The DOJ stepped in to challenge those two maps last month, as a federal court in Washington considers whether they would reduce minority voting power in the state. In response to Texas’ motion for summary judgment, the DOJ offered its strongest criticism of the plans yet, saying they’d hundreds of thousands of Latino voters into districts where the candidate of their choice could get elected:

“The proposed Congressional redistricting plan has a retrogressive effect because, compared to the benchmark plan, it decreases the percentage of districts in the Congressional plan in which minority voters have the ability to elect and because under the proposed plan 479,704 fewer Hispanics will reside in districts in which they have an ability to elect a candidate of choice,” lawyers with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division write. “Both plans were also adopted with a discriminatory purpose, and there are a substantial number of material facts in dispute with regard to both prongs of the Section 5 standard.”

Race and ethnicity, the lawyers wrote “were common themes during discussions between the Republican leadership and others, including a United States Congressman and staff. State leaders viewed race as a proxy for party, leading to redistricting decisions and movements of population based solely on the basis of race.”

In August, unsealed emails between Texas House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) and Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) revealed congressional Republicans’ involvement in the redistricting process. The Houston Chronicle and Politico reported those emails also revealed a dustup between Smith and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who disagreed on how boldly they should redraw the district lines.

After one of Barton’s staffers wrote in an email that Smith’s plan amounted to “high-risk poker with no discernible positive return,” Smith wrote another message warning him to quit sending messages that “may be used against us in court.”

In its Tuesday night filing, the DOJ said those emails “provide riveting circumstantial evidence” that the Republicans crafting the plan worked to shut out minorities from redistricting talks, and drew districts based on race, not party affiliation.

In his Texas Redistricting blog, Dallas attorney Michael Li added that “the DOJ also disagreed strongly with the state on discriminatory intent arguing that there is ‘direct and circumstantial evidence’ that ‘that ‘both plans were enacted with discriminatory purpose.’”

Texas has until Monday to reply to the DOJ and other groups’ opposition, Li writes, and the court will hear the state’s arguments for a ruling in its favor on Nov. 2.

DOJ brief on Texas’ motion for summary judgment

Wednesday, Abbott obliged them, filing a petition in a Washington appeals court for a review and a stay of the rule. (While the rule takes effect next January, requirements for the sulfur dioxide standards won’t kick in until March 2013, a distinction that has become a point of contention on its own.)

The state’s largest electric provider prompted a fresh wave of anti-EPA outrage earlier this month after announcing it’ll have to close power plant and coal mining operations to keep its emissions under the new threshold, costing 500 jobs.

In his petition yesterday, though, Abbott said the rules “threatens to disrupt the provision of reliable electricity” in Texas, raising economic and public health concerns beyond job losses at power plants.

The attorney general “is deeply concerned about these new federal regulations’ impact on the State of Texas, its electric grid and the Texans whose access to something as basic as electricity is threatened,” Abbott said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle’s FuelFix blog. (Read the full petition there, too.)

“Inexplicably, the [Obama] administration is determined to advance its aggressive agenda despite the risk of power outages in the heat of the Texas summer and unemployment for hard-working coal miners and power plant employees,” Abbott said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

While the state’s power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, has said the rule could cause power outages, the EPA has consistently disagreed.

Before a congressional subcommittee Thursday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson gave more assurances that companies would be able to work with her agency to avoid blackouts, though U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Lewisville) was skeptical, FuelFix reported.

“What if you’re wrong? Are you infallible?” Burgess asked.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Ennis) heightened the discourse further. “It’s if there’s some evil genie at the EPA bound and determined to put every regulation possible on the books as soon as possible, regardless of the economic consequences,” he said.

It’s not the first time Abbott’s sued the EPA’s Texas-messin’ tendencies. In February, the attorney general, received a warm reception from some of the same congressional Republicans in his testimony on the state’s still-pending challenge of the EPA’s move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Challengers to the maps say the Republican-dominated Legislature deliberately played down the effects of Texas’ Latino population boom over the last decade, shuffling districts to cement GOP power and pool minority-dominated areas into as few districts as possible.

The three-judge panel in San Antonio will consider newly drawn maps for U.S. Congressional districts and Texas House districts, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported today. While Democrats and minority groups argue Texas needs more districts that favor black and Latino representation, Republican lawmakers — represented by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott — say their plan is kosher.

