Court Fight Over State Redistricting Map?

21 July 2011 |permalink | email article

California’s first ever citizens redistricting commission is preparing for a half-million-dollar court fight over new legislative and congressional districts. But it hasn’t completed drawings yet and faces a July 28 deadline. The state’s districts are being drawn for the first time by the commission created by the passage of Proposition 11 in 2008 to strip legislators of the right to drawn their own districts – a long overdue political revamp.

The Sacramento Bee reported the commission is arming itself with legal counsel to fight challenges that some communities and ethic groups have been shortchanged. Officials of Latino, African American and Asian-Pacific groups have been active on redistricting but have yet to decide on whether to challenge the new maps. 

The California Republican Party and a former Democratic leader in the state Senate, Don Perata, are among critics laying the groundwork for potential challenges to all or some Assembly, state Senate, congressional and Board of Equalization districts. The commission, by law, has five Democrats and five Republicans. The remaining four members are independent or minor-party members. Approval requires support from three members of each bloc.

Handling Debt and the Economy

New ABC News-Washington Post poll: President Obama leads congressional Republicans in trust to handle the deficit debate – 48 to 39 percent. Fight-eight percent say the president hasn’t done enough to compromise on the deficit, while 77 percent, say the same about the Republicans. Sixty percent of Americans say a default would cause serious harm to their own financial situation. While the president’s approval rating has fallen below 40 percent to handle the economy for the first time, Republicans in Congress score even worse, 28 percent approval. The dramatic impact of the tea party movement has pushed the GOP to the far right.

Read ‘em and weep

“You have the New York Times absolutely running wild with the story. Front page, front, front page, front page. Column, column, Vicious stuff, vicious stuff. And it’s all ideological, is it not?” – Bill O’Reilly, the smarmy Fox News commentator and the latest News Corp employee to defend Rupert Murdoch, suggests the scandal is a serious one, guilty journalists should be prosecuted, but too over-hyped. Talk about being out of touch.

“I will not vote to increase the debt ceiling limit. It goes completely contrary to common-sense and how I grew up in Iowa.” – Michelle Bachmann, in a new statewide ad which, aside from her migraines history, ignores the reality that Ronald Reagan (18 times) and George W. Bush (7 times) raised the ceiling several times without a political whimper. Is she in a parallel universe?

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