Like I said, every time there's a Tea Party event, the right-wing media just make stuff up. Every. Time.

We noted over the weekend how conservative bloggers, always busy inflating the size of Tea Party rallies, excitedly pointed to a Politico report from Searchlight, NV.. Partisans stressed how Politico estimated the crowd to be 20,000 strong.

But oops, that's not quite right. All Politico did was report on what Tea Party organizers claimed was the crowd size: 20,000. By contrast, local police estimated just 8,000 people attended the Sarah Palin event. And yes, there are countless high school football games played each year that attract bigger crowds than that.

Now fast-forward to today's Fund: "Politco.com concluded that the event drew “as estimated 20,000 Tea Partiers” to a windswept desert lot." [Emphasis added.]

Behold the sleight of hand, as Fund pretends Politico independently confirmed the crowd of 20,000.

Wrong.

UPDATED: I'm guessing that if the Tea Party movement really did represent a massive, grassroots uprising, partisans wouldn't have to constantly concoct numbers and inflate crowd estimates.