Choose Liberty will take place in Orlando on Nov. 12 as part of a series of events organized by conservatives to “start our march towards November 2012 and taking our country back from the hands of the progressives.”

Joe Arpaio states on his website, “I have asked my deputies to train with the federal government so they may help in the fight against the illegal immigration. Today, I am proud to say I have the largest contingency of cross certified law enforcement men and women (160 of them) who are out patrolling in an intensified effort to bring illegal immigrants to justice.”

He adds:

An illegal immigrant breaks the law – local police bring them to jail and charge them with the crimes they committed on the streets. My detention officers take things a step further. They are now trained to follow up with each of those arrested and, if the arrestee is found to be in the country illegally, my officers charge him/her with that crime as well.

Arapaio, who created “Tent City,” writes:

Today, there are about 2000 men and women living in Korean War tents that we received for free from the U.S. military. Inmates sleep in bunk beds, twenty to a tent. They have full access to showers and port-a-johns.

We supply fans and ice water in the summer because temperatures inside the tents can reach as high as 140 degrees. In the winter, when it’s cold, inmates are issued an extra blanket.

A 2009 Time magazine article points out that Arpaio — who this week called on President Obama to release his birth certificate microfiche — “has faced numerous complaints from Amnesty International, the ACLU and other rights groups. His office is being investigated by the Justice Department for alleged discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

Americans for Prosperity, which helped organize Choose Liberty, “is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state, and federal levels.” The group has received millions of dollars from the controversial Koch brothers.

According to Florida Political Press, founded by Florida tea party activists, “the left is planning to keep us in bondage with increasing debt, excessive spending and tougher regulations on individuals and companies.”

If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic.

I don’t actually see a problem with Von Drehle’s literary technique there. But it’s curious to see the 70,000 number attributed to “liberal sources.” On Saturday, Time magazine ran an Associated Press story on the protest reporting that “thousands” of people attended. So is Time itself a “liberal source”? Is the AP?

That’s worth keeping in mind, whenever new housing numbers come out and you try to understand what’s going on. Also, if you somehow hit the lottery, you could snap up a dream house at a bargain. Take a look. My favorite is the house in California, just a five-minute drive from the beach. It won’t sell, despite being priced almost $1 million lower than its initial listing, because there are so many houses even closer to the beach that are better bargains. It’s hard to remember that just a few years ago, buyers would have wildly outbid each other to snag a home a short drive from a California shore.

In McMansionland, a market with a dearth of move-up buyers is giving new meaning to the concept of affordable housing.