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At one time in the history of our grand republic, political discourse was a much more civil endeavor. While politicians have disagreed, debated, argued and even on occasion, fought on the floor of Congress, there has generally been a certain level of decorum between the two major political parties and among the three branches of government. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case -- and it's hurting our country.

"Mr. President, congratulations. You're a tough adversary," Tip O'Neill said in a 1981 telephone call to President Ronald Reagan after Congress voted to approve the President's economic package. The very liberal Mr. O'Neill had strenuously opposed the Reagan tax cuts, but the speaker went on to say, "I want to wish you all the success in the world."

Who in today's Democrat party would offer such words to President Bush? Who on "the Hill" -- which liberal pundit -- what Democrat party leader -- would adhere to what once was an unwritten rule of mutual respect between political rivals? Extremists in today's Democrat Party are so full of anger that even the horrific devastation and human suffering brought on by Hurricane Katrina have failed to produce any discernible detente in their torrent of viscera.

Katrina has created a humanitarian crisis worse than any natural disaster in U.S. history. Yet, while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are mourning dead family and friends and trying to comprehend their losses in the flooded streets, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, and the GOP for the devastation caused by the hurricane.

"Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged," read Kennedy's post on Ariana Huffington's anti-Bush website. The eco-evangelist went on to suggest to his disciples that God may have been offended by a memorandum Barbour -- former Chairman of the Republican Party -- had written to President Bush about flaws in the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on global warming. "Perhaps," Kennedy wrote, "it was Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings (sic) for the Mississippi coast."

Set aside for a moment whether the people of New Orleans consider themselves "spared" the worst of Katrina. The Kennedy screed is not only theologically offensive -- it is at best, outrageously insensitive to the plight of countless Americans now searching through waterlogged rubble for the bodies of loved ones and treasured belongings. At worst, it ranks with Sen. Richard "Dick" Durbin's likening American soldiers to the armies of Hitler, Stalin or Cambodia's Pol Pot.

Regrettably, Kennedy is not alone in ignoring the humanitarian and refugee crisis occurring along America's Gulf Coast to further a narrow political agenda. On Wednesday, as government, Salvation Army and Red Cross officials were appealing for every possible kind of help, a coalition of liberal activists brushed aside the plight of Katrina's victims to demand media attention for their opposition to John Roberts, Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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