OCTOBER 8 / Speaking of red-hots

ANDREA GEORGSSON, abortion absolutist and Chronicle editorial writer, contributes money to political candidates. Guess which party.

Find the answer at BlogHouston. Be sure to click through the "abortion" and "leftover" links.

Ms. Georgsson's political activism is a useful test for the Chronicle's new "opinion director," John Wilburn.

Does he subscribe to old-school journalistic ethics, which prohibit editorial writers and public-affairs reporters from leaving the sidelines to play in games they are covering?

If so, does he have the power to do anything about her transgression?

And if so, does he have the backbone.

Here's hoping. Meanwhile . . . 

Meanwhile, enjoy the great sport of Georgsson-watching. It's not been as much fun since the Chronicle deep-sixed a mini-tradition of running signed columns by editorial writers every Monday morning.

Ms. Georgsson's greatest hits include this hymn of praise for Margaret Sanger, the spiritual mother of abortion on demand, followed two months later by this defense of Mother Sanger's enthusiasm for eugenics.

"In her zeal to make birth control available to early 20th-century women," Ms. Georgsson wrote, Ms. Sanger was both a socialist and a free-love advocate.

Sanger also aligned herself with the eugenics movement, which sought to limit "breeding" by "inferior" humans: the lame, the feeble-minded, the insane and nonwhites.

"Aligned herself with" works if it means "served as a powerful and influential leader for."

And for the squeamish, "nonwhites" is a euphemism for, among others, black people. One other "movement" Ms. Sanger enthusiastically "aligned herself with" was racism.

None of this deters Ms. Georgsson.

[P]roviding women access to the means of preventing endless strings of children was Sanger's overarching goal, not genocide.

That's a relief. Birth control was the overarching goal, leaving genocide, I suppose, as a mere arching goal. Or, more charitably, a necessary cost to be paid for achieving the greater good. Or, most charitably, a shortcoming to be excused by the liberals' best friend when they're caught, as so often happens, on the dirty side of a moral question: good intentions.

At least Ms. Georgsson can turn a phrase. "Endless strings of children" ranks right up there with Senator Obama's wish that his daughters never be "punished with a baby."

(Mr. Obama is surely the one Ms. Georgsson has been waiting for. His support for abortion is almost as absolute as hers, if such a thing is possible, extending even to the first minutes after a live birth in a botched abortion. No medical care for these uncooperative little blobs of protoplasm. The alternative would be to punish the mother and contribute yet another live child to that endless stream.)

As for old-school journalistic ethics, what relevance does that quaint artifact of a nobler time have in the era of advocacy journalism by an endless stream of big-media journalists, Ms. Georgsson among them?

She at least has the generosity to put her money where her mouth is. The other cheapskates just give nonmonetary campaign contributions: positive coverage on the front pages, love letters on the opinion pages.

Ms. Georgsson needs firing, but the firing seems to be over and she's still standing.

Pity.

UPDATE: Thanks for the links from Lose an Eye and BlogHouston.