The Tea Party's newest hero is Miami Herald sportswriter Armando Salguero

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Oh, the irony!

The Tea Party's newest hero is a card-carrying member of the lame-stream media: Miami Herald sports reporter Armando Salguero.

On Wednesday Salguero jumped to the defense of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after his paper posted a story on its website that quoted a National Enquirer story about an alleged 1987 tryst between Palin and former Miami Heat star Glen Rice when he was a college player.

In an email to his colleagues, Salguero asked: "Do we know this story to be TRUE? Are we certain it is TRUE because we’ve done the work or have a reasonable certainty that is TRUE? Did anyone actually try to confirm this story before giving it Herald front page credibility? Did anyone call Glenn Rice to get independent confirmation? He lives in Miami, you know."

Conservatives4Palin.com posted Salguero's email under the headline, "The Miami Herald’s Armando Salguero Slams His Own Newspaper for Printing Lies About Governor Palin."

The Tea Party Nation is also praising Salguero on Twitter for his defense of Palin.

Miami New Times writer Kyle Munzenrieder has cataloged some of the Tweets:

@ThomasSSchmitz: .@ArmandoSalguero Thanks 4 speaking out against the cutting & pasting of Creepy McG's (@JoeMcGinniss) pervy #YellowJournalism

@Ohio4Sarah: @ArmandoSalguero Props to you for displaying courage and shiing the sunlight on the biases in the "newsroom" #Palin

@IanLazaran: @ArmandoSalguero You also could have asked your colleagues why they didn't report on the Obama/Vera Baker story in the Enquirer. [Ed note: The Enquirer reported in 2010 that Obama had a 2004 affair with a campaign staffer named Vera Baker. No smoking gun was produced, and Baker herself denied the allegations.]

@britcomeback09: @armandosalguero thank you for your basic humanity & demand for fairness when it comes to Sarah Palin. Truth always wins out & she has that.