Palestinian militant group says it killed an Israeli settler kidnapped in the West Bank, AP reports. CNN working to confirm. Visit CNN for the latest.

Israeli warplanes flew over the home of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israeli officials said. The move apparently is aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to help get a captured Israeli soldier released. Visit CNN for the latest.

Many of you may have heard of today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold most of the Texas redistricting plan engineered by Tom DeLay.

I have not read the full opinion so I can’t comment on that, but does anyone else find it frightening that partisan groups are allowed the power to redraw these districts? Gee, no obvious situation for abuse of the system there.

And lest my usual far-right critics think this is simply an attack on DeLay and the GOP, I am well aware that the Democrats have done the exact same thing when they are in power and that bothers me too.

We should not allow such an important decision to be placed in the hands of those who benefit directly from the outcome, especially when it has the potential to disenfranchise voters so easily. But what can we do about it? I fear not much.

Unless I am mistaken the drawing of districts is left up to the individual states, which i assume might play a part in the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Its possible some States do this process in the correct manner (an impartial panel of judges who have lifetime appointments or who are otherwise not dependent on the process), and in the case of smaller states it may not be an issue as dividing a state in two or three ways is going to be more difficult to gerrymander (or you could be wyoming and have only one district). But states like Texas have a system that is broken. Initiatives might do the trick but if you have a Republican majority in the state its going to be difficult to get them to vote for a plan that might take power away from Replubicans (and the same in blue states with the Democratic party). Legislative solutions are unlikely to work because the legislature allready approves of the process. As I said there may be nothing anyone can do. And that is very very scary.