Texas Redistricting: Court Won't Block Map Challenged By GOP Attorney General Greg Abbott

AUSTIN, Texas -- A federal court refused late Friday to block a congressional redistricting map it drew up for Texas, rejecting a request from the state's attorney general just hours after the Republican accused the court of "undermining the democratic process."

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had asked the San Antonio-based court to stay the implementation of its interim map, which the court drafted when minority groups challenged the original plan passed by the Republican-dominated state Legislature.

The court-drawn map would ensure minorities made up the majority in three additional Texas congressional districts. If the 2012 elections were held under the court's map, Democrats would have an advantage as they try to win back the U.S. House.

Abbott said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court-ordered map will remain in place until the legal fights are resolved.

The court drew the maps after minority groups filed a lawsuit, claiming a redistricting plan devised by Republican lawmakers didn't reflect growth in the state's Hispanic and black populations.

In a court filing earlier Friday, Abbott accused the court of overstepping its authority.

"A court's job is to apply the law, not to make policy," he wrote. "A federal court lacks constitutional authority to interfere with the expressed will of the state Legislature unless it is compelled to remedy a specific, identifiable violation of law."

Abbott argued that the Legislature's map "incorporate constituents' concerns about communities of interest and proper representation." He said the court's departure from that map "not only undermines the democratic process, it ignores the voice of the citizenry."

Lawmakers redraw boundaries for the state's legislative districts every 10 years to reflect changes in census data. Texas' population boom in the last decade gave it four new U.S. House seats, which will be filled in the 2012 election.

Like other states with a history of racial discrimination, Texas can't implement those new maps or other changes to voting practices without federal approval under the Voting Rights Act. No federal approval, and looming deadlines for county election officials, made it necessary for the court to issue its own plans – which could be implemented immediately.

Minorities currently are the majority in 10 of Texas' 32 congressional districts. The new court-drawn map would raise that to 13 out of 36 districts.

Republican lawmakers insist the maps drawn by the Legislature merely reflect the Republican majority in Texas. Experts say that under the legislatively approved map, three of the new seats would likely be won by Republicans.

When drawing the interim map, the court gave priority to ensuring minority voting strength was protected in the 2012 election.

In its own filing Friday, the NAACP cheered the court-drawn interim map as a "step forward for Texas." The group said it, "recognizes the growth of the minority population and takes significant steps toward remedying some of the startling lack of proportionality in the prior plans."

Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield Step Out In New York City (PHOTOS)

Emma Stone was spotted in New York City Tuesday with rumored beau, Andrew Garfield.

The pair were spotted grabbing a bite to eat while out for a stroll on a gloomy day in the Big Apple. The actress, who turned 23 earlier this month, and her maybe-boyfriend were first rumored to be together earlier this summer after co-starring in "The Amazing Spider-Man."

While the young lovebirds have been keeping their relationship on the quiet side, they've dropped the silent treatment as of late and taken their romance public. Garfield joined Stone on-stage for her monologue on the November 12th episode of "Saturday Night Live" and the pair attended the Worldwide Orphans Foundation's Gala two days later, keeping their distance and walking the red carpet separately.

Looks like they were saving their stroll for a different day.

Check out the photo of the pair chatting and chewing in NYC!

Herman Cain-Newt Gingrich Debate: Sexual Harassment Claims Are Off Limits At Tea Party Event

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Republican presidential contender Herman on Saturday vowed to answer no more questions about decade-old sexual harassment allegations and blamed journalists for the claims that have dogged his campaign.

Growing agitated with reporters after a one-on-one debate with rival Newt Gingrich, the former business executive suggested the reporters who asked questions about the allegations were unethical. Asked if he planned to never answer questions about the incidents, he was certain.

"You got it," he snapped, even as the allegations leave plenty of doubts about Cain's candidacy.

A lawyer for one of Cain's accusers said Friday that his client had filed a complaint "in good faith" against Cain in the 1990s for "several instances of sexual harassment" and had received a financial settlement.

Attorney Joel Bennett suggested Cain wasn't telling the truth in his repeated denials of the incidents that allegedly took place while the Georgia businessman headed the National Restaurant Association.

Cain repeatedly has denied ever sexually harassing anyone, and his campaign said it was "looking to put this issue behind us." Advisers had hoped Saturday night's debate here near Houston would help do that.

Tea party organizers explicitly limited to the discussion to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Gingrich, however, gave Cain an opportunity to address the allegations with an open-ended question about what has surprised him about running for president.

