It's rare to see local TV news anchors criticize other media on air. It's even rarer to see them offer pointed political analysis two days before a hotly contested election.

But ABC Action News anchor Brendan McLaughlin managed both on Sunday's edition of his political show, Flashpoint, offering a pointed analysis of Orlando WFTV-Channel 9 anchor Barbara West's interviews with Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden and GOP presidential nominee John McCain. (H/T to the Florida News Center for e-mailing this around.)

Playing West's questions in the Biden interview, which made national headlines for the anchor's aggressive use of GOP talking points to assemble questions, McLaughlin concluded the problem was her tone and the fact that she gave McCain two chances to attack Barack Obama in her questions that she did not give Biden.

As the controversy over West's questioning of Biden blossomed, I always felt her problem was that she accepted too much of the Republicans' distortion of history and facts in her questions. No one who actually knows what socialism is and what Marxism is would seriously ask whether the Democrats favor bringing such systems to U.S. government. By assuming that such ideas may be valid -- instead of asking whether voters might believe this stuff, regardless of its accuracy -- West gave too much credence to some pretty crackpot theories.

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Click here to check out McLaughlin's commentary for yourself and marvel at a local anchor who uses video and sharp observation to nail an important point.