The Department of Justice on Friday delivered Georgia Republicans a major victory when it signed off on the state’s plan to redraw political boundaries, delivering the GOP a win but also denying it the chance to strike down the Voting Rights Act

….Republicans, who pushed through the new maps over Democratic objections during a special August legislative session, had simultaneously submitted its plan to the Justice Department for preclearance and sued the DOJ in federal court. Had the Justice Department rejected its maps, the state would have moved forward with its lawsuit.

Republicans had said publicly that they saw the court case as an avenue toward a declaration that the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. With the DOJ’s approval of its redistricting plan, however, that now seems moot.

and this: The new maps approved by state lawmakers in August increases to 14 the number of congressional districts in Georgia, reflecting the state’s population growth in the 2010 census. It also could boost the state GOP margin in the U.S. House to 10-4, up from the current 8-5 advantage.

New maps approved for the state’s 180 House districts and 56 Senate districts show that Republicans could achieve two-thirds majorities in both chambers in November 2012 — enough to pass constitutional amendments without Democratic interference.

The full story at the link

All three maps precleared.  Note:  This is the first time Republicans have controlled the process of redistricting and the first time in a long time (if not ever) that there were no objections from DOJ to the proposed plans coming from the Georgia legislature. 

The Justice Department’s decision on the South Carolina law comes after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. signaled a tough stance on the new laws in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Libary and Museum in Austin, Tex., which honors the president who shepherded the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law.

Holder expressed concern about the new laws in the Dec. 13 address, saying: “Are we willing to allow this era – our era – to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud tradition of expanding the franchise ended?’’

More at the link

Here, on first review of the opinion, the terms “ability to elect” or “retrogression” aren’t exactly what the State of Texas, the Department of Justice or the intervenors thought or hoped it meant.  After Bartlett, the Supreme Court should be interested in weighing in on the D.C. panel’s analysis on coalition districts or populations.  This makes redistricting under Section 5 and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as complicated as brain surgery blindfolded.

Eight months after losing one redistricting contest, Republicans have prevailed in another that will put U.S. Reps. Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.) and Steve Rothman (D-9th Dist.) in one North Jersey district, to Garrett’s partisan advantage.

….New Jersey is losing a seat in the House because the state’s population did not grow fast enough to keep pace with faster growing states in the sun belt and other parts of the country. Texas, for instance, is gaining four seats while Florida is gaining two. By contrast, New York and Ohio are each losing two seats.

The other states losing a single seat are Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

The victory comes eight months after Republicans lost the effort to redraw the state’s 40 legislative districts to Democrats, who continue to dominate the state Legislature and, because of the new map, are favored to do so for the next 10 years.

full story here.

State leaders have sought the Justice Department’s approval for the maps, but have concurrently filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court to have them precleared.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s chief spokesman says the governor is confident the maps will get
administrative approval, however.

“We feel good about our maps,” said Deal spokesman Brian Robinson. “We know we’ve got a great product and we feel strongly that we should get federal approval.”

If so, it will be the first time in the history of the Voting Rights Act that Georgia has received an administrative OK for its voting districts on the first try, said Robinson.

Republicans in Georgia handled the process from start to finish for the first time in Georgia history this year.

full story at the link

It turns out there are far fewer residents without photo ID than originally thought.  Hat tip to EA.

I will be on with Dana Loesch on Friday at 2:30 CST local on KFTK in St. Louis to talk about Eric Holder and Fast and Furious.  An editor of Big Journalism, Dana streams over at Andrew Breitbart’s sites worldwide live.

Let’s start with Hans von Spakovsky’s story at PJ Media. Throughout President Bush the Younger’s tenure, documents designed to make him look bad were regularly leaked to eagerly complicit MSM outlets, including an internal DoJ memo regarding redistricting in Texas that piled inaccuracies on top of specious legalese to argue that there should be 11 protected minority districts in that state rather than the 8 that were part of the plan pre-cleared by the Bush administration. Later on this document was dissected and harshly critiqued in a court decision favorable to the Bush administration’s determination.

It now turns out that the woman who wrote that document, an ardent progressive supporter of Obama who is known in the Voting Section for her disdain for people of other political slants, has thrice perjured herself before investigators looking into the matter of the leaks. When confronted with e-mail evidence that contradicted her claim that she knew nothing of the leaks, she confessed, stating that her reason for perjuring herself was to protect other people in the Section involved in the leaks. On returning from her most recent interview with investigators, she sobbingly told her colleagues everything about her confession. Rather than being cashiered and/or prosecuted, she is now regarded as a hero by some in the Section, and apparently continues to address important and controversial cases.

Read the whole story here.

lots of lipstick spin.