Things Noted Here and There

My colleagues have been giving lessons in historical logic at various places: Caleb McDaniel and Nathanael Robinson on"the fallacy of serializing progress"; and Sharon Howard and Another Damned Medievalist at Crooked Timber on how one might assess"the traditionality of modernity." As Sharon suggests, we need to keep our copies of David Hackett Fischer's Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought nearby the keyboard.

Hiram Hover calls attention to some bitter conservativereactions to the Bancroft Prize awarded to Sean Wilentz for The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. The reactions, as Hiram points out, are purely political, without critical merit, because the critics haven't yet bothered to read the book.

David Horowitz's responses to Kathryn Lopez's softball questions at National Review Online drew howls of laughter from Michael Berube and Scott McLemee. The old fraud continues to feature his attack on KC Johnson, David Beito, and me at Front Page Rag. It led to my harsh exchanges with him on Conservativenet. I think it is especially important that his feet be held to the fire in conservative circles.

In response to pressure from Congress and the press, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has begun posting documents and audio tapes captured in Afghanistan and Iraq at this site. Al-Qa'ida related documents are here. Documents from Iraq are here. According to Stephen F. Hayes,"Post-Haste," Weekly Standard, 15 March, the ODNI will be adding hundreds of additional documents on an on-going basis to this site, as they can be processed.