Discussing the concern of some parents' about their children being a captive audience to President Obama's planned speech next Tuesday, MSNBC's David Shuster today scoffed at conservative activist Michael Leahy by asking if Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign was "indoctrination" (audio available here):

MICHAEL LEAHY:  This is from the lesson plan, the old, the original lesson plan. They want--

DAVID SHUSTER, interrupting: Which has since been changed, but go ahead.

LEAHY: --teachers to extend learning by having students write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. Now, David, that is indoctrination. We don't want that.

SHUSTER: Okay, so was it indoctrination when Nancy Reagan? Okay, fair point. Well, was it indoctrination then when Nancy Reagan encouraged students to write down what they could do to help say no to drugs?

Today on The Washington Post's front page appears the article "Back Home in Alaska, Palin Finds Cold Comfort: Scrutiny Has Been Intense Since Election."  Staff writer Michael Leahy reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has had a rocky return following her run on last year's Republican national ticket.  Writes Leahy:

A number of factors seem to have contributed to the bumpy homecoming: a residual anger among Democrats for the attack-dog role Palin assumed in the McCain campaign, lingering resentment from Republicans for the part she may have played in McCain's defeat, and a suspicion crossing party lines that the concerns of Alaska, at a time of economic crisis, will now be secondary to her future in national politics.

The claim that Sarah Palin hurt McCain's candidacy has been refuted by various sources including, coincidentally enough, The Washington Post.  Chris Cillizza covers the White House for the newspaper.  Shortly after the election he cited five election myths.  One of them was that McCain made a mistake by selecting Palin as his running mate:

One need look no further than the NewsBusters archives on fashion critic Robin Givhan and TV critic Tom Shales to see that the Style section for the Washington Post is hardly immune from the liberal bias that plagues much of the paper's A-section.

But for a change we're happy to note when a Postie in the Style section casts a critical glance at something in the popular arts that unfairly skewers conservatives. Such is the case today with reporter Michael Leahy's withering critique of Alexandra Pelosi's [file photo at right] newest documentary, "Right America: Feeling Wronged -- Some Voices From the Campaign Trail":

It's drive-by journalism, to put it charitably, a string of stupefyingly brief hit-and-run interviews with a bunch of unidentified people who we know are going to say nothing that will surprise us. By then, we've already figured out they're going to be fried by Pelosi's camera. We know they're going to sound like yahoos, often goaded, always reduced to sound bites and caricatures.

Leahy, recalling his impressions of conservative voters from his own campaign reporting, continued by dismissing Pelosi's documentary as a cheap excuse "for a snarky laugh track" at the expense of center-right Americans (emphasis mine):