One of the toughest things for copy editors is writing the one column headline. Long words don't work, and, depending on the number of lines, you can only use a few short words.

This is not one of those situations.

Republicans Glad to Lose on Bill to Start New Draft

What does a barely informed teenager take away from just reading the Los Angeles Times headline? Yes, it's a confusing headline. It doesn't really tell you much.

The headline gives the impression that Republicans had a bill to start a new draft, but lost, and are happy about it.

That impression is appropriately wrong. As informed people already know, the only ones pushing a draft are a couple of Democrats, and even they are not very serious about that.

In fact, you've got to get to the 16th paragraph before you find out that it was a Democrat who was the one sponsoring the draft bill in the first place.

It's an exceedingly horrible headline that appears to be written only to conflate "Republicans" and "Start New Draft." The Los Angeles Times owes its readers an apology.