Cain didn't hesitate: "The nit-pickiness of the media," he said.

"It is the actions and behavior of the media that have been the biggest surprise," he said, his voice rising.

"There are too many people in the media who are downright dishonest. ... They do a disservice to the American people," Cain said, bringing the room to its feet.

Gingrich had nothing to gain by raising allegations of improper sexual behavior by one of his rivals. The former House speaker from Georgia has been divorced twice and married three times, including to his current wife with whom he had an affair while married to his second wife.

Yet the moment gave Cain another opportunity to decry the media, whom he has blamed for the allegations becoming public.

"If I were running this campaign the way the pundits thought I ought to be running this campaign, I would have dropped out in August," Cain later told reporters.

"When people get on the Cain train, they don't get off."

A Washington Post-ABC News survey taken after the allegations emerged last Sunday showed Cain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney running almost even atop the field, with most Republicans dismissing the harassment allegations. Seven in 10 Republicans say reports of the allegations don't matter when it comes to picking a candidate.

But in a sign of the possible danger ahead, the poll found that Cain slipped to third place among those who see the accusations as serious, and Republican women were significantly more likely than men to say the allegations make them less apt to support the businessman.

The questions show no sign of letting up.

When reporters tried to ask about the allegations following Saturday's debate, Cain interrupted.

"Don't even go there," Cain said before the reporter from The Washington Post could finish his question.

"Can I ask my question?" the reporter said.

"No," Cain snapped.

"Please send him the journalistic code of ethics," Cain instructed his chief of staff, Mark Block.

As he left the press conference, he began to offer an answer.

"If you all just listen for 30 seconds, I will explain this one time," Cain said.

He then immediately recanted.

"I was going to do something that my staff told me not to do and try to respond, OK?" he said. "We are getting back on message. End of story. Back on message. ... Everything has been answered."

During the otherwise staid evening, Cain and Gingrich largely agreed with each other that Washington was too big and spending was too high during the $200-per-ticket event modeled after the 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

Those debates between rivals for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois were sprawling discussions of substance that politicians hold up as models for civil discussions. Gingrich, a former history professor, lauds them during his campaign and has proposed a series of seven, three-hour debates with President Barack Obama.

The other candidates vying for the GOP nomination were invited; only Cain and Gingrich accepted the invitation.

Organizers said Saturday they were considering more head-to-head debates and planned to work with the remaining candidates to schedule them.

At several points, it gave both Cain and Gingrich an opportunity to make lengthy points on fiscal issues.

"Long-term projections about what a government program is going to cost have never been right," Cain said, projecting confidence as he sat side-by-side with the former House Speaker in high-back chairs.

"Name one," Cain challenged the audience with similar defiance he displayed all week as he fought to steady his political campaign.

Asked after the debate about the last seven days, Cain didn't hesitate: "I've had a great week. A great week."

2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

WASHINGTON — One year to go until Election Day and the Republican presidential field is deeply unsettled, leaving President Barack Obama only to guess who his opponent will be. But the race's contours are starting to come into view.

It's virtually certain that the campaign will be a close, grinding affair, markedly different from the 2008 race. It will play out amid widespread economic anxiety and heightened public resentment of government and politicians.

Americans who were drawn to the drama of Obama's barrier-breaking battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the up-and-down fortunes of John McCain and Sarah Palin, are likely to see a more partisan contest this time, with Ohio and Florida playing crucial roles as they did in 2000 and 2004.

Republicans have their script; they just need to pick the person to deliver it. It will portray Obama as a failed leader who backs away when challenged and who doesn't understand what it takes to create jobs and spur business investment.

Obama will highlight his opponent's ties to the tea party and its priorities. He will say Republicans are obsessed with protecting millionaires' tax cuts while the federal debt soars and working people struggle.

On several issues, voters will see a more distinct contrast between the nominees than in 2008. Even the most moderate Republican candidates have staked out more rigidly conservative views on immigration, taxes and spending than did Arizona Sen. McCain.

Democrats say Obama has little control over the two biggest impediments to his re-election: unemployment and congressional gridlock.

The jobless rate will stand at levels that have not led to a president's re-election since the Great Depression. Largely because of that, Obama will run a much more negative campaign, his aides acknowledge, even if it threatens to demoralize some supporters who were inspired by his 2008 message of hope.

