It’s not just the national media that’s got the ear of New Hampshire voters in the days before their first-in-the-nation primary tomorrow. Local newspapers are filled with stories about the various candidates, and The Concord Monitor (which reaches about 20,000 weekday readers in and around the state’s capital city) has had a spate of stories favorable to Barack Obama since Thursday’s Iowa caucuses.

What makes that all the more interesting is that the generally liberal newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton back on December 30, saying the former First Lady “has the right experience, the right agenda and the know-how to lead the country back to respect on the world stage and meaningful progress on long-neglected problems.”

But since the caucuses, more than a few pro-Obama pieces have found their way into the paper. On January 4, for example, the Monitor ran a long story headlined “Speaking of faith, Obama does; Senator bucks party trend to reach out.” The first couple of paragraphs will give you the flavor:

I'm calling this the Day's Daffiest Question Award. Suzanne Malveaux, come on up and accept it on behalf of CNN. You asked the question, after all.

Malveaux was interviewing Mike Huckabee this afternoon and talk turned to a tough editorial a New Hampshire paper had written about Mitt Romney.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: Saturday, New Hampshire's Concord Monitor broke with tradition. They're not endorsing someone, but they certainly took a slap at your opponent, calling him "a phony that must be stopped." Do you think that they went too far?

View video here.

We had a little campaign drama yesterday as a disturbed man (who claimed he had a bomb) took hostages in the Rochester, New Hampshire, headquarters of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Over a period of several hours, all of the hostages were released. And eventually the hostage-taker, Lee Eisenberg, surrendered without incident (but not before calling CNN ... maybe he had a debate question?).

When the incident began, Hillary Clinton was in the Washington area. She cancelled her campaign schedule for the day and immediately travelled to New Hampshire, where she met with law enforcment and the families of the hostages. Clinton made at least two public statements during the day, and she held a news conference (video) after the ordeal ended. Clinton's actions were certainly appropriate for the incident, and her statements were sober and direct. But in the end, her actions were no different than what any other politician or candidate would have done.

Abracadabra seems to be the magic word - at least for one New Hampshire Democrat and United Press International (UPI).

Prosecutors in Strafford County are claiming in court papers that former congressional candidate, Gary Dodds (D-NH) staged his own car accident and faked his disappearance in 2006 in order to garner sympathy and support for his weak campaign.

In that same disappearing Dodds spirit, UPI made the vanishing politician's party affiliation disappear. Voila!

The John Edwards presidential campaign couldn't have asked for a more flattering article than the one printed Friday by New Hampshire's Concord Monitor.

In an interview with the paper's Lauren Dorgan, Edwards promised universal health care, universal pre-kindergarten, matched savings accounts for poor people, and a new iniative called "College for Everyone." All of these new programs are going to require significant amounts of tax money in order to be paid for.

Instead of asking Edwards where he would get the money to pay for his massive spending increases, Dorgan and her Monitor colleages let Edwards off the hook with a spin that he's only asking America to "sacrifice." Here's an excerpt:

In December of 1999, Katherine Prudhomme created an uncomfortable moment for Al Gore in New Hampshire, one the liberal media never would have dreamed of creating: she asked him about Juanita Broaddick's claim that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978 at a Little Rock hotel. The video from WNDS-TV showed Gore claiming he never watched the Broaddrick interview, and he had no opinion on it. Embarrassing. Along with posting the video, Brent Baker reported only Fox News (and a day later, the Brian Williams show on MSNBC) showed it, while the nets stayed away.

Now, Prudhomme reports on Free Republic (h/t Doug from Upland) that she just tried on Friday to confront Hillary Clinton on the same Broaddrick question at an event in Nashua, and Hillary claimed "I don't know anything about that" and "I don't know what you're talking about." Prudhomme says she was carrying a certified-mail receipt that she's sent the Broaddrick interview on tape to Hillary's office. Since this alleged exchange apparently happened off-mike, it probably won't carry the same delicious video. Will the media follow up on this, or will their usual severe allergy to the Broaddrick issue continue? This is her account of the event: