Hillary's "Warmer Maternal Side"

How adorable.

Political reporter Patrick Healy lets official 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cultivate a cozy nurturing image in Monday's "Clinton Opens Her Campaign With Health Insurance Plan."

"Reminiscent of the scene this month when Representative Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to be speaker of the House, children surrounded Mrs. Clinton and climbed over their parents in the audience. The event was intended to convey both her policy smarts and her warmer maternal side - a combination new to presidential primaries.

"During most of the half-hour event, a 4-year-old girl named Camilla Harden, a beneficiary of the program, clutched Mrs. Clinton's left hand. Eventually Camilla began scampering around with her sister, Olivia, 2. Every time Mrs. Clinton patted or tickled the girls, the photographers' cameras clicked madly."

How adorable.

And Healy's Sunday "news analysis" of Hillary's chances in a general election refuses to catergorize Hillary Clinton, whose voting record is well to the left of center(a lifetime rating of 9 out of 100, according to the American Conservative Union),as a liberal, but simply brings it up as an accusation made by critics:"And she will have to show people that she is not the person her critics describe: radically liberal, ruthlessly ambitious, or ethically compromised. Her friends say she is none of these; some of them still chide her for being the 'Goldwater girl' of her youth."