Do you know the columnist, or do you just assume he’s a liberal Democrat because he works for the a major metropolitan paper?
If you don’t know him, I’d not be too sure with the LA Times. They perpetually suprise FReepers with sensible editorials, and since at least the Clinton air campaign on behalf of the Muslim terrorist in the Balkans have given straight reporting on a lot of issues to the discomfort of the left (they debunked the ‘genocide’ claims used to ‘justify’ the ‘humanitarian intervention’ while the bombs were still falling).
The article is from the LA Daily News which tends to be more conservative than the LA Slimes.