While the New York Times Magazine touts the effectiveness of conservative blogs, the LA Times Magazine writes about the liberal blogs "truth squad" and profiles John Amato of Crooks and Liars.

For political junkies, must-see TV once meant sitting through hours of "Crossfire," "Hannity & Colmes" and "Meet the Press," hoping for the occasional gem. Nowadays, to catch Robert Novak turning the air blue on "Inside Politics" or work yourself into an apoplectic lather over our politicians' latest truth-challenged utterances, you can point your browser to Crooks and Liars , the brainchild of 47-year-old West L.A. musician and liberal-Democrat John Amato. Since last fall, he has been serving up political dish from a decidedly blue-state perspective with daily posts of video and audio streams. Amato, who turned to blogging after an injury scotched his saxophone career during a hiatus from a reunion tour with Duran Duran, currently is receiving between 100,000 and 200,000 hits on the site per day and has even done a few original interviews. We pried him away from his computer for questions from the mainstream media.