The St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact site figured out that the photo of the 9/12 anti-reform FreedomWorks taxpayer rally today (above), circulated by conservative bloggers and memed on Twitter, is in fact, a fake. They used a source who should know, Pete Piringer, a public affairs officer with the Washington, D.C. Fire and Emergency Department who estimated that 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up. Estimates online varied wildly from thousands to 2 million.

Politifact sealed the deal with this:

It doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth Street and Independence Avenue that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Based on reader response to the St. Pete piece, it appears the photo is actually from a 1997 Promise Keepers event. Piringer noted that local government no longer issues official estimates of crowds on the Mall for good reason.

[via HuffPo]