We argued last week that the system for redistricting the U.S. House of Representatives needs to be fixed to restore competitive politics. Consider the current shenanigans underway in Texas as exhibits L, M, N, O and P in the case for taking redistricting out of the control of the political parties.

In case you've missed it, U.S. House Republican Leader Tom (The Hammer) DeLay has been feverishly working since January to get the newly Republican Texas House to overturn the Congressional district map put in place after the 2000 census, in order to increase the number of Republicans in it by somewhere between five and eight. Why? Because it could, basically. The threadbare argument made by Texas Republicans is that the current map was written by state courts, not the legislature -- which happened, of course, because the legislature and the governor could not agree on a plan by themselves. This happens a lot in states with divided partisan control of governorships or legislative chambers. But it's a completely novel idea to overturn such plans when divided control ends.

"This is a political strategy we haven't seen before," Tim Storey, redistricting analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures, told the Washington Post. "People who study this area can't find any case in the last 100 years of mid-decade redistricting without a court order." And, as the Post noted in an editorial yesterday: "The Texas plan, if not defeated, risks creating a dangerous new norm by which redistricting wars go on continuously."

Indeed, as Colorado Republicans proved last week, the process can be quickly and efficiently hijacked. There, a bill was introduced on Monday, passed on Wednesday, and signed into law on Friday, all with minimal debate. It shifts district lines around 29,000 voters, turning the most marginal swing district in the country into a solidly Republican seat. (Colorado's New Democrat Attorney General Ken Salazar has at least temporarily halted this power grab with a lawsuit.)

As Texas shows, these wars can really get out of hand. During the regular Texas legislative session, which ended last month, House Democrats famously frustrated the re-redistricting effort by leaving the state and denying Republicans the quorum necessary to do their dirty deed. According to a wide variety of reports, DeLay was so furious about this tactic that he and his staff tried to commandeer officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to track down the fleeing Democrats so that Texas Rangers could haul them back to Austin to participate in the gerrymander.

These potentially illegal bloodhound efforts failed, and the session ended, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly called a 30-day special session for the specific purpose of re-redistricting. Now the effort to stop the madness is coming down to a few Texas Senate Democrats who are weighing a vast assortment of inducements from the GOP to lie down for DeLay and let the congressional reshuffling take place.

There's more at stake in the Texas re-redistricting drive than more seats to buttress Republican control of the U.S. House. GOP activists view this as an opportunity to get rid of Texas' smart, stubborn and influential band of New Democrat and Blue Dog congressmen who represent an abiding centrist threat to Republican domination, even in President Bush's home state.

According to the New York Times, Republican uber-lobbyist Grover Norquist (the subject of a major piece in the latest issue of Blueprint), admitted that "the point of the exercise was to help remove centrist Democrats from Congress, leaving only the most liberal behind."

Thus, this latest outrage is not simply a matter of elephants trying to cage donkeys. If it succeeds, it will also reinforce the general trend toward a U.S. House of Representatives, and ultimately state legislatures, that are genetically engineered to avoid electoral competition and to represent only the ideological extremes, while disenfranchising the majority of Americans who consider themselves moderates.

We urge Texas Democrats and fair-minded Texas Republicans to short-circuit this plan and the special session called to make it happen. If they do so, they will save Texas taxpayers a million dollars or so in the short term, and in the long term save Americans all over the country the spectacle of perpetual redistricting. We all have a stake in messing with the great Texas power grab.