Get ready ‘cuz here it comes…

The Supreme Court yesterday validated all but one of Tom Delay’s redistricting efforts in Texas. Although that sucks from a Democratic standpoint, the part of their ruling that should have both Republicans and Democrats quaking with fear is that Partisan redistricting outside of the standard 10 years required by the Constitution is A-okay.

The implications of this are going to be far and wide. On NPR yesterday they were discussing this and the commentator they had on said something to the effect of “Don’t worry, we probably won’t see a case of gerrymandering this extreme ever again.” Well, I got news for that commentator: “Get ready, ‘cuz here it comes!” Tom Delay and his cronies wanted to play, well they got their wish. In states all across the country we are going to start seeing the redrawing of district lines dependent on who controls the majority in their respective state’s legislature.

There are some who are going to try and defend the Delay redistricting plan by saying it was just to “correct” the district lines that were drawn after a Democratic gerrymander back in the 1990s. To you I say “Horsepucky!” This isn’t a damn game of tit-for-tat here. We’re talking about the right of every citizen to be represented by a candidate of their choice. The redrawing of legislative districts in a way so partisan the minority has about a snowball’s chance in hell of having their candidate represent them is ludicrous. Extremism, although it seems to be the order of the day, is not the way to do business in government. How can a state legislature justify the redrawing of legislative districts without using census data to support the requested changes? There is no justification, it’s purely partisan politics and it’s going to play out bad for the American people. For every partisan gerrymander, there is going to be a lawsuit challenging it. Let me rephrase that, for every partisan redistricting attempt that is not borne from census data, there is going to be a lawsuit challenging it. Did the Supreme Court Justices even anticipate that? Apparently not.

So get ready everybody, ‘cuz here comes one of the biggest wastes of judicial time ever (besides the constant lawsuits attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade).

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