The tea party, one of the modern era's most intriguing and effective political movements, will play its first role in a presidential race. After helping Republicans win huge victories in last year's congressional elections, activists may push the GOP presidential contenders so far right that the eventual nominee will struggle to appeal to independents.

"It's going to be extremely different, with much more hand-to-hand combat, from one foxhole to another, targeted to key states," said Chris Lehane, who helped run Democrat Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

Republican consultant Terry Holt agreed. "You can expect a very negative campaign," he said. "In 2008, Barack Obama was peddling hope and change. Now he's peddling fear and poverty."

Obama and his aides reject that characterization, of course. They say the Republican candidates are under the tea party's spell, noting that all of them said they would reject a deficit-reduction plan even if it included $10 in spending cuts for every dollar in new taxes.

Both parties agree that jobs will be the main issue. The White House predicts unemployment will hover around 9 percent for at least a year, a frighteningly high level for a president seeking a second term.

GOP lawmakers, who control the House and have filibuster power in the Senate, have blocked Obama's job proposals, mainly because they would raise taxes on the wealthy. The candidates, echoing their Republican colleagues in Congress, say new jobs will follow cuts in taxes, regulation and federal spending.

With the economy struggling and Obama hemmed in legislatively, his advisers sometimes say the election will be a choice between the president and his challenger, rather than a referendum on the administration's performance.

"That's a very genteel way of saying `We're going to rip your face off,'" said Dan Schnur, a former aide to McCain and other Republicans, and now a politics professor at the University of Southern California. Obama has little choice but to try to portray the GOP alternative as worse than his own disappointing record, Schnur said.

Some Republican candidates would be tougher targets than others. Texas Gov. Rick Perry promotes his state's significant job growth, leaving Democrats to grouse that he was a lucky bystander rather than the cause.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says his years in the private sector make him best suited to lead an economic expansion. But Obama's allies have gathered details of jobs that were eliminated when Bain Capital, a takeover firm that Romney headed, restructured several companies.

Obama can't fine-tune his strategy until Republicans pick their nominee, and that may take months. So he's spending part of this year traveling to some of the most contested states, telling disappointed liberals he still deserves their strong backing and trying to convince centrists that he can revive the economy.

Obama's overall job-approval rating was 46 percent in an Associated Press-GfK poll from October. Only 36 percent of adults approved of his handling of the economy, a worrisome number for any incumbent.

Yet 78 percent said he's a likeable person, which forces Republicans to be careful. It's possible Obama will run a more cut-throat campaign than will his challenger. For now, anyway, Romney calls Obama "is a nice guy" who doesn't know how to lead.

Republican insiders see Romney as their most plausible nominee. He has run the steadiest and best-financed campaign thus far, relying on lessons and friends picked up in his 2008 bid.

But the GOP race has been unpredictable, and Romney has struggled to exceed one-fourth of the support in Republican polls. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota emerged as his main challenger last summer, only to be supplanted by Perry. A few halting debate performances hurt Perry, and former pizza company executive Herman Cain replaced him at or near the top of the polls, along with Romney.

Last week, Cain tried to swat down allegations of sex harassment from the 1990s. Party activists are waiting for the impact. Some, however, think Cain's lack of political experience and his unorthodox style, which includes largely ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire, are more likely to bring him down.

Two schools of thought run through Republican circles. One holds that Romney is the logical nominee and will consolidate the party's somewhat grudging support after conservatives stop flirting with longshots such as Bachmann and Cain. Republicans have a history of nominating the runner-up from previous primaries, and Romney fits that bill.

The competing theory holds that Americans are angrier at government and the two parties than political pros realize, and the tea party is just the start of a potent, long-lasting movement. Under this scenario, Romney can never placate conservative voters because of his establishment ties and the more liberal positions he once held on abortion, gay rights and gun control.

If this view is right, the shifting support for Bachmann, Perry and Cain is more than a flirtation, and someone will emerge as the "non-Romney" who wins the nomination.

Veterans of past presidential campaigns tend to doubt this outcome. But even with Obama's economic woes, plenty of Republican insiders worry that Romney's inconsistency on important issues and voters' doubts about his authenticity could let the president slip away.

Romney should have put his GOP rivals "in the rear-view mirror" by now, said Mike McKenna, a Republican lobbyist who has tracked focus groups and polls in various states. "The problem is, a huge part of the party views him as a third Bush term."

