http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ricting_lawsuit

DENVER - In a decision that has national implications, the Colorado Supreme Court threw out the state's new congressional districts Monday saying the GOP-led Legislature redrew the maps in violation of the state constitution.

YES! This can help Texas A LOT! Take that, Tom DeLay, you bitch!

Just another example of how below the belt Repuglican politics have become. Good for the Colorado Supreme Court. Right on!

Not unless the Texas Constitution is the same as Colorado's.

Amazing nonetheless. Majority Democrats gerrymander congressional districts and that's OK. When Republicans then gain the majority, you hypocrites scream six ways to Sunday that it's unfair, or that they're rigging elections.

Puhleeze!

Please, what Dems are as you say gerrymandering.??? Proof please! Please name them.

Be careful what you ask for, puckman1, because you just might get it. Gerrymandering is an ancient bipartisan practice in American politics. Try Googling for "North Carolina" and "Interstate highway median strip" to see if you can find a map of the district in that state that - you guessed it - followed that median strip of an Interstate highway.

It was the 12th District

[ December 01, 2003, 05:46 PM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

Not to mention the late Phil Burton's masterpiece in 1980 which divided up California so the Democrats would dominate.

The uproar is not about gerrymandering, which you properly state, has been done by both parties for years. What the Texas and Colorado Republicans tried to do was redraw the districts more than once every ten years.

And MIB, as an attorney, you should know that one state's supreme court often looks to other states' rulings on similar issues for guidance on their own cases.

Now, please give me even ONE example of the Democrats trying to redraw the districts in any state more than the once every ten years. (If confused, the redrawing of districts happens once every ten years to adjust for the new federal census data that is taken once every ten years.) I'm waiting . . .

Not if it's an individual state's constitution at issue. To Texas, the Colorado decision is irrelevant, because the CO. Supreme Court based its decision on that state's constitution, which says redistricting can only be done once every 10 years. There is no federal law that mandates this. Instead, the U.S. Constitution mandates a diennial census to determine representation. Exactly how that is done is left to the states.

See my above comment, as you're missing my point.

Seems you tried to change the topic to gerrymandering from the frequency of redrawing the districts. Are you trying to sidestep the issue at hand? Still waiting for an example of the Dems trying to ever do this.

(Class, the topic is not gerrymandering, but frequency of redistricting. Please try to stay focused.)

Look, it's not only Democrats who've gerrymandered, but the GOP has done so more than once, especially during the post-Civil War era (for obvious reasons) and again during the Gilded Age, when they controlled various state legislatures. Tom DeLay, however you look at it, is extremely antidemocratic (and anti-republican, for that matter*).

*(Cf. his plan to have the GOP bigwhigs spend most of their time at their NYC "show convention" on a luxury liner on the Hudson, which is far more dangerous than actually setting foot on the streets of the statistically safest city in the US, with all the dark, non-English-speaking hordes who cast their votes for Bill and Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer (and George Pataki and Mike Bloomberg).

Anything that brings Herr DeLay down a peg is a good thing in my book!

Keywest Guy is correct. The issue is re-districting in both of these cases. I would also like to see situation where democrats did the same.

No, it was you who tried to steer me off into a different direction. If you would have read my first post more carefully, you would have seen that I clearly commented that Democrats have gerrymandered, too, just like Republicans.

I'd like to see a state create a system that uses a non-partisan commission to create the districts every cycle. Maybe then we could get some logical districts instead of simply districts to preserve or increase majorities. In fact, why not leave the re-districting up to the MINORITY party? That would help us escape the tyrany of the majority that revisits us every decade.