At a pre-trial hearing Thursday, judges said they expect the case to last just nine days, according to the Austin American-Statesman:

One of the plaintiffs, state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, said a quick resolution is important for the political process. This November, voters will go to the polls to pass judgment on several proposed constitutional amendments. But those who will run in the March 2012 primaries have begun announcing their candidacies and in some cases are already campaigning. For example, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, and state Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, already are wooing voters in the proposed District 35 seat.

“People want to know what their district will look like,” Rodriguez said. “They want to know who they’ll be voting for.”

Doggett has joined in the legal challenge to the new maps, as has Castro indirectly, as a member of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) have also intervened to challenge districts in North Texas.

The run-up to the court battle has already shed new light on the Texas Congressional delegation’s role in the process, including emails subpoenaed from staff members who sound skeptical that the new maps would pass a federal test. As Linda Campbell wrote in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

In June, Dub Maines, an aide to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, complained that a map approved by a Texas House committee had “next to no chance” of getting the federal preclearance that the Voting Rights Act requires for new electoral districts to go into effect.

Maines also called an idea floating around to challenge the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act “high-risk poker with no discernible positive return.”

The National Journal took a long look at the Texas governor’s involvement in the map Democrats slam as “Perrymandering,” and the possibility that the court’s rejection of the maps could reflect poorly on the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

If the state’s map is rejected, Assistant Attorney General David Mattax told the court Thursday it’d be up to judges to draft a new one, because running the process through a special legislative session would take too long.

In a separate case, a Washington court must also consider whether the maps can pass federal “pre-clearance” according to the 1965 Voting Rights Act — a test to ensure any changes to Texas voting laws don’t create barriers to minority representation. That case still hasn’t been scheduled.

Politico reported Monday on a conflict between U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio) and Joe Barton (R-Ennis) over how many of Texas’ four new congressional districts should be drawn to favor Republicans, and how many should favor Democrats. Texas’ population gain in the past decade has been heavily driven by growth in the number of Hispanic residents, who tend to vote Democratic. Meanwhile, the GOP tsunami last fall swept Republicans Ciro Rodriguez (R-San Antonio) and Blake Farenthold (R-Corpus Christi) into districts that would probably require some tinkering in order to be considered ‘safe’ for the incumbents in more typical election years.

According to Politico, Smith is taking a more pragmatic approach to map-drawing, attempting to make deals to create two GOP-leaning districts and two Democratic-leaning districts. On the other hand, Barton is pushing for either three or four of the new districts to favor Republicans.

An anonymous “Republican insider” told Politico that Texas Republicans are taking Smith’s side of the argument — though anonymous Democratic sources said Barton is getting support from Gov. Rick Perry.

The Democrats also said, according to the story: “Perry has also considered the idea of skipping Justice Department review of the new congressional map and going directly to federal court for approval, Democrats added. Nearly all Voting Rights Act-mandated reviews are first conducted by the Justice Department, although Perry wants to avoid that step with the [Barack] Obama administration.”

If that is indeed Perry’s plan, it might not work. An expert on Voting Rights Act preclearance told the Texas Independent in late March that the state would probably not find any extra sympathy in front of a three-judge D.C. panel than it would from Department of Justice staffers.

“Even if they go to federal court, they would have to face off with DOJ,” said election law attorney J. Gerald Hebert, who is executive director of the Campaign Legal Center.

“The legal standard used by the federal court is identical to the legal standard used by the DOJ,” he said.

Additionally, “the D.C. court is very deferential to the Justice Department, by and large,” Hebert said. “Because the DOJ reviews about 20,000 voting changes a year, and the D.C. court gets very few a year, they rely very heavily on the expertise of the DOJ.”

“I’ve often found that when a challenge is in the D.C. court, the court looks to the Justice Department for a great deal of guidance,” he said.

Today, the Rio Grande Guardian reported that the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) is suing Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Gov. Rick Perry in a South Texas court, alleging “that the population numbers being used for the State’s 2011 redistricting process “severely undercounts Latinos.””

According to MALC’s petition, posted by the Guardian, “The creation of redistricting plans for Texas election districts using the defective 2010 census data discriminates against Latino voters and is not legally enforceable.”

MALC’s attorney Jose Garza told the Guardian, “There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps, tens of thousands for sure, of individuals who were simply not counted. The Legislature is making no accommodation for that. They are using 2010 Census as if it were perfect.”

As the Texas Tribune notes, attorney Mike Hull – whose clients include the conservative Texans for Lawsuit Reform — filed a suit earlier this year in a North Texas court, “saying in that filing that non-citizens shouldn’t be counted in drawing political districts and saying that their inclusion dilutes the relative voting strength of some citizens.”

