(UPDATED to add info from Ripon Society's site)
(2nd UPDATE, 6:14pm: Info re: YouTube editing comments. As posted on Politico and confirmed by Arizona's Politics.)
Expect to hear more about this in the contentious Flake-Cardon primary battle. This blog post just hit the front page of Politico.com: "Flake answer missing from video".
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-CD6) was part of a panel discussion at the Ripon Society, a GOP organization that is said to espouse centrist positions. At the 18 minute mark, he appears to be about to answer a question about how President Obama's no-deportation-of-DREAMers policy was playing in Arizona; however, the video appears to perfectly edit out his answer - he is seen handing the microphone to another panelist.
Here's the video posted by the Ripon Society:
The questions will be, of course, whether the Society edited it* and whether it was by request.
The piece posted by the Ripon Society on their website after the forum lends a little support to the appearance that it is an intentional edit: it notes the responses to the immigration-related question from the other three panelists; at these types of forums, it is unusual for one panelist to not say a word on a question.
Politico's blogger posted an update this afternoon, with conclusive evidence that the video was purposefully edited by the Ripon Society (or, with their permission). We confirmed the information: YouTube notes that the video posted above was "Created using YouTube Video Editor", that the "source video" was also posted by the Ripon Society, that the source video is "private" and was 1:15 longer than the currently-available video.
The questions are now whether the edit was by request (Flake, his Congressional office, his campaign), and what the answer was.
* original language, it is now obvious that it was edited
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