The Curmudgeonly Clerk, having departed chambers of an anonymous federal district judge in the Southern District of Texas "for another part of the state, where [he] will enter private practice (viz., products liability defense for a medium-sized firm)," has shut down his current blog. While we hope for his return -- perhaps even at a certain group blawg? -- we at least can rejoice in the archives he left up. Few if any other blawgers have the attention to detail that the Curmudgeon has shown.

Consider his last substantive post, on the recent law review/ Wall Street Journal article that proposes Texas's splitting itself into five states, in order to increase Republican presence in the Senate. While other bloggers merely assumed that this would happen, the Curmudgeon acerbically noted, "Even if Texas were to divide itself up, I doubt very much that the GOP would net eight new senators. Absent from any of Kesavan's and Paulsen's analysis is a consideration of demographic data. In the 2000 elections, there were 3,799,639 Texan votes for Bush and 2,433,746 Texan votes for Gore."

However, there's an easy response to his conclusion, "It would take some pretty fancy slicing to carve out five Republican sovereignties": Tom DeLay's proven that he can dice Texas quite finely for partisan purposes.