Now that the Census will deliver prison-count data in time for redistricting plans, learn how to use that data effectively to finally reduce the effects of prison-based gerrymandering.

"I'm just dumbfounded," stammered Justice Ann Walsh Bradley of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. This was Thursday, January 21, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated ruling in Citizens United, which easily eclipsed the unfolding drama in Wisconsin. Justice Bradley's words were in response to the state court's anguished position on the recusal of high court judges, a position that's brought only disappointment since October 2009.

Is it a constitutional problem if a judge presides over the case of a corporate CEO who spent three million dollars to elect the judge in question? The Supreme Court faced just this question last term...Now, less than a year later, the Supreme Court is poised to open the floodgates to a volume of corporate spending in judicial elections that could make three million dollars look like a drop in the bucket.

Threats to our democracy in 2009 (moving into 2010); and 2009's successes/accomplishments: an editorial.