Estimating at DC’s 9/12 Rally

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com pegs attendance around 70,000 — double what Glenn Beck estimated, and he had every incentive to exaggerate — and tells the story of how the 60-70K became, in the hands of FreedomWorks and Michelle Malkin, 2 million. It’s a remarkably dishonest estimate, and one that’s been picked up by foreign sources, erroneously attributed to police reports (unofficial first-responder reports said 60,000), and flies in the face of conventional logic, and DC’s experience during inauguration. Just goes to show, these people will lie about anything, even math.

More remarkable, perhaps, is conservative blog RedState’s method of reporting the attendance controversy — an exaggerated title (“2,000,000 March on Washington”), with a footnoted disclaimer slashing the estimate by 90%. God help us if President Obama gets a cold — RedState will tell us he’s dead.