And that fact poses a problem when he tries to take down liberal writers. The way Goldfarb mocked The Daily Beast's Max Blumenthal for highlighting a Salon piece he did with Dave Neiwert last year about Sarah Palin and the family's ties to the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

This gets slightly bit into the weeds, but the gist is that last week CBS News reported that when that Salon piece came out in October it prompted a testy back-and-forth between Palin and John McCain's campaign chief Steve Schmidt. Palin wanted the AIP controversy put to bed, but Schmidt pushed back, insisting the campaign would not put out false information about Todd Palin's involvement.

The CBS News report had the Palin/Schmidt emails to back up the story. And in the wake of Palin's surprising 'No más' moment last week, Blumenthal noted that his Salon story in October had “caused her deep personal distress, and provoked a rancorous series of exchanges with her campaign manager, Steve Schmidt.”

For some reason that was too much for Goldfarb, who ripped into Blumenthal for being delusional in thinking that his Salon story had any impact on Palin.

The arrogance of that paragraph, even for a blogger, is striking. There is no evidence of “deep personal distress” from Blumenthal's shoddy reporting.

Of course, as is custom for conservative media critics, Goldfarb never detailed in any way how Blumenthal's reporting was “shoddy.” But more importantly, Goldfarb was adamant that there was “no evidence” that Blumenthal and Neiwert's piece had any effect on Palin.

Except, of course, that the CBS report, complete with the angry Palin memos, proved conclusively the Salon report last October did have an effect on Palin [emphasis added]

On the morning of Oct. 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, “THE PALINS AND THE FRINGE.”

While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP.

The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line “Todd” to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message.

If the Salon story hadn't caused Palin any distress she wouldn't have gotten into an email pissing match with McCain's campaign boss. But she did and everyone can read the emails that prove it.

Everyone, that is, except Goldfarb.