I Mess With Texas, Part 5

I forgot one more excellent reason to mess with Texas.

Tom DeLay.

Apparently the House majority leader, currently facing some legal troubles of his own, has engineered some others that the Supremes are now taking into consideration. From this New York Times article:

Supreme Court to Review Texas Redistricting Dispute
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The United States Supreme Court agreed today to review the constitutionality of the Texas redistricting plan that was engineered by Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader until recently, and helped Republicans add to their majority from the Lone Star State.

The justices will consider several lawsuits by Democrats and minority groups challenging the redrawn maps of voting districts pushed through in 2003. The redistricting has been credited with helping Republicans gain five more seats in the Texas delegation to the House of Representatives in 2004, increasing the Republican ranks to 21, compared with 11 Texas Democrats.

Today's announcement by the Supreme Court comes 10 days after the Justice Department acknowledged that some of its top officials had overruled a determination by the agency's civil rights division staff in 2003 that the redistricting plan would dilute the voting strength of minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

Because after all, once you're in charge the first thing you want to do is solidify that death-grip on the system, so that you can always and forever, amen, keep yourself in charge. Even when you have to know that means calcification, oligarchy, and despotism. Get rid of the challenge, rather than make your constituents better off. Nice work!

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Unrelated, though not entirely: Caution to all who decide to re-gift. If you re-gift, oh, say, a large ticket item that includes storage devices, then pass it off as a brand-new present, do erase your old "tests" on the machine first. Because, you see, if you don't, those "tests" have storage dates. And they can be seen once they're downloaded. And then the person you gave the item to, who believed it to be new, will realize it is in fact over a year old and therefore likely something you bought for yourself, didn't care for, and are now pawning off. The gift is generous, the spirit behind it is less so. At the very least, announce it as a re-gift. The basically brand-new nature of the item, plus the large-ticket price, isn't a problem (in my book). Not revealing it as a re-gift, however, is deceitful.

Those who know what I'm talking about will also know the connection to Texas on this one.