McKenna said pundits don't realize that the tea party movement was as much a rejection of the high-spending, high-deficit practices of President George W. Bush and Republican lawmakers as it was a reaction against Obama's health care plan. With his ties to New England and the party establishment, Romney "looks like the lineal descendant of Bush," McKenna said.

He said he fears that a lot of conservatives will sit out the 2012 election if Romney is the nominee.

Plenty of strategists reject that view. They think conservatives' deep antipathy toward Obama will cause them to overcome their misgivings and fully back Romney.

David Axelrod, Obama's top political adviser, points to issues Obama can cite success on, from health care and undermining al-Qaida to reviving the auto industry and ending the Iraq war.

"We're going to have a very robust debate," he said. "The Republicans say if we just cut taxes and spending and regulations, we will grow. And I think the American people understand it's more complicated than that."

Scott Walker Recall Effort Officially Begins As Supporter Files Petition, Launches Fundraising Period

The first official recall petition against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was filed Friday, kicking off a period of unlimited campaign fundraising that was originally expected to begin Nov. 15.

According to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, David Brandt -- a supporter of Walker -- filed the petition in order to give the governor an extra week and a half to raise unlimited campaign contributions. Walker's ability to raise funds without the binds of the state's $10,000 donation limit for individuals comes thanks to a loophole in Wisconsin election law that lifts the limit for targets of recall elections.

Brandt -- who along with Bettie Brandt has given Walker a total of $238 since September 2010,according to the Wisconsin State Journal -- filed the petition with the state's Government Accountability Board under the committee name "Close Friends to Recall Walker." Brandt wrote in the petition that he was registering the recall committee to "fulfill my friend's last request," and notedthat he would not raise or spend more than $1,000 in his recall effort.

The official recall petition complicates matters for those leading the more serious recall effort against Walker. Organizers of the effort will have 60 days starting Nov. 15 to gather, on a separate petition, the more than 540,000 signatures required to bring on a recall election. Until an election is authorized, Walker may continue to fundraise without limits.

While the official recall campaign is just beginning, anti-Walker sentiment has been present in Wisconsin since he took office in January 2011. His controversial anti-union law, which stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights, sparked a wave of recall elections in which six Republican state senators were challenged and two lost their seats.

Most recently, Walker was targeted by protesters involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Chicago protesters crashed a breakfast event where Walker was speaking on public policy, chanting "union busting, it's disgusting" and "we are the 99 percent" during his remarks.

Marathon Sunday: Healthland's Tips for a Safe, Fun Run

On Sunday, Nov. 6, tens of thousands of participants of the annual ING New York City Marathon will hurtle through the city's five boroughs. That's a lot of potential for fun — and for pain.

Following are a few tips Healthland has collected for running a safe race and recovering from the post-marathon blues.

• Are you ready? This is a no-brainer, but make sure you are in truly race-ready shape — the fitter you are before a mega-run like a marathon, the lower your chances of injury and the less damage you'll do to your heart during the race. The good news is that marathon-associated heart damage is only temporary.

• Avoid the wall. Some 40% of runners hit "the wall," the dreaded moment, usually around mile 21, when the body depletes its available carbohydrate stores and starts burning fat instead, causing pain, dizziness and extreme fatigue. This calculator might help you avoid it.

• Good pain, bad pain. Take a page from these endurance runners and know the difference between injuries that require you to stop and those you can run through. In simplest terms: muscle inflammation is O.K., joint inflammation probably means its time to call it a day.

• Duck the post-race funk. An episode of mild depression is fairly common in the aftermath of a major event, especially one that you've spent a considerable amount of time and energy planning for. Avoid the post-race blues by scheduling away any empty downtime. Make plans to start a new project, or socialize with friends and family. Your plans don't have to be epic, but just make sure you stay occupied.

Most of all, have fun out there. We'll be cheering — and marveling — from the comfort of the sidelines. Good luck!

Why the Real Victim of Overpopulation Will Be the Environmen

Maybe it's just the fact that the official day has been set for Oct. 31 — Halloween — but there's a distinct whiff of panic and fear around the expected birth of the 7 billionth person on the planet. Here's Roger Martin, chair of the NGO Population Matters, writing in the Guardian recently:

The 7 Billion Day is a sobering reminder of our planet's predicament. We are increasing by 10,000 an hour. The median UN forecast is 9.3 billion by 2050, but the range varies by 2.5 billion — the total world population in 1950 — depending on how we work it out.

