Here’s a thought for you. Houston alone has picked up more than 150,000 refugees from Katrina. I’ve seen estimates up to a quarter million for Texas. Assume for a moment that half of them never have the means to go back to New Orleans or a place to go back to. Texas could gerrymander 100,000 primarily poor, black refugees into one or two existing minority congressional districts. The extra population, however, might be enough to tip them over the point at which they’d pick up yet another congressional seat in 2010, a seat they’d be sure to gerrymander so as to be an easy pickup for a white, conservative, Republican.

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