This looks like a bit of a mystery via the daily Caller, especially given the advertising the Alabama Democrats did.

An official with the Alabama Democratic Party says the inflammatory comedian Bill Maher will not attend a reception hosted by the party this month.

The news comes after an uproar that the Democrats would align themselves with a comedian with a record of making offensive and sexist statements about conservative women, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Bradley Davidson, the executive director of the state Democratic Party, told the Huntsville Times Thursday that Maher will not participate in the March 17 reception slated to occur before he does a standup show at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville. The party, however, still plans to hold a reception for donors before Maher’s show.

Via YellowHammerPolitics blog, which notes a url previously linked to a web announcement they screen-capped. That link now defaults to the main page. If there never was anything to back away from, why scrub an announcement that reads pretty much like one would expect if Maher was going to drop in at the Chairman’s Reception?

They started frantically scrubbing their website of any reference to Bill Maher. The url (http://aldemocrats.org/bill-maher) which had served as the landing page for ticket sales to their “Evening with Bill Maher” began redirecting people back to their homepage. It was as if they had never implored folks to “Come join Alabama Democrats at the Von Braun Center Concert Hall in Huntsville for an Evening with Bill Maher.”