerrymandering.
1) Mexican Americans are not particularly politically monolithic, supporting both parties if not evenly, then to considerable degree. As such, both parties actively try to cultivate their support.
2) Mexican American candidates are frequently elected in mixed and even Anglo majority elections, their political party and platform being seen as far more important than their ethnic group by the public. Likewise, when elected, they rarely show any particular favoritism to their ethnic group over the public as a whole.
3) When Mexican Americans live in majority Anglo districts with Anglo leadership, they rarely if ever are discriminated against, as long as they are legal citizens. Those who are not legal citizens are not constituents of that district, so enforcement of the law against them is not in any way discriminatory.
4) If anything, Mexican Americans are assisted far more by integration than by being ghettoized. Those that live in primarily illegal Mexican and Mexican American districts are far slower to advance up the economic ladder and become prosperous than those who make an effort to be assimilated into the American culture.
5) When Mexican Americans “deeply” assimilate into American culture, their opinions, attitudes, and voting behavior mirror those of Anglo Americans. They lose all national and cultural affinity with Mexico. From that point it is discriminatory to force political affiliation with other Mexican Americans who are not so fully integrated.
Chris Adams and crew over at PJ Media have reported extensively on the utter and complete corruption of the DOJ. The most politically potent of the corrupt seem to be located in the the voting rights division.
That means an action by the evil forces in the DOJ will be coordinated with external Alinsky and Black “community organizing groups” like Acorn, the Black Panthers and the NAACP, Black Churches, social-justice college groups, and the media.
In the below excerpt links one and two are leftist hires in the Civil Rights Division Voting Section.
All ten new hires to the Justice Department's Criminal Section have far-left resumes -- which were only released following a PJMedia lawsuit. (This is the tenth of a series of articles about the Justice Department's hiring practices since President Obama took office. Read parts one , two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight, and nine.)
Nah, I entered the thread to opine on you and your broken records. I do believe you are the one that opened with a volley of gardisal condescension; but that is to be expected with your previous seminal posts of perry and reproductive enlightenment. Now, play victim. ;)
With Hispanic support for Obama waning, could Latino vote be up for grabs in 2012?
Oh come on....do you know how silly it looks to be bashing another FReeper when the subject matter is much more important. This has all the elements of a libtard. Remember what Reagan along with Rush said...let us go after the real enemies and not other conservatives and/or Republicans. Let’s follow Reagan’s playbook!
We have a winner!! Only 20 posts into the thread, too!
GAAAAARRRRRDDDDAAASSSSIIIILLLLL!!!
We have a winner!! Only 20 posts into the thread, too!
GAAAAARRRRRDDDDAAASSSSIIIILLLLL!!!
Since his first day in office all he has done is shun, ignore, or work to get even with anyone and everyone who did not support him or give him money.
bump.
I agree. But preclearance by the Justice Dept is a requirement under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Section 5. This section was extended for another 25 years by the Congress in 2006. Preclearance is require in states or parts of states.
Insults only?
I guess then you know you just lost;)
L
Now some FReepers are blaming Perry for Obama’s DoJ having to sue the state. It's a new day on FR...
So, you have now twice had nothing to offer this thread but your opinion of me and to seek my attention. Why, you even winked at me this time!
Sorry Michael, but I don't swing that way. Find your jollies elsewhere.
GARRRRRDDDDAAAASSSIIIIILLLL!!!
We do. Perry passed Voter ID into law.
Couldn’t Wasserman at least look at the new redistricting plan before parroting the RAT talking points that no new Hispanic districts were drawn? Republicans drew two new Hispanic-majority districts and turned the Hispanic-majority TX-27 into a Hispanic-plurality CD (it is not like 49.5% Hispanic), meaning that there’s a net gain of one Hispanic-majority CD.
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