If you took the Blog Readability Test and pasted the HTML code into your blog, like this or this, then read this. You may want to remove the code. On a bloggery note,"Blogger (aka Blogspot) has eliminated the optional URL field from the comments form." No more comments from me at Blogspot. Thanks to Sharon Howard and Mark Stoneman for the tips.

Michael Binyon reviews John Burrows' A History of Histories for the London Times, 16 November.

James Wolcott,"Critical Condition," TNR, 4 December, reviews Gail Pool's Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America. Dwight Gardner joins the discussion here.

William Grimes,"Freedom Just Ahead: The War Within the Civil War," NYT, 5 December, reviews David Blight's A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. Blight is interviewed about his new book here by NPR's Terry Gross.

At kultur.macht.europa, Jürgen Habermas and Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, debate the future of the European Union. The text of their speeches is at the bottom of the page. Habermas essentially dismisses national differences as inhibiting progress on a constitution. The interests of national leaders, elites and bureaucrats, he argues, are the real obstacles to the democratization of the EU. Thanks to Nathanael Robinson for the tip.

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court heard the cases of Boumediene v Bush and Al Oudah v Bush, testing the application of habeas corpus rights of American prisoners at Guantanamo. Many of the precedents cited were from English legal history, such as the 17th century's Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, who imprisoned political opponents in Jersey, in hopes of nullifying their rights."In the end, he failed and was himself impeached before fleeing abroad." You can follow the argument before the Court at Balkinization; and, of course, Dahlia Lithwick,"It was the Best of Habeas, It was the Worst of Habeas," Slate, 5 December. Thanks to Manan Ahmed and Mary Dudziak for the tips.

Ralph E. Luker - 12/7/2007

Like the vast majority of HNN's and Cliopatria's readers, I tend to be a lurker, rather than a commenter, at other sites, anyway. Blogspot's new restriction will only encourage my passivity. That's probably a good thing.

Jonathan Dresner - 12/7/2007

There's no restriction on HTML within comments, either at blogger/blogspot or here, so there's no reason that commenters can't, with a few extra keystrokes, still include their URL of choice as part of a signature, etc.

Jeremy Young - 12/7/2007

I don't feel the need -- it's little more than an annoyance for me.

My point is that since you've just announced you will never again comment at eleven of the fifty sites on your blogroll -- including mine and those of your co-bloggers Rebecca Goetz and Nathanael Robinson -- because of a software change over which we have no control, you might want to consider that your own site's software contains the same problem.

Ralph E. Luker - 12/7/2007

I'd be happy for you to take that up with the management, which I'm not.

Jeremy Young - 12/7/2007

I disagree with Blogspot's decision to drop the URL field from its comments, but keep in mind that HNN has, to my knowledge, never had a URL field in its comments (or even a preview button), and that has not kept those of us with blogs from commenting here.