According to the Tribune, “The suits, at this point, are mainly about where the inevitable redistricting lawsuits will be heard. MALC’s going for South Texas. Hull, who hasn’t named his actual clients, is going for North.”

The Guardian story frames the decision as a “Those wacky Republicans have done it again!” narrative, casually mentioning toward the end of the article a similar House initiative to roll back a program scheduled to phase out the manufacture of energy-inefficient light bulbs. But it is that bit of legislation that may have much farther-reaching consequences than the type of silverware used in the Congressional coffee shop.

In January, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives that is meant to repeal Title III, Subtitle B of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). Title III, Subtitle B, a dense, painstaking subsection in a dense, painstaking law, creates regulations on the manufacture and sale of energy-inefficient bulbs.

Specifically, it requires a roughly 25-percent energy efficiency increase in standard-issue light bulbs, to be enforced in phases from 2012 to 2014. It also requires light bulb manufacturers to work toward achieving energy efficiency that is twice current levels by 2020. Because traditional incandescent bulbs are unable to achieve either such improvements, it has often been reported as a total phase-out of all incandescent bulbs across the country. The new bill, dubbed the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, would abrogate the repeal.

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), those familiar spiral bulbs, have been shown to have a shelf life ten times that of incandescents, with energy costs around a quarter of those found with the older bulbs. So why are the congressmen behind the bill so in favor of keeping the old, energy-inefficient incandescent bulbs?

Some supporters have said it’s an issue of consumer rights, that people who like the old bulbs should be able to keep buying them. Others have cited safety concerns, saying that the CFL bulbs pose an environmental risk due to the mercury they contain — though the EPA promotes a bulb recycling program, and the trace amounts of mercury contained in the CFL bulbs would in fact add less mercury to the ecosystem than incandescent bulbs do. Their reduced energy usage would slightly mitigate the amount of mercury that coal-burning power plants emit into the air.

Meanwhile, Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.), one of the bill’s sponsors, in a display of what can only be called chutzpah, took something of a constructionist view of invention and called supporters of the new CFLs anti-innovation in an interview with G. Gordon Liddy. He cited the incandescent bulb, whose basic design has gone unchanged for over 100 years, as “one of the greatest innovations in American history.” Incidentally, the only American contribution to the incandescent bulb, a product of work by British, Scottish, German and Canadian scientists, was the development of better filaments by Edison Laboratory researchers and others; the CFL, on the other hand, was invented by American Ed Hammer of General Electric.

The real answer as to why the bill’s sponsors are itching to extend the shelf life of incandescent bulbs may not be so ideological. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that in one year, replacing just one 60-watt incandescent bulb with an equivalent CFL results in $7 in energy savings (Microsoft Excel file). Other Department of Energy figures (PDF) state that the average U.S. household has 45 light bulbs across 30 separate fixtures and that there are 116,900,000 households in the country. This means there are 5.26 billion light bulbs across the United States. At present, CFLs hover at a market share just under 30 percent. If that were to go up to 100 percent as a result of the EISA mandate, power companies would stand to lose almost $26 billion in revenue every single year.

Manufacturers like GE have little to lose by introducing and advocating CFLs, because they’re almost six times more expensive than traditional incandescents on average, meaning that over the long term, the decreased frequency with which consumers would have to buy them would be offset by the higher price — and in the short term, such companies would get a massive burst in revenue from Americans switching over. But the energy industry has billions to lose in the conversion — and it’s appealing to its friends in Congress to try to keep that from happening.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who introduced the bill, has close ties to the energy industry. Before his election to office in 1984, he was a consultant for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Co., and he has made many statements about his disbelief in climate change, including one in which he called wind “God’s way of balancing heat” and suggested that wind farms would disrupt the balance of heat on earth and lead to further global warming. He made headlines in June of last year after he personally apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for what he dubbed a government “shakedown” targeting the oil giant. The “shakedown” he referred to was the BP-underwritten $20 billion fund that President Obama announced would be used to settle claims from those affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Barton retracted his apology after facing an intense media backlash.

The Better Use of Light Bulbs Act has bounced around the House Energy and Commerce committee since its introduction. Barton is the chairman emeritus of that committee. On February 17, 28 senators introduced the bill in the Senate. It remains in committee in the Senate as well. While it certainly may not make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate and would almost certainly get a veto from President Obama if it does in fact make it to his desk, the bill could be a symbolic victory for House Republicans — considerably more so than plastic forks in the Capitol coffee shop.

