Word: mississippi
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...federal judges ordered that their plan, which doesn't require Justice approval, go into effect last week. The Democrats appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of getting that order blocked. But it turns out that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia handles emergency appeals from Mississippi, which is convenient for the Republicans. Scalia personally swore in Chip Pickering as a congressman in 1997 and is a friend of the congressman's father, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pickering, whose nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is snarled in the Senate. Democrats again cried foul and tried, unsuccessfully...
...Take Mississippi. Democrats are angrily accusing Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, of playing politics with the 1965 Voting Rights Act to get the congressional lines in Mississippi drawn to favor Republicans...
...Last December, the Democratic-controlled Mississippi state government approved a redistricting plan that, of course, helped Democrats, particularly in the newly consolidated 4th District where Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows would have to face Republican Rep. Chip Pickering. (The two congressmen are running against each other because Mississippi's dwindling population resulted in the loss of one seat.) Pickering immediately cried foul, complaining that the plan was drawn up so that it would be "the most favorable to Democrats...
...Mississippi redistricting plan, however, had to be sent to the Justice Department, which under the Voting Rights Act must okay new lines because of Mississippi's past history of racial discrimination. Democrats charge that Justice then sat on the plan to give a panel of three Republican-appointed federal judges time to draw up its own redistricting proposal for the state which favors GOP candidates. "They're playing partisan politics with this," gripes Shows. The Justice Department denies...
...expects the Governors to get anything close to the $6 billion in federal aid they were asking for last week to cover this year's Medicaid shortfalls. Mississippi may be in the direst straits; its Medicaid program ran out of money entirely last Friday, as lawmakers argued over an array of unpalatable options, ranging from a 5% reduction in doctor reimbursements to sharply cutting back on services...