Pushing the Limits

The government, restrained by the 1st Amendment, may not restrain citizen speech, with certain exceptions. You can't slander anyone, you can't lie under oath, you can't commit fraud against others, and you can't threaten the President.

This may be legal - it is certainly reprehensible.

Polls on Facebook The obama Poll.png by deanbarnett on Aviary

Nate Silver on the Tea Baggers Rally

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Size Matters; So Do Lies

Nate dispassionately examines the attendance at and meaning of the "9/12" rally in DC, and how the truth of genuine grievances can be overshadowed by lies and poor judgment. Money quote:

The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.

Tea Baggers vs. Pot Heads

The Cluster Fox crowd, particularly Dick "I Used to Have Power" Armey's FreedomWorks corporation, really really want to show their "9/12" crowd in DC deserves to be taken seriously, even if they are forced by actual turnout numbers to lie through their dentures about attendance.

Was it 1.5 million, as FW's Matt Kibbe claimed ABC reported? Well, no. ABC, referring to DC Fire Department estimates, pegged the crowd at 60 to 70,000.

Tell ya what - when the Tea Baggers clearly outnumber the beer-swilling pot smokers at Bonnaroo, I'll consider taking this Cluster Fox movement seriously.

ABC contradicts Kibbe: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/protest-crowd-size-estimate-falsely-attributed-abc-news/story?id=8558055

Bonnaroo Attndance: http://www.bonnaroo.com/rolling-stone-july-9-23-2009.aspx?preview=true