The Washington Post has the details:

The new scientific-integrity policy applies to the department’s 67,000 employees as well as its contractors, grant recipients and volunteers when they analyze or share scientific information with reporters and the public or use the department’s information to make policy or regulatory decisions, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

The hiring and promotion of officials should be based on “knowledge, credentials and experience relevant to the responsibility of the position,” according to the new policy, which also requires the public distribution of scientific and scholarly work not protected by government secrecy laws.

The new policy “sets forth clear expectations for all employees – political and career – to uphold the principles of scientific integrity, and establishes a process for impartial review of alleged breaches of those principles,” Salazar said in a statement.

In addition, the new policy aims to shield government whistleblowers from scrutiny.

The rules detail new whistle-blower protections and say workers may share their findings with reporters without manipulation by public affairs officials. Department employees are encouraged to work with professional organizations and societies, as long as they don’t create conflicts of interest.

Allegations of scientific or scholarly misconduct will be investigated within 60 days, and officials will work to ensure that unfounded allegations don’t negatively affect an employee’s reputation, the department said.

A multitude of evidence shows the George W. Bush administration tampered with scientific study for political means. A 2004 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (PDF) found “manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science” for political gain to be “unprecedented” during the first term of the Bush administration. The report documented various violations, including “a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies”; “a wide- ranging effort to manipulate the government’s scientific advisory system to prevent the appear- ance of advice that might run counter to the administration’s political agenda”; and “evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about “sensitive” topics.”

While installing these safeguards, the Obama administration has not been immune to its own stretching of scientific findings. The administration received wide criticism last August — and again when the national oil spill commission issued a report — when the president’s environmental policy adviser Carol Browner suggested the “vast majority” of oil in the Gulf of Mexico was gone.

Study on climate change has been the most glaring issue involving the politicization of science. For example, The Texas Independent reported late last year on allegations from scientists that the staff of Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas highly influenced a study that refuted another report on climate change’s impact on Earth.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) topped the list of 11 federal lawmakers and one governor, Barton was second and Johnson fifth. Texas and California were the only states on the list to be represented by a pair of lawmakers. (Read about Bachmann’s selection in our sister publication The Minnesota Independent.)

In addition to Barton’s June 2010 description of a government “shakedown” of BP while oil was still gushing from the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico, CREW also highlighted a Dallas Morning News report showing that Barton had made nearly $100,000 in a natural gas deal involving a significant political donor, and while Barton was ranking Republican on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton later apologized for his apology to BP, but he defends the natural gas deal as a legitimate business transaction.

Barton is set to find out Tuesday whether he will secure a second stint as chair of the House Energy committee, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

CREW also skewered Barton for actions by his Joe Barton Family Foundation, which solicited donations from corporations for the local Boys and Girls Club in 2005 and 2006 — the problem, according to CREW, was that the foundation asked corporations to donate the money directly to the Boys and Girls Club in the foundation’s name, rather than accepting contributions and then passing them to the charity, thereby avoiding congressional lobbying disclosure requirements.

According to CREW, the Barton Foundation employed similar techniques in 2008 and 2009 regarding donations to Meals on Wheels.

Barton defeated Democratic challenger David Cozad by a margin of 66-31 percent in November.

Meanwhile, Johnson took flak from CREW for awarding dozens of Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships (collectively worth more than $31,000) to family members and a top staffer’s children — first reported by the Morning News.

Despite strict anti-nepotism rules by the CBCF, Johnson awarded scholarships to two grandsons, two great-nephews and children of a congressional aide over five years. After the details were made public, Johnson repaid the scholarship money.

The scholarship controversy goaded D Magazine to dub Johnson “the worst grandmother in America,” and prompted the Morning News to endorse Republican challenger pastor Stephen Broden over Johnson. However, the Morning News later withdrew its endorsement of Broden (who often makes inflammatory statements, including that abortion providers target African Americans) after the pastor said violent overthrow of the government is “on the table” if elections do not produce a change in leadership. (Note: The Morning News endorsed Barton for re-election.)

Johnson ended up winning reelection over Broden by a margin of 76-22 percent.

