LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

Article via religionnewsblo, from Bloomberg.com. Neither surprising nor very alarming, it's still interesting.

The U.S. government released a list of charitable groups collecting contributions to help Hurricane Katrina victims that is dominated by religious organizations and excludes many secular and international relief groups.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency list was posted on the agency's Web site and published in major newspapers yesterday. After the American Red Cross, which was named first, the next organization was Operation Blessing, a group based in Virginia Beach, Virginia and founded by televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

``How in the heck did that happen?'' said Richard Walden, president of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based secular group that has been conducting disaster relief work since 1979 and was not on FEMA's list. ``That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars.''

On the plus side, "Matthew De Galan, chief development officer at MercyCorps, a secular relief and development organization in Portland, Oregon...said his group is raising a record amount of money despite the omission and said he doesn't ascribe any motives to the content of the list."