The fall-out from recently-released Justice Department memos pertaining to Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of Texas continues:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Friday said that the Justice Department was not motivated by politics when it approved a controversial Texas congressional redistricting plan in 2003, overriding objections within the Civil Rights Division that minority voters would be harmed.

...Gonzales' insistence that politics played no role wasn't shared by some Civil Rights Division veterans. They say the Texas case, joined by the department's recent approval of a Georgia voter ID law later rejected by the court, suggests a troubling trend of politics trumping Voting Rights Act considerations.

"The decisions are politically driven," said American University law professor Richard Ugelow, a 29-year Civil Rights Division veteran who joined the exodus of career staff from Justice in recent years.

William Yeomans, a senior voting-rights expert who left the Justice Department earlier this