The poltics of counting

Charlie Martin takes a crack at estimating the size of the 9/12 march on Washington. His conclusion: "probably well more than 850,000 in the crowd."

Perhaps more interesting than the actual count is this:

The National Park Service actually has a methodology for crowd estimation; they just were forbidden by Congress from using it after the Million Man March came out to be less than half a million. That restriction mysteriously disappeared for the Obama inauguration, and USA Today published a useful article on it.