From the Daily Kos:

By Ian Reifowitz

Image from Bill Marsh, New York Times

What a great title, huh? At Netroots Nation in Detroit, there was a panel by that name, and it did not disappoint. Moderator Tom Bonier began by laying out how Republicans approach gerrymandering, and elections in general:

If you can't win fair, change the rules.

And that's pretty accurate. Republicans do this on any number of fronts, from voter suppression tactics such as reducing the number of days people can vote, making it harder or impossible to register and vote on the same day, purging the voter rolls in ways that throw legitimate voters off the rolls, and demanding voters show government-issued photo ID (although gun permits are allowed in Texas, naturally, but not college ID's). In addition to these, Republicans have excelled in mastering the redistricting process by gerrymandering districts at the local, state, and federal level.

The two sides don't do it to anywhere near the same degree, however. In the runup to the 2010 elections, Republicans developed a $30 million plan called REDMAP to aid in their attempt to flip state legislatures and thus gerrymander districts going forward. As you can see above, it worked.

Republican Rep. Stephen Meeks, who opposes same-sex marriage, compared it to pedophilia and bestiality on Twitter. The disturbing tweet highlights Rep. Stephen Meeks’ anti-gay beliefs, which he attributes to his “Biblical view of civil unions and government’s role in it.”

Nor is this the first time Rep. Meeks has engaged in this sort of rhetoric. Nearly two years ago, he posted to his Facebook page that “It would be impossible to outlaw homosexuality” but we could “outlaw the practice of it, since we outlaw the practices of incest, pedophilia, prostitution.”