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The aftermath of last week’s earthquake in Haiti has brought out the best in people who have been generous in their compassion and unselfishness. Unfortunately it has brought out the worst in a few public figures that have exploited the tragedy to advance their respective political agendas. From Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez on the left to the revisionist history of Pat Robertson, these individuals have needlessly politicized the terrible situation in Haiti.

One of these cold-hearted souls is U.S. Representative Steve King when he decried the granting of temporary protected status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians. Instead of using a thoughtful and rational analysis he foolishly claimed that that Haitian migrants “have no reason to fear deportation” because they would fill the “great need of relief workers.” As the liberal blog Think Progress noted, King appeared to backtrack from his comments while on talk radio on Tuesday. Yet he could not help but take an unnecessary potshot as his political opponents:

Well, the first thing that happened was we hadn’t even gotten through the after shocks and people were still crying out from under the rubble and the open borders amnesty crowd jumped on that and used the Rahm Emanuel axiom, which is never let a crisis go to waste. And it began to call for Temporary Protective Status for the illegal Haitians that are in the United States, which about thirty, thirty thousand of them have been processed for deportation but not sent.

Sorry to burst your bubble Rep. King yet as we’ve written about several times before immigrants’ right groups, lawmakers, and activists have long advocated granting TPS for Haitians. Last week’s earthquake was one of the latest in a string of natural disasters including hurricanes and flooding to hit Haiti in recent years. Such nasty comments discredit the hard work that groups such as Haitian community organizations have done for years as well as a few politicos within your own party.

It may seem contradictory to bring attention to the remarks by the likes of Rep. King but they deserve to be mentioned as examples of crass selfishness that brings no benefit to the victims of Haiti’s tremors.

Image- CNN (“Haitians line up to receive food and water Wednesday at a U.S. Army distribution point in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.”)
Online Sources- detnews.com, The Latin Americanist, Think Progress, Wonkette, Reuters, BBC News

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- The United Nations on Tuesday authorized sending 3,500 more peacekeepers to Haiti to try and restore order and protect relief convoys, even as young men scavenged in the rubble of last week's earthquake and U.S. troops helicoptered onto the grounds of the wrecked National...

Any discussion of the issue of free speech and the internet needs to first recognize the new playing field that the internet presents over traditional media. The rise of the internet has also given rise to an entirely new set of .... One note of the so-called flower campaign read, “Google, the mountains can't stop our contacts, and we'll get over the wall [the "Great Firewall"] to find you!” The sentiment demonstrates the deep desire among some Chinese for greater speech ...
Human Rights - http://humanrights.foreignpolicyblogs.com/

Politics junkies in the U.S. are focusing rabidly on today's special election in the Massachusetts Senate race, but it's worth noting that Haiti is still garnering much more attention online. Here's the Trendistic chart comparing tweets using the words "Haiti," "#MASen" (the generic hashtag for the race), "Scott Brown" and "Martha Coakley":

And here's a similar comparison using Google Insight for Search:

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US troops fan out across Haiti as aid operations gather momentum, a week after the devastating earthquake.

NEW YORK, Jan 19 (IPS) - After months of denial, the British government has agreed to release secret documents that lawyers say could prove that MI5 agents were present during the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's torture of a British resident held by the U.S. government for eight years.

The EU pledges more than 400m euros (£354m) in emergency aid for Haiti, as rescuers battle to help earthquake survivors.

US aid efforts for the Haiti earthquake appear to be speeding up. By midweek, a total of 5,000 US military personnel will be in the country, with about 5,000 more on ships offshore.