DELAY'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL, RACIST TEXAS GERRYMANDER COMING UNGLUED?

I bet it irks the neo-Confederate bigots no end that there is a special law for them to keep them from disenfranchising African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities. Well, it used to irk them. Now that they control the Executive Branch they've found some ways around it. What am I talking about? According to Section 5 of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states with a history of discriminatory election practices (i.e.- the ones that started the Civil War so they could keep African-Americans as slaves) are required to receive approval from the Justice Department or a federal court for any changes to their voting systems. Section 5 prohibits changes that would be "retrogressive," or bring harm to, minority voters. This has been irking and frustrating to Republicans since Nixon's Southern Strategy kicked in-- until Tom DeLay and George Bush stomped all over it.

Tom Eggan wrote two excellent pieces about how Texas Republicans have gotten away with skirting the law-- to put it mildly-- under the leadership of GOP crime boss Tom DeLay and with the active connivance of Bush Regime political operatives in the Justice Department (Ashcroft and Gonzales). The pieces ran December 2nd and December 10th and show clearly how the Bush Regime conspired with DeLay to over-rule the unanimous finding of the 8 non-political lawyers and analysts from the Justice Department's voting section who reported that DeLay's gerrymander of Texas was a clear, straight-forward violation of the Voting Rights Act which would discriminate against minorities.

Today the Associated Press reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up the Texas gerrymander. It's a political mess the Supreme Court was expected to steer clear of. So far it has led to lots more Republican seats in both the state legislature and the U.S. Congress-- and to the indictment of DeLay on ethics and criminal charges.
"Today's Supreme Court action agreeing to take up the Texas case on Tom DeLay's illegal redistricting scheme is a hopeful sign that the voting rights of millions of minorities will be restored," is what House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had to say about it.

DeLay's illegally-drawn district lines run afoul of clear one-vote requirements, having been specifically designed to dilute the voting strength of Hispanic and African-American Texans for partisan Republican gain (and to insure DeLay's continued role as Majority Leader of the Congress where he would be able to continue directling millions of dollars of bribes into Republican coffers).