While this country welcomes Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other faiths, he said, the Judeo Christian tradition remains its foundation.

If this is so true then please tell me why our founding fathers felt so obligated to create a governmental constitution that respected all religions?

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, Amendment 1, if we can usurp the right of our citizens to choose the faith of their desire, then, can the further usurpation of press, and expression be far beyond?

Maybe we should go back to the Magna Carta in which our constitution takes its precedence. Take a look at the Chapters of the MC that are still in force today. Well, in most civilized countries, anyways:

Rights still in force today

For modern times, the most enduring legacy of the Magna Carta is considered the right of Habeas Corpus. This right arises from what we now call Clauses 36, 38, 39, and 40 of the 1215 Magna Carta.

The impact of the Magna Carta is great in its influence, for example, on U.S. law. The following material refers to UK law and stands apart from a broader appreciation of the impact of the Magna Carta.

Three clauses of Magna Carta remain in force in current UK law, and can be viewed on the UK Statute Law Database.

Clause 1 of Magna Carta (the original 1215 edition) guarantees the freedom of the English Church. Although this originally meant freedom from the King, later in history it was used for different purposes (see below). Clause 13 guarantees the “ancient liberties” of the city of London. Clause 29 gives a right to due process.

Newt couldn't have shot himself in the foot better.

Showing contempt for Katrina hurricane victims might get him the a slot on the GOP ticket, but it will surely lose him the White House. There is no issue that galvanizes contempt among the American public more than the negelect of disater victims after Hurriance Katrina.

It's strange that the Republican party still doesn't know how vunerable they are in this area. But I suppose it should be expected. They have contempt for just about anyone who doesn't make at least $200,000 a year.

Oh, how I hope the GOP nominates Newt He's got more baggage than Giuliani and Bernard Kerik combined.

Sandy -

I think you know I'm about the last person to come to the defense of a Republican, least of all someone as loathsome as Newtie, BUT...listening to the audio...it seemed to me that by calling New Orleans residents "uneducated" he was adding to his criticisms of governmental authorities the contention that residents should have been educated by authorities as to how to respond to the imminent threat of a hurricane. In other words, I think he's asserting that they were not properly trained and prepared (and therefore "uneducated") as to how to deal with the emergency well before it happened. That's a valid criticism of inept governmental agencies in this case. I don't believe that Gingrich was asserting that new Orleans residents are just ignorant and can't read a map.

But hell, if anyone deserves a few news cycles of having to parse his own words in his own defense, Newt does. I mean, he's buddies with Father Superior Bill Bennett, who made a pitch for aborting black babies to solve the problem of urban crime. Who knows what they really feel inside, if they actually have insides?

So WTF...have at him.

I don't think that the people that stayed in New Orleans where uneducated. They stayed there to loot. I watched a local station from New Orleans that was broadcasting in Mississippi and as soon as the storm passed the unprepared people just started steal. I don't mean food but big screen plasma tvs and new shoes. Face it they went shopping. Heck the cops where shopping in Walmarts. What part of "Get out of New Orleans there is a catagory 5 hurican coming" do you think that they would not understand or be unprepared for.

Now neadless to say the local, state and federal government should have had a backup plan incase a levy broke around a city that is below sea level.

I would have said disadvantaged, not uneducated, folks.
There were a lot of retired and disabled people in the Ninth Ward, who had no way to get out of the way. There were also people who didn't own cars, or couldn't find gasoline for the cars they had.
I didn't see the powers-that-be send any buses to help people leave.
What I saw was several acres of school buses drowned in a parking lot. The irony is that if they used the buses to evacuate people, those buses wouldn't have been flooded out.

The Republicans are on their way out of here. Their Party , as it was once known, is gone. They are left with scraps of trying to figure out who they are. Now, all of a sudden, they are okay with Giuliani? (LOL) That's a joke. If they embrace him, that's it. All of their values ans morals will be thrown right back in their faces. There will be voters who say,

"Hmmm. If he's just like a Democrat save the party affiliation and I'm already pissed off at my party, ans since I'm not gonna get what I want out of Giuliani, why not punish them by voting Democratic?"

Ha Ha Ha . So, on that note. I hope they pick Rudy. It will actually, be much easier for us to take the White House in 2008 and remove the 21 Republican Senators from Congress. ( Yeah) In all actuality, I don't care who they pick because in a general election match up one on one, Barack Obama is the only one who has been continually beating every single Republican while Hillary and Edwards either beats one ties with the other and loses to one. So, hey.

;p

What part of "Get out of New Orleans there is a catagory 5 hurican coming" do you think that they would not understand or be unprepared for.

Now neadless to say the local, state and federal government should have had a backup plan incase a levy broke around a city that is below sea level.
Posted by StephenCook on March 5, 2007 at 04:42 PM

I am really tired of people blaming the victims. Yes, there was looting, but do you really think people risked their lives to stay behind and get a water soaked TV or anything else? HOW are people living in tenaments with no cars supposed to get out of the city? Where do they go? Not everyone has relatives 1000 miles away that they could head to even if they have transportation.

This same category 5 hurricane hit MS and other states and other towns in LA. They were able to sit it out. No one knew that Bush had cut repairs to the levees until after the fact, when the Corp of Engineers said they were in bad shape but there had been money cut from the budget for Bush's illegal occupation.

It was Bush and the republican's fault that this disaster was of this size to New Orleans. Those deaths up in attics, etc, are all on their shoulders. THEY are the ones who have FEMA and other emergency groups who should have been prepared.

And this picture and memory of those people dead in wheelchairs, in water, etc, will be on the blemish of Republicans for many years to come.

Posted by StephenCook on March 5, 2007 at 04:42 PM,

What did you know, and when did you know it?

The situation that I saw in NOLA were people trapped in a city with a Cat 5 hurricane bearing down upon them, most with no way out as they did not have vehicles, and even if they did vehicles, how do you evacuate a city of a million and a half people in two days! Imagine the grid-lock, much worse than the Senate today!

People had to survive! No water to drink. Swimming in their own waste, and ancestral remains. Stores flooded. Like the merchandise in those stores, food and material, was going to be salvaged during the potential cleanup of the city. Hell no, all of that merchandise was headed for the big dumpster with a tax write-off to boot. That's what big business does, NCV, as in No Current Value. Clean it up and rebuild it.

The biggest problem was not people trying to survive, and salvage their lives from the remnants of their wind blown, flooded city. No, the biggest problem was that there was no plan, with at least fifteen years of advance warnings of the levee system problem, there was no plan of how to evacuate, or remove people to safety within the city, and that was the governments obligation to the people. That was the government break down.

Davidual -

I thought was Gingrich's point about New Orleans residents being "uneducated" - that government had failed to "educate" them on how to deal with a specific kind of disaster that is not to be unexpected on the Gulf Coast.

However after having read StephenCook's swill, who knows what Gingrich really meant, and how his ilk understood his comments?

Perhaps StephenCook can give us the details on William Bennet's plan to eliminate crime by aborting black fetuses.