All these years of making fun of Newsbusters' incompetent efforts to demonstrate “liberal bias” in the media, and I've finally realized that the basic problem is that these people have no idea what the word “liberal” means. (Or the word "bias," but we've been over that.)

In the course of ranting about schools serving salad to children*, Newsbuster Iris Somberg describes Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt as a “doctrinaire liberal.” Previously, Newsbuster Warner Todd Huston has called Hiatt a “socialist,” and Newsbuster Matthew Sheffield has said Hiatt runs a “liberal” editorial page. And Newsbuster Noel Sheppard has claimed to be surprised when the Post runs an op-ed that is “counter to leftwing economic dogma.”

If you know who Fred Hiatt is, you probably already know that to be nonsense. If you don't, here's a primer.

Anyway, that's Newsbusters in a nutshell: They think Fred Hiatt is a “doctrinaire liberal” and David Frum -- former Bush speechwriter, National Review editor, Giuliani adviser, etc, etc -- is not a conservative. Their claims of “liberal bias” should be dismissed accordingly.

* I am not making this up. Somberg is angry that “liberals decided it was the government's job to put 6,000 salad bars in schools and proceed to regulate how much of each vegetable a child must intake for it to count as a reimbursable meal.” Who else's job would it be? (Newsflash: Governments run schools.) And what's wrong with giving kids salad? Somberg doesn't say.