Charlotte Hays

That, of course, doesn’t give the right to take the ultimate control and play God with lethal injections. But in the dangerous, post-Terri Schiavo world, most people will have trouble recognising the moral implications of what the doctors did. As Catholic blogger Diogenes points out, hey, they were gonna die anyway: “The cameras were fixated both on the suffering huddled in the Superdome and on the failure of government, but it seems that the more ominous failing was happening down the street where presumptuous physicians in the name of mercy resorted to murder.

“You have to understand these people were going to die anyway. Rest assured.” The US isn’t perfect, but it is not a land of racial hatred. Race demagogues, however, will seize any opportunity to peddle the notion that blacks are treated as second class citizens. Katrina was a golden opportunity. As The Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes: “The slimy and toxic water covering much of New Orleans does not stink nearly as much as the slimy and toxic accusation that help didn’t reach the victims of Hurricane Katrina quickly enough because most of those victims were black. “It is a sickening slander, especially since there is no evidence to back it up. Worse than sickening: It is hateful. It is a libel spread not in a spirit of constructive criticism, but to inflame racial bitterness - bitterness toward American society generally and toward the Bush administration in particular.”