Will, I'd link to this as "Required Reading," if it weren't already on my damn blog!

So, if you work for a newspaper you can't contribute to a candidate? What a hypocrit.

Let news personnel contribute what they want to whomever they want - just require them to disclose the information. Financial reporters have been required to disclose any links to companies they discuss for a long time. Go to an outlet like MSNBC and see any article about Microsoft. Virtually every article will include the disclosure about MSNBC's relationship to Microsoft.

What's wrong with having reporters include a statement like "I donated $500 to the Kerry campaign" in any article political article they write? With this, they'd be free to donate as they wish and we would know about their political leanings. Full disclosure is the way to go.

I wish my employer would place me on "paid leave." Of course, that would require me to find an employer first, ideally one who finds out I gave money to a political candidate and then needs time to 'investigate.'

Is there a lower donation limit to this? I mean, if I become a professional journalist (easy 'profession' to get into, although jobs are few) can I just make a $25 donation to a party, and have the next few weeks free to party with pay?

A San Francisco Chronicle editor is a Democrat? Oh, my goodness, what shocking news. I was reading the paper under the impression that the people writing it had no political opinions - or, at least, did not let their bias show up in pring.

Of course, despite my precociously excellent vocabulary, I'm only two years old. . .

Do any of us really need a disclaimer? It's obvious that editorial writers pick and choose what they want to write about and what letters from readers they want to publish.

I wrote a stinging letter entitled "Film-Flam" to the ed of our local liberal rag about the Moore "documentary" that was actually printed. I imagine the thinking was that it was so outrageous, it would make their point for them that only rightwing nutcases object to Moore. Geniuses that they are, they assumed it was a typo and changed the title to Flim-Flam. So much for literacy.

Unfortunately it must have resonated with the great unwashed because they printed many letters damning and sliming me and even a guest editorial in the Sunday edition written by an academic explaining in painful detail why it wasn't plagiarism to rip off Bradbury's title. Of course, I never said it was plagiarism. Moore never said he made it up. He knew everyone who read the original would make the correct assumptions and it worked.

I received lots of emails and telephone calls supporting my courage speaking out against a film presented as a documentary when, it is in fact, a mish-mash of lies and distortions.

Of course, readers would be better served by open disclosure of political views and contributions than they are by the fraudulent pose of neutrality. But I suspect the reason so many editors insist on maintaining the fiction of 'objective' purity is that if disclosure were required, they might have to account for their donations to political candidates in Havana and Pyonggyang.

Seems to me that newspapers in this country were expected to be highly partisan - thus the protection in the First Amendment. So what is wrong with a paper coming right out and saying who they support and what their political viewpoint is? It isn't like we can't figure it out anyway.

So the Opinions Page editors aren't allowed to have an opinion of their own?

Oookaay.