The Texas re-districting plan that was so high-handed it signaled a Republican determination to steal elections (signaled it to anyone who didn’t already know, that is) was actually considered by a majority of the lawyers at Justice to be
a violation of the Voting Rights Act (which is what a few of us said at the time).
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.
J. Gerald "Gerry" Hebert, one of the lawyers representing Texas Democrats who are challenging the redistricting in court, said of the Justice Department's action: "We always felt that the process . . . wouldn't be corrupt, but it was. . . . The staff didn't see this as a close call or a mixed bag or anything like that. This should have been a very clear-cut case."
The case is still on appeal by the Texas Democratic party, but that didn’t stop Atty Gen Al ‘The Mole’ Gonzales from sticking his two cents worth in. As far as he’s concerned, over-ruling the JD’s legal staff when it said a clearly illegal move to disenfranchise black voters was afoot is perfectly OK. He called the near-unanimous recommendation
a mere ‘disagreement’.
"The fact that there may be disagreement within the ranks does not necessarily make it a wrong decision," Gonzales said at a briefing with reporters in Washington.
Gonzales disputed allegations from Democratic lawmakers and lawyers that the Texas case provides additional evidence that the department's work has been politicized during the Bush administration.
Justice Department officials overruled another staff objection earlier this year in approving a voter identification plan approved by Georgia's Republican-controlled legislature. The plan was later halted in the courts as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
"We're not going to politicize decisions within the department," Gonzales said. "We're going to make decisions based on what the law requires."
So what we have here is one more unique, GOP Orwellian definition wherein a blatant politicizing of the law in the Pubs’ favor is NOT politicizing while pointing it out is.
One has one’s hopes that the American people are getting hip to this hypocrisy. After all, the Pubs have done this so often it has engendered its own acronym: It may be against the law but IOKIYAR–It’s OK If You’re A Republican.
Just think, this is the highest legal authority in the nation talking. He not only finds ways to unilaterally declare that torture is OK, he’s fully prepared to break any law that doesn’t serve partisan interests and then label his partisanship ‘unpartisan’. What a guy. Almost makes you long to have John Mitchell back….
The Early-Warning Frog
