The beagle-obsessed blogger who has spent much of the weekend dredging incredibly nasty stories about Sarah Palin from the bottom-feeding muck of the leftist blogosphere to the surface of the mainstream media has now been shown a photograph demonstrating that Palin was, in fact, pregnant with her fifth child earlier this year and that, no, Trig is not her 16 year-old daughter’s baby. Here’s what he has written in response to this photo, under the heading “She Looks Pregnant Here”; try not to grab the computer screen and attempt to break it in rage:

Here’s a photo that looks like it confirms Palin’s pregnancy, uploaded today, on what was the last day of the Alaska Legislature’s Session, on April 13, 2008, five days before Trig Palin was born. More here. This seems to put the kibbosh on this, although it would still be good to have official confirmation from the McCain campaign, which should be easy enough to do. Just a simple confirmation from the doctor who was present at the birth.

There you have it. Ooze out a slanderous tale that involves not only a politician but her teenage daughter and her infant child — including a hint of incest — and then back away from it by suggesting it is rather the responsibility of the slandered to straighten the mess out that you have caused.

And then — oh, and then! — he has the temerity to complain about “all the hyper-ventilation about how despicable and vile and evil it is to ask some easily verifiable questions about a central argument of the McCain-Palin campaign.”

An easily verifiable question? What is the “central argument of the McCain-Palin campaign” that needs to be answered here? You mean the argument about whether a blogger’s heart can rot inside his body even as he inveighs self-righteously in his own defense? I don’t think anyone needs an answer to that question any longer.