Texas Republicans to lose 5 seats?

Gerrymandering-To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections. Tom Delay blatantly and unabashedly broke the law by redistricting in mid-decade. We'll see if the Supreme Court has the integrity to rule constitutionally this time. They failed the people of Pennsylvania the last time they ruled on gerrymandering. With a little luck, and some new found common sense, maybe Justice Kennedy learned something from the Pennsylvania case. Court to Hear Dispute on Texas Redistricting The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would decide the validity of the much-disputed Congressional map that Texas Republicans pushed through the State Legislature two years ago in a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting that led to the loss of five Democratic Congressional seats. The court agreed to hear appeals brought by four groups of plaintiffs representing Democratic, Hispanic and black voters as well as the city of Austin and its surrounding county. The justices will hear the cases on an expedited basis on March 1, in time to issue a decision by the end of the current term in late June, but not in time to avoid the prospect of turmoil in Texas politics should any aspect of the 2003 plan be overturned. The state's Congressional primaries are March 7. Not since Bush v. Gore, the decision that resolved the 2000 presidential election, has the Supreme Court ventured so deeply into a legal dispute at the core of partisan politics.