Barton and Johnson weren’t the only controversy-plagued Texas incumbents who coasted to victory: Other lawmakers who won despite being embroiled in ethics issues include state Rep. Joe Driver (R-Garland) — accused of ‘double-dipping’ for travel expenses from his official and campaign accounts; state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown (R-Irving) — who was driving a brand-new Mercedes owned by her husband’s employer, a TxDOT contractor; and state Rep. Charles “Doc” Anderson (R-Waco) — who was slapped with federal liens for failing to pay $70,000 in back taxes.

Driver said he simply made a mistake. Harper-Brown returned the vehicle and said she didn’t do anything wrong. Anderson said he had been in a dispute with the IRS and had paid all the money.

Barton, Johnson, Driver and Harper-Brown are all legislators from the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

Though he doesn’t specifically mention cap-and-trade or climate science, he said he would work to overturn President Obama’s “job-killing policies” and ensure there is oversight for “every program.”

In the letter, which makes Upton’s candidacy for the committee chairmanship official, Upton tells his fellow Republicans that he:

WILL work with all the members of our Conference as one team;
WILL pass legislation to repeal ObamaCare;
WILL conduct rigorous oversight of every program, budget, regulation and agency
within our jurisdiction;
WILL aggressively cut spending by adopting new Committee rules to foster spending
cuts and eliminate government programs; and
WILL protect the sanctity of human life by rigorous oversight and passing legislation
to permanently ensure that no federal funds go toward abortion, including:  Rep. Joe
Pitts’ Protect Life Act and Rep. Chris Smith’s No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

But the letter does not lay out an energy agenda, nor does it address climate change. The letter is the latest effort by Upton to talk up his conservative credentials, amid criticism by some Republicans that he’s too moderate. In fact, some conservatives have even criticized Upton for his support for phasing out incandescent light bulbs in favor of more efficient ones.

But there was some good news for Upton today. Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, voiced his support for Upton in a story this afternoon. “I know Upton quite well. He’s not as conservative as I am,” he wrote. “But he is especially well suited to be chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. On the issues the committee will take up, he is conservative. Republicans shouldn’t let a silly light bulb bill keep him from becoming chairman.”

Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas), John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) are also hoping to get the chairmanship.

The move comes as Upton has been touting his conservative credentials in an effort to win the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Republicans have criticized Upton for being too moderate on environmental issues, with one of his opponents, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), leading the “not-conservative-enough” charge.

Environmentalists and a number of lawmakers have mounted a massive campaign to oppose the pipeline project, known as Keystone XL. And they have set their sights on recent remarks by Clinton that suggest the State Department will approve the project. But it’s not just Democrats who oppose the project; at least one Republican, Sen. Mike Johanns (Neb.), opposes it because it would go through his state.

In a letter to Clinton, Upton said:

Government is currently standing in the way of this $7 billion privately funded project, which is expected to stimulate $20 billion in new spending for the U.S. economy and spur the creation of 118,000 jobs. Our number one priority must be job creation, and this is a prime example of the over-burdensome regulatory system that is killing the private sector.  Government must stand back and allow the U.S. economy to rebound. If not we will continue to see our jobs go overseas.

It’s clear that Upton, who has the 12th best lifetime League of Conservation Voters score among Republicans, is being forced to underscore his conservative credentials to land the top spot on the committee.

In an editorial yesterday, the Examiner criticized Upton for voting for a land management bill that restricted access to federal lands for oil and gas leasing and for voting “no” on a bill to cut the EPA’s funding, among other things. “Upton’s claims of being a Reaganite notwithstanding, there is nothing in his voting record to suggest he would be an aggressive opponent of Obama’s plan to impose cap-and-trade through regulation,” the editorial said. On top of that, the editorial criticizes Upton for being “Democrats’ favorite Republican” to succeed the current chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

The Examiner also ran a story yesterday on Republican efforts to block the EPA and repeal parts of the health care law. In it, Upton said, “The bottom line, particularly if I am chairman, is we’re not going to allow them to regulate what they cannot legislate.” It’s that comment that Upton’s office highlighted in an email to reporters.

Upton is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the chairmanship of the committee. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is also interested in the position, but he must be granted permission to waive the GOP rule limiting congressmen to three terms as the top Republican on a committee. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is also interested in the chairmanship.

Shimkus and Upton, in interviews this week by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, signaled they would target White House climate and energy policy coordinator Carol Browner if they become chairman.

Upton said he would subpoena Browner to testify before the committee, and Shimkus said he would work to “defund” Browner and all of the other so-called policy czars, who were appointed and not subject to Senate approval.