As per usual, my big mouth gets me into trouble. I wrote this letter to the Boston Globe in response to a professor's letter attacking Daniel Pipes:

The letter from alleged professors John Womack and Evelyn Keller which appeared in your Sunday edition is, unfortunately, typical of the type of character assassination and baldfaced lying which passes for intellectual discourse these days. Needless to say, Daniel Pipes is anything but a racist or extremist. He takes an objective and critical view of the Islamic world which is, quite naturally, frustrating for those who wish to blame all the world's evils on Israel and the United States. It is significant that they refer to James Zogby, who has spent a lifetime writing checks to the PLO and attempting to legitimize terrorists like Yasser Arafat, as "a widely respected moderate". If this is the professors idea of a moderate, than their opinion of Pipes is certainly unsurprising. One might venture the opinion that the violence of the professors ire is, perhaps, less to do with Pipe's opinions and more more to do with his Jewish background. Needless to say, Harvard and MIT might be better served by leaving Daniel Pipes alone and subjecting its professoriate to IQ tests.

Intemperate, I admit. And, shockingly, they printed it, well most of it. Now, I stand by the whole thing with the exception of the bit about James Zogby. Basically, I let my anger get the better of me and flew off the handle rhetorically. When I saw it in print, I realized an apology was in order. Zogby is certainly a supporter of the Palestinians and, in my opinion, an unfair critic of Israel, but to my knowledge he has never supported terrorist acts or organizations financially or otherwise and I did not intend to imply that he did. I was trying to make a point that he is a partisan for a single side in the conflict and not a "moderate" as he was described. However, the rhetoric is unnecessarily and unfairly inflammatory and I regret that. I wrote a letter to the Globe explaining this but, as there is no gaurantee it will be printed, I figured it would be best to say the same thing here as well. Mea culpa.