You can always count on Michelle Malkin and Drudge to lie about an issue to try and turn the heat off of her racist friends. I just hope some people don't get hurt because of it. She wrote a story and as usual jumped the gun to make her point: A teachable moment: Racial thuggery in St. Louis;Updated.

People like Malkin are scanning the headlines now for something that will turn the racist light off of the teabaggers, but she can't even get this story straight. Where have you seen that before?

Here's what really happened.

A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.

"The incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit," said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, who originally said Monday's attack may have been racially motivated.

D'Vante Lott, 16, said he was on the bus and witnessed the attack by the two black students.

The victim walked onto the bus, looking for an open seat, but students kept turning him down, as D'Vante said happened often with this student.

But Monday, the victim apparently tired of asking for a seat, D'Vante said, moved one student's book-bag off a seat, and just sat down.

She finally updated her story hours later because you know she needs those links and trackbacks, but Sullivan was asking her to change it for a while. You'd figure that a story which she promoted as racially sensitive would be one that she would keep an eye on so that she got her facts right, no?

The Daily Dish says the story in St. Louis was updated with the truth before she even promoted her "racial thuggery" charge.

That is Michelle Malkin's categorical claim about the ugly incident on a school bus in Saint Louis this morning. She wrote that post at 12.02 pm, linking to this story which says it was updated at 11.35 am to rebut the notion that this schoolyard fight was racially motivated. The police chief rushed to judgment and later recanted. Maybe Malkin missed it and will soon qualify her claim.

Andrew, you know she knows the truth, but needed the traffic, dude.

And Dan Riehl is a horse's ass. You gotta read it to believe it.

Digby has an enlightening post on this.

Keep in mind that these are the same people who were just carrying signs calling Obama Hitler and saying that Acorn groups and his arrogant wife should be sent back to "their own" country and be stripped of their rights. I'd say those so-called thugs were the polite ones.

More seriously, these people are a perfect example of the modern racists. They don't go around calling black people "boy" (to their faces) and they certainly don't think of themselves as bigots. But in their minds, racial minorities are dangerous barbarians who are threatening to destroy their way of life. Hence, when they find themselves in a group of loud teenagers, they see it as a test of their own manhood to "put them down." (Of course, that's why they need all those guns.)

A black president is threatening to them, even if they don't really understand it, because while he is unquestionably a very accomplished individual in anyone's estimation, the loyalty he inspires among African Americans frightens them --- and his sometime feints to popular culture and black solidarity make them very, very uncomfortable. That's why this obsession with ACORN has such resonance. The black army is forming. We are living in a new world where racism is a minority position. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it doesn't find political expression is some powerful ways. It behooves liberals to be vigilent about this and keep these impulses in check with frequent reminders that it is not acceptable in modern America to be a racist.

It's also obvious that nativism and immigration are the great racial undercurrent of the moment and they have long been the animating feature of toxic right wing populism. We ignore this stuff at our peril.

Racism is a minority position, but it's a lot bigger problem than one would think after all this time. A black president is too much to handle for many of them. We see it every day on our TVs. The racism being exhibited by the teabaggers is astounding to me, and the media are doing their best to not inform America about it, even as they show it. It's like watching an action movie, but the dialogue doesn't match the action. And I will never ignore this hatred. I never have and I never will.

UPDATE: Pam Spaulding finds a possible hate crime: GA: white man beats down black woman in front of her child at Cracker Barrel

Police are investigating a possible hate crime as a white man, Troy Dale West of Poulan, GA, put the beatdown on a black woman, Tasha Hill. He did so in front of her daughter when Hill told West to watch out for her child as the mullet-sporting West swung open a door to leave a Morrow, GA Cracker Barrel...read on

I checked out Drudge to see if he flagged this report and guess what? There's no mention of it. And neither did Malkin.