whonew wrote:
What does redistricting - which has always been a partisan process - have to do with this thread and the GOP doing something that has never been required in 200-plus years?

How soon some forget that Texas Senate Democrats had to go AWOL when the Republican's (starting with Delay) did an illigal redistricting in 2003. 

There had been a legal redistricting just 2 years before and this redistricting was to make the Texas districts more Republican friendly.

Redistricting effort

The Texas Legislature was called into session in 2003 to again redistrict the state’s congressional lines. While redistricting is commonly done only following a national census, the state legislature has the legal right to pursue it at any point. Hoping to prevent a quorum (the minimum number of legislators needed to conduct business in the legislature), more than 50 Texas House Democrats secretly fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma, halting business in the legislative chamber. They remained out of the state long enough to force the House to miss the deadline, ending consideration of redistricting during the regular session.

On June 30, 2003, a special legislative session to take up redistricting began. On July 14, Republican Sen. Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant joined 10 Democrats citing “unalterable opposition” to redistricting, giving them enough numbers to doom redistricting in the Senate during the special session. On July 28, eleven Senate Democrats blocked a quorum by fleeing to Albuquerque, New Mexico moments before the House and Senate adjourned the first special session and just before Republican Gov. Rick Perry planned to call a second special session on redistricting. On August 26, the second special legislative session ended with the Democratic senators still in New Mexico and no redistricting bill passed by the Senate. On September 15, a third special session to address redistricting began with Democratic Sen. John Whitmire of Houston defecting from Albuquerque. As a result, the remaining Democratic senators who fled returned to Austin (the state capital). On October 12, 2003, the Texas House and Senate completed a compromise redistricting map and sent it to Perry's office for his signature. Because of past barriers to the voting rights of minorities, Texas is one of nine states required to have it's redistricting plans approved by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On December 19, 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice gave preliminary approval to the Texas redistricting map. The clearance was made official on January 6, 2004, when a three-judge federal panel approved the map. http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/3242576.html href="http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/3242576.html" rel=nofollow>[7]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=2003_Texas_congressional_redistricting
    

Republicans, the party of
DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO
Edited 1 time by fancyred 05/29/11 23:46.