Max Blumenthal is attempting to stand behind his story.

His article at Salon.com remains unchanged even though the Village Voice and Dave Weigel at The Washington Independent have written detailed corrections contradicting Blumenthal’s post.

At his personal website he recounts a discussion he had with “Isis,” a photographer who, according to Blumenthal “does tend to be a little apprehensive about speaking to folks.”  It seems that at this point, “Isis” is the last remaining eyewitness that Blumenthal says supports his assertions made on Wednesday at Salon.com.

As a reminder, here are the assertions that Salon.com made that “Isis” is supposed to corroborate  (there are many, many more false allegations at Salon.com, and Blumenthal has not made any attempt to retract or explain them, but these are the assertions that are related to the mysterious “Isis”): (more…)

You know you’re having a bad day, Joan Walsh, when it’s just you and Max Blumenthal alone in a foxhole while you’re being overwhelmed by the truth. Because David Weigel, one of your sources for Blumenthal’s story and Max’s own blog posts that James O’Keefe once helped organize a “racist conference,”  has now “clarified” his remarks and guess what?  Your story just fell apart.  Read it and weep:

Clarification — and Mea Culpa — on James O’Keefe and ‘Race and Conservatism’

On Wednesday, I wrote a post reacting to Max Blumenthal’s story “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem” and was too quick with a description of the August 30, 2006 Robert Taft Club event on “race and conservatism.” Specifically, I wrote this:

“A zoomed-in headshot of James O’Keefe (after the jump), then working for the Leadership Institute, survived, although it cropped out the table he was sitting at, covered in controversial literature.”

In a later post, I walked this back: While I’d been at the event, it was Isis, a photographer/investigator for the One People’s Project, who told me that her photo was actually a picture of O’Keefe at a table of controversial literature. But several e-mailers and commenters have pointed out that my first post appeared to endorse Blumenthal’s whole story. I want to quickly walk through that story and point out the parts that, based on my experience at the event and interviews with Isis and event organizer Marcus Epstein, were not true.

There follows five points of material error in Blumenthal’s story and in the original post at the “anti-racist” website, One People’ s Project (whose site is adorned with the old Soviet Union colors of red and gold, and features a Soviet-style logo).   Among the revelations: (more…)