FiveThirtyEight:

[Y]esterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.

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.

It means a lot that these people -- mostly employed, who undoubtedly have a lot of other things they'd rather do -- took to the street out of a love of their country. And I'm not sure how the author of the article is sure that Kibbe lied, as opposed to believing some idiotic number he himself had been handed. Nonetheless, I think facts are important, whether it's "my" side who's mishandling the information or someone else.

Too bad this wrong number is getting so much coverage.

UPDATE: Darn. This happens to me every time I trust and cite the left. Rand Simberg's got a fairly convincing-sounding evidence-based analysis which seems to show somewhere between 240,000 and 500,000 participants. If so, the 70,000 number above is even more absurdly low than two million was high.