"The president-elect popped into a party at Bobby Van's restaurant, as well as The Washington Post's newsroom, where hard-bitten journalists fumbled for their cellphone cameras and reached for his hand."

So noted Post staffer Paul Schwartzman in his January 18 Metro section front-pager "Mr. Obama's (Giddy) Neighborhood." Yet for a supposedly hard-bitten bunch, the Posties sure are giddy over Obama. 

Elsewhere on the Metro front page: "Driven to Obamaville by Something 'Bigger Than Us,'" -- columnist Marc Fisher's look at Obama fans camping out in an RV park north of Washington, D.C. -- and David Fahrenthold's "Visitors Pour Into D.C., Loaded With Luggage, But Lightened by Hope."

Hard-bitten journalists? Only if it's Chris Matthews that's been doing the biting.

Washington Post metro columnist Marc Fisher treated readers of the October 2 paper to a look at outgoing "moderate" Republican Wayne Gilchrest (1st District-Md.), who was felled in a primary contest back in February by a conservative state senator backed by the fiscally conservative group Club for Growth.

Fisher dutifully documented and then applauded not only Gilchrest's disillusionment with Sen. John McCain and his disdain for the GOP's conservative base, but of the American middle class at-large, whom he charged as obsessed with "comfort." (emphasis mine):

Wayne Gilchrest, the nine-term Republican congressman who represents Maryland's Eastern Shore and parts of Anne Arundel County, has had it, and he's ready to talk.

He's had it with his own party, which he says "has become more narrow, more self-serving, more centered around 'I want, I want, I want.' " He's finished with his party's presidential candidate, John McCain, who Gilchrest says "recites memorized pieces of information in a narrow way, whereas Barack Obama is constantly evaluating information, using his judgment. One guy just recites what's in front of him, and the other has initiative and reason and prudence and wisdom."

Washington Post's Marc Fisher devoted his July 22 column, "Law Reinforces Montgomery as a Nanny State" to pooh-poohing a recently-passed bill by the affluent, liberal Maryland county that borders the District of Columbia on its northwest side. Fisher leveled a charge that free-market advocates and conservative Marylanders would cheer regarding the new ordinance mandating that employers of nannies provide a written contract.

"This is a classic MoCo decision to make law as a political statement rather than as a remedy to a burning social need," Fisher complained, noting that "conditions for domestic workers in Montgomery are considerably better than in many other places."

What's more, if nannies don't like their work environment, "the proper remedy" would be "to quit and find other work," Fisher argued.

Sounds pretty conservative for a WaPo columnist, so what's the catch? Well, one of Fisher's qualms with the law's development was how it might make Montgomery County seem hostile to illegal immigrants: