There is a question often asked in Alaska:  What’s the difference between a ‘hockey mom’ and a pit bull? The answer: The lipstick.

Well, Gov. Sarah Palin the Republican nominee, often called a ‘hockey mom’ even by herself, unfortunately, will have to live up to this image because the left wing mainstream media and the left wing blogs on the internet are on the attack like a lion seeking out fresh political meat.

While Barack Obama says ‘family and especially children are off limits’ for political debate, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, the New York Times, had three negative stories on Palin on page one of today’s newspaper.

The headlines: ‘Disclosures On Palin Raise Questions On Vetting Process’; A New Twist In The Long-Running Debate On Mothers’; ‘In Political Realm “Family Problems” emerges As Test’.

The questions being raised by each of these headlines, all of which you will see repeated up until the elections, are: How well was she screened and is there more?  With all these children does she have time to be Vice President? And, disclosure of teen daughter’s pregnancy brings uncertainty?

The Times is not known for salacious headlines or investigative reporting of the personal kind, like the New York Daily News or the New York Post, but perhaps the shocking pick of Palin by John McCain as his running mate caused some serious concerns within the core of the Grey Lady to behave like the attack dog they really are.

It all began yesterday when the McCain campaign revealed that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant and will marry the father of the baby, who by the way is a hockey player named Levi Johnston.

If hurricane Gustav and the disrupted GOP convention were not enough to talk about, the vultures of the forth estate came out in attack-dog force.

Before this the rumors by Internet blogs had Palin covering up a pregnancy by a daughter of the Governor’s fifth child, a special needs baby, claiming Palin was not pregnant.

And then there was liberal CNN host Campbell Brown asking a spokesman from the McCain campaign questions like, “I mean, how do you respond to people who wonder why her mother (Bristol’s) would have subjected her to this scrutiny by accepting this high-profile position?”  “And so you do risk putting her through an incredibly difficult process by accepting this job if you’re her mother. You can’t deny that, right? “

The McCain spokesman held his own defending the candidate to the point that it was clear that Brown stepped over the line of journalistic decency.

The toilet is being flushed and no one will go unscathed, even Palin’s husband Todd was reminded of his arrest in 1986 for driving while impaired.

Maverick McCain pulled one out of his hat and he’s got the Dems on the run and they are frightened of what they see — a pit bull with lipstick.