Every additional person needs food, water and energy, and produces more waste and pollution, so ratchets up our total impact on the planet, and ratchets down everyone else's share — the rich far more than the poor. By definition, total impact and consumption are worked out by measuring the average per person multiplied by the number of people. Thus all environmental (and many economic and social) problems are easier to solve with fewer people, and ultimately impossible with ever more.

Until the 7 billion threshold was approached recently, population growth had largely disappeared as a major international issue — a far cry from the 1970s, when Malthusian thought was back in fashion and countries like India and China were taking brutally coercive steps to curb population growth. That's partially a reaction to those dark days — right-thinking environmentalists didn't want to be associated with unjust policies, and so population became the green issue that dare not speak its name. But I also think that when the 6 billionth person rolled around — just 12 years ago — the world was in a very different and much brighter place. It's a lot easier to feel sunny about the idea of the planet growing more crowded when the global economy is humming, there are few major conflicts ongoing and you can take a water bottle through airport security.

Things, of course, are a little darker in 2011, so suddenly more people just seem like more mouths to feed, more competitors at the marketplace, more straws in the milk shake. You can see it in the way that immigration has once again become a hot-button political issue in the U.S., or the rise of population-induced apocalyptic fears. Are we going to breed ourselves out of existence? Is there room on the planet to support 7 billion–plus people?(See "Welcome to the Era of the Everyday Billion-Dollar Disaster.")

Take a deep breath. The answer is yes — and not just because you could fit 7 billion people in the state of Texas and it would only have the population density of New York City, which I can tell you from personal experience isn't that bad. We're a long way from Soylent Green territory here. As Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University pointed out in the New York Times recently, we have more than enough food, water and other essentials to keep every one of the 7 billion — and far more — perfectly healthy:

In fact, the world is physically capable of feeding, sheltering and enriching many more people in the short term. Between 1820, at the dawn of the industrial age, and 2008, when the world economy entered recession, economic output per person increased elevenfold.

Life expectancy tripled in the last few thousand years, to a global average of nearly 70 years. The average number of children per woman fell worldwide to about 2.5 now from 5 in 1950. The world's population is growing at 1.1 percent per year, half the peak rate in the 1960s. The slowing growth rate enables families and societies to focus on the well-being of their children rather than the quantity.

It's not sheer population growth that is stressing out the planet — it's what those people are producing and consuming. It's notable that much of the concern over population growth tends to focus on sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world. That may be where population is growing fastest, but poor Ugandans and Nigerians use a tiny proportion of the world's resources compared with rich Westerners, even if our populations have begun to stabilize. Here's how Jared Diamond — of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame — laid out the issue in 2008:

The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of the 300 million people in the U.S. consumes as much as 32 Kenyans do. With 10 times the population, the U.S. consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

A billion people — that's 1 in 7 — go hungry around the world today, but that's not because the planet is incapable of producing enough food to feed them. After all, as much as half the food produced worldwide ends up wasted, either rotting in the fields, the markets or in our refrigerator. We could feed 7 billion, 8 billion, 9 billion and probably more — if we chose to do so.(See "Population: The Numbers Game.")

That's one of the reasons I'm relatively sanguine about the population issue. It's basically impossible to predict the future, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. But humanity has been pretty good so far at responding to the challenges this planet puts before us, and I see little reason to expect that will change. More people, after all, does mean more potential problem solvers, not just more mouths to feed.

But there's an undeniable cost to all these people and all this growth: the planet itself. Even as human beings have grown in numbers and wealth, becoming healthier and more robust, other species have suffered. A study last year in Science found that on average, 52 species of mammals, birds and amphibians move one category closer to extinction every year. Almost one-fifth of existing vertebrates species are threatened, including some 41% of amphibians. Another recent Science study found that humans are destroying apex predators like tigers, wolves or sharks, which then has a major knock-on effect down the food chain.(See photos of World AIDS Day 2010.)

And as our numbers increase, other species decrease. A Nature study found that we are already entering a period of historic extinctions — perhaps the sixth great "extinction wave." It doesn't seem to matter that we keep putting more and more of the planet under protection for nature. Our sheer numbers — and our material needs, our carbon emissions, our waste — leave less and less room for other species, or at least, species that don't depend directly on us, like domestic animals and pests.

We may be headed toward a planet that supports 7 billion, 8 billion, 9 billion people — but not much else. It's not exactly the overpopulated apocalypse that science fiction and some environmentalists would have us fear, but it would still be an incalculably lessened world.