Gerrymander pacemakers

Good to see the continuing unraveling of Tom DeLay's dirty work down in Texas. Following on from his indictment on money laundering charges, the Texas congressional redistricting plan Delay masterminded, one of the most transparent pieces of gerrymandering in US politics for many a year, is set for a Supreme Court review. The redistricting, which was railroaded through in 2003 (three years after the most recent census) by a Republican controlled Texas Legislature, and later approved by a three-judge federal panel (two Republican appointees, one Democrat) enabled the GOP to turn a 17-15 deficit in the Texas congressional delegation into a 21-11 split in its favour after the 2004 elections.
The plan has been widely criticised since its inception for diluting the voting strength of black and Hispanic Texans, in contravention of the Voting Rights Act. New evidence that has come to light in the last two weeks indicates that political appointees in the Justice Dept. overruled the judgement of all eight career attorney in the department's Civil Rights Division, all of whom had opposed the redistricting plan on the grounds that it would harm minority voters. The Dallas Morning News reported David Becker, a former Civil Rights Division member who left in April after seven years, as saying, "It's probably not an overstatement to say it's unprecedented for that kind of overruling of the career staff to occur."
The case will be an important early test of what kind of Supreme Court we will have under new Chief Justice, John Roberts. One would hope that their concern for justice would outweigh any partisan leanings they may have. But in the USA today, one shouldn't count on it.