If you've always felt that social conservatives have gotten a raw deal or have been disregarded by the opinion editors of the Los Angeles Times, it hasn't been your imagination. A Sunday, November 19, 2006, opinion article in the Times acknowledges that the "the editorial page remains reliably liberal on social issues." The author is Gregory Rodriguez, a contributing editor to the Times and a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. In his Sunday article, "What's left of L.A.'s left?", Rodriguez opines (bold added),

In 2004, then-Times Opinion Editor Michael Kinsley was looking to break with the editorial page's past. Under Kinsley hire Andrés Martinez, the editorial page remains reliably liberal on social issues but more fiscally conservative and pro-business than in the past.

To support that the Times is "more fiscally conservative and pro-business," Rodriguez cites the fact that the paper took a non-liberal position on a ballot initiative - over a year ago in 2005. Uhhh, OK.

Yet, it seems, according to Rodriquez, the paper still has a way to go to reach moderation.

For most of the last generation, L.A.'s public intellectual life has been dominated by editors, thinkers and writers who ran the ideological gamut from A to B — from committed liberal to strident leftist.

Rodriguez acknowledges that liberal voices have dominated the public discourse in Los Angeles in recent years. He expresses near shock that a weekly paper recently published an unflattering portrayal of a local liberal labor chief. Unflattering news about a champion of a liberal cause? Horror!

But Rodriguez' surprise is - well - not surprising. The Times' news departments have a well-documented track record of ignoring or downplaying unflattering news of Democrats. (Here are just a few examples we've illustrated in the past.)