I'm getting the feeling that if Tea Party conventioneers told the Times' Kate Zernike that the earth was flat she'd run with it.

As noted earlier, she referenced Tea Party organizers who claimed “millions” had marched at Tea Party protests within the last year; a figure that appers to be fabricated.

Now in a follow-up piece, Zernike writes [emphasis added]:

Susan and Gil Harper from Cushing, Me. — she a lawyer who telecommutes to New York, he a furniture maker — said they had limited their political involvement to voting. But Mr. Harper said the bank bailout outraged them, and pushed him to his first Tea Party rally.

By Christmas, he told his wife that what he wanted was a ticket to the Tea Party Convention. When she gave it to him, she said she would go along, but only incognito, wearing a hat and sunglasses.

“Because of Nancy Pelosi calling people who believe in the Tea Party movement Nazis,” she explained. “My grandfather's family, as Polish Jews, escaped Nazism. To call us Nazis is an abomination.”

Fact: Nancy Pelosi never called Tea Party supporters “Nazis.” Period. But the Times quotes a conservative making that slanderous claim. The Times treats the outlandish allegation as fact.