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Henry Norr has been suspended from the San Francisco Chronicle because the Chronicle doesn’t like his views on the war. Ummm, can we say “lawsuit”? Papers have a legitimate need to make sure their journalists don’t have conflicts of interest, and so there could exist circumstances where a journalist’s private political activities might be taken into account at a newspaper. But, Norr writes about spam! You can look at the Henry Norr Article Archives and see he hasn’t written on a political topic all year. I learned of the details of his situation from Dave Winer who gives numerous links. The best is Norr’s own account. (scroll down to read it.)

Here’s my letter to letters@sfchronicle.com

To the Editor:

Shame on the Chronicle for its vengeful suspension of Chronicle technology reporter Henry Norr. I’ve read your conflict of interest policy and he doesn’t have a conflict of interest. He writes about spam for chrissake. Your reporters have a right to participate in politics. When you suspend them after such activity and try to make it seem as if a time card is the issue, it has a chilling effect on the ability of the rest of your staff to freely exercise their rights. You will be lucky if he doesn’t sue you and end up owning the Chronicle. The right thing to do at this stage is clear: Announce that you have completed your “investigation” of his time card and found that he took a valid sick day. Reinstate him immediately and pay him for the days missed. Also make it clear to other employees that they are free to participate in political activities, consistent with the Chronicle’s stated conflict of interest policy.

If you don’t fight for the other guy’s freedom, there will be no one left to fight for you when they take away yours.

The Jon Stewart Show on Comedy Central is too funny. Watch this video where Jon discusses the contract the Bush administration has given Cheney’s former company Halliburton. Thanks to On Lisa Rein’s Radar.

Follow-up to my earlier entry on the US using napalm in Iraq (and denying it) and now apparently covering it up?

If you search Google News for “napalm” you’ll find this entry on the second page:

CIA: It really was Saddam on TV

San Jose Mercury News, CA – Mar 20, 2003

… In addition, about 20 GPS-guided 2000-pound bombs, cluster bombs and napalm were to be dropped on an observation post that occupies key terrain, said Col. …

but if you go to that link, no such text appears in that article. And if you search San Jose Mercury News’ website for “napalm” nothing is found. There’s no Google cache of the page either.

So did Google make this up? I doubt it. Or is the San Jose Mercury News changing its stories? Are they under pressure to change their stories?

In the article that remains, we hear: “There’s really nothing up here but a bunch of rubble,” said Cpl. Graham Ahlstrom, 22, from New York.

Could Cpl. Ahlstrom be referring to Safwan Hill, when he says “up here”? It seems likely.

This New York Times article reports that the World Trade Organization has ruled that the Bush Administration’s 30% hike in steel tariffs last year was illegal. The shocking part of this article is that this is the seventh time now that the U.S. has lost such challenges. Can’t someone in Washington take a hint? Time to play fair! No giving breaks to your big campaign donors! It just gets us in bigger trouble… Now the U.S. faces trade sanctions. I suppose that’s not all that this administration deserves. Those articles of impeachment I wrote about are looking better and better.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in Lawrence v. Texas, a case in which a neighbor falsely reported a disturbance next door in order to have police find his neighbor, Mr. Lawrence, engaged in sex with another man. Texas is one of several states that outlaws sodomy only for same-sex couples, but allows it for heterosexual couples. SCOTUSBlog says the Texas D.A. “gave what may have been the worst oral argument in a truly important case in the past decade.” The NYTimes transcript above seems to confirm that, as Mr. Rosenthal has to allow the justices to provide his examples for him and he finds himself utterly unable to respond to the line of argument presented at the end of the above transcript, and so he merely changes the subject. Score: Privacy Rights 1, Texas Bigots 0. We’ll see how the Justices scored this one in a few months.

Lawrence Lessig discusses a tragic proposal being considered by the Mexican Congress. Mexico would extend copyright from the life of the author plus 70 years, to the life of the author plus 100 years. Also, “at the end of the copyright term, the government has the right to charge royalties for works in the “public domain.”” It’s hard to think about much of anything except the war right now, but this is a foolish proposal that will devastate creativity and progress in Mexico for generations. Perhaps it will take someone implementing such horrific steps backwards for people to wake up to the idea that an author’s exclusive rights to their works must be balanced by the public’s interest in widely available access. If we see Mexico self-destruct, perhaps we’ll think twice before doing the same. Unfortunately, Lessig is right that the “harmonization” argument will push others to follow suit. Then, of course, we all end up flushing progress down the drain. Did anyone need another reason to be depressed?

The former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, has drafted these articles of impeachment of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft. Also, there was a rumor going around that Representative John Conyers wanted to know what the support was for impeachment, which appears to be false. See voice4change.org.

It is a terrible thing to see. It makes me want to cry, scream, and then cry again. But, I think it is an important thing to see. It is easy to say, “We are so proud of our troops who are willing to sacrifice their lives.” And we are. We should be. But it is a horrific thing to see the fear in their eyes when they actually face the prospect of that sacrifice. The look in the woman’s eyes is the hardest to bear. Put a face to this noble idea of sacrifice. Individualize it. Personalize it. It then becomes a harder thing to ask of them. You want to be completely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that asking this of them was for a vital cause and that this cause could only be achieved in this way. When you are positive asking this of them was your very last resort, only then could it begin to make sense, and maybe not even then. You can see the footage here, here, or here. Links from The Agonist.

This piece is as well-done as it is frightening. Link from Alan Bostick.

According to this article, the United States dropped napalm on Safwan Hill in Iraq. Conveniently, the US was not a signatory to the 1980 weapons convention which prohibits such actions. When Bush said he wanted to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I’m not sure anyone realized he meant our weapons of mass destruction and that he meant he wanted to destroy them by using them. Live and learn. Thanks to Nathan Newman for the link.

Update 3/22: CNN has an article that confirms the use of napalm by the U.S. Read to the bottom to find these paragraphs:

There is a lookout there, a hill referred to as Safwan Hill, on the Iraqi side of the border. It was filled with Iraqi intelligence gathering. From that vantage point, they could look out over all of northern Kuwait.

It is now estimated the hill was hit so badly by missiles, artillery and by the Air Force, that they shaved a couple of feet off it. And anything that was up there that was left after all the explosions was then hit with napalm. And that pretty much put an end to any Iraqi operations up on that hill.

Update 3/23: The Pentagon now denies that the U.S. used napalm in Iraq on Safwan hill, although the Age reporter who filed the report got the information from two marines on the scene and confirmed it with the marines again on Friday. Somehow the Pentagon knows more about what the military is doing than the marines who are there. Doubtful.