He may be on the way out, but Bill Clinton can still count on his friends in the media to cover for him.

Today’s Los Angeles Times is a good example. The paper cut a line from George Will’s Jan. 11 column, eliminating a reference to well-founded allegations that President Clinton committed rape.

Without naming Juanita Broaddrick, Clinton’s rape victim, Will wrote, "It is reasonable to believe that [Clinton] was a rapist 15 years before becoming president, and that as president he launched cruise missiles against Afghanistan (a nearly empty terrorist camp), Sudan (a pharmaceutical factory) and Iraq to distract attention from problems arising from the glandular dimension of his general indiscipline."

The Los Angeles Times, however, wrote "It is reasonable to believe that he launched cruise missiles against Afghanistan (a nearly empty terrorist camp), Sudan (a pharmaceutical factory) and Iraq to distract attention from problems arising from the glandular dimension of his general indiscipline."

In his column Will wrote that "other than by soiling the office, he was a remarkably inconsequential president, like a person who walks across a field of snow and leaves no footprints."

Apparently, as far as the L.A. Times is concerned, poor Juanita Broaddrick left no footprints either.

After noting that Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the 7th Circuit, called Clinton's illegalities "felonious, numerous and nontechnical" and "constituted a kind of guerrilla warfare against the third branch of the federal government, the federal court system," Will concluded by writing that "Clinton is not the worst president the republic has had, but he is the worst person ever to have been president."