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Well, I’m sorry if it can’t be worked out. I’ve published a number of books, and I have gotten a number of reader reports on them. Some of it is useful, some of it is not. The first thing I learned is never to take criticism personally. It’s only human to take it that way on first reading, so I put it aside and then read it again. Then I decide what advice is helpful and what is best ignored.

So, if people have gotten mad about this, I’d let the dust settle and then just decide how much of the criticism is helpful.

It did occur to me on reading this that there’s a natural tendency for writers to give an opponent his due on issues that aren’t important to their central argument. I don’t know how many conservative columns I’ve read that gave clinton or obama credit on some other point, when they frankly didn’t deserve it—just to show that they are “fair and balanced” and not mean-minded. I would refrain from doing that. Better to stick to the facts.

For instance, would the State of Hawaii fake a COLB or a birth certificate deliberately? Or would they employ legal fictions and pretend that someone was born in the islands who was actually born in Kenya or China? I don’t think that can be casually ruled out. That kind of thing does happen.

No need to accuse the Hawaiian government of doing it, since that’s not relevant to the case being made. We don’t know that they did. But also no need to let them off the hook just to be nice. We don’t know that they didn’t. We don’t know much of anything, in fact, until we see the evidence. Close reading of the statement of the govt of Hawaii about the issue of Obama’s BC finds that they say virtually nothing definite. They have some kind of original birth certificate or copy of a Kenyan certificate or whatever, but they really are not specific enough for us to know what it is that they are refusing to talk about.