This is News?

I'm not sure that it really qualifies as "news" that conservatives are mobilizing to oppose Hillary Clinton, but that's the way the L.A. Times reports it.

What I find most interesting is the sympathetic pro-Clinton way the Times frames the story.

The article is breathlessly headlined "GOP Hawks Circling Clinton's Campaign," with the subheadlines "Conservative attacks come early. She says she knows how foes think and how to defeat them."

In other words, the GOP's "hawks" are the "attacking" bad guys, but the Times' Girl Hillary is on the case and can win.

Buried deep in the article we learn the Clinton campaign has employees "monitoring enemy blogs" (gotta love that phrasing) and that she has "spent lavishly to hire a large team of opposition researchers."

In other words, she's doing at least the same as those who are working against her. She's campaigning.

Her spokesman even says -- perhaps somewhat menacingly, given the Clintons' history -- "One thing people know about the Clintons is they know how to fight back." And we're told she'll be relying on the "street-fighter instincts of longtime political aide Harold M. Ickes."

What, no "attack" headline from the Times about Mrs. Clinton? I guess she's strictly going to play defense, huh?

So much for a fair and balanced perspective from the Times on the rigors of the election trail.

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