Strong day for Fox News, which has scored two glowing write-ups in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and news that O'Reilly's interview with Hillary Clinton was ratings gold. Both pieces point out that -- wait a minute -- is Fox News the new friend of Democrats everywhere?!?

Consider:

All of a sudden, the once-frosty relationship between Fox News and the Democratic candidates seems to have grown warmer. Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama, who steadfastly refused to attend Fox-sponsored debates last year, are now giving plenty of interviews as they court Fox’s viewers, who are largely white, conservative and undecided.

And:

Just a year ago, Fox News Channel was considered a pariah in many Democratic circles. But it appears that the cable news network is no longer in the doghouse.

Consider this week: On Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made a long-awaited appearance on "Fox News Sunday," a booking that host Chris Wallace had been seeking for more than two years. (The show airs on both the Fox broadcasting network and its sister cable channel.) On Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) granted her first interview to Bill O'Reilly, a commentator viewed with antipathy by much of the left, in no small part because of his denunciations of the Clintons in the 1990s. And this coming Sunday, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean plans to sit down with Wallace for the first time since November 2006.

>UPDATE: Michael Calderone talks to Markos Moulitsas, who's none too happy with all of this.