Jeremiah Goulka '01 on Gerrymandering in Virginia

Excerpted from truthout.org:

On the same day that Barack Obama spoke of freedom fighters in Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall after being publicly sworn in a second time as president, the Republican president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, Sen. Walter Stosch, proposed that the state Senate adjourn in honor of another Stonewall: Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the Confederate general who fought not for individual freedom, but for states' rights, which was and remains a more couth way of saying (or denying) that he was fighting so that the Confederacy's economic elite could continue to own slaves just as he did.
Yes, January 21st was Jackson's birthday. It was also Martin Luther King Day, and the state of Virginia had already commemorated Jackson's birthday the previous Friday along with Confederate slaveholder and general Robert E. Lee's birthday in the state holiday Lee-Jackson Day.
While this might seem like just another instance of silly old Southern Republicans doing silly things to keep the good ole' boys back home happy, I would argue that it is emblematic of how the Republican Party is content to destroy itself, shattering itself on the petard of its own bigotry. The gerrymandering the Virginia Senate Republicans did just before Senator Stosch moved to adjourn for the day is helping it hoist that petard.

Read the rest of the article here.