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The bizarre thing is, he and I tangled on some birther issue a while back without either of us becoming insulting, and at the end of the conversation we acknowledged each other's civility. So when I pointed out his edited quote, it was meant almost in a teasing fashion--like "Dude, you just did the very thing you complain about."

The DIFFERENCE, is the stuff I didn't bother posting (because it was too long and irrelevant) does not CHANGE THE MEANING of what was quoted. It is an elaboration of what Madison had already said, but not contextually different.

What JEFF attempted to do was to change the understanding of Bingham's position completely, and not by Accident or laziness. By DELIBERATE intent to deceive us into believing that merely "birth in the republic" was all that was necessary, when the rest of the quote explicitly clarified that it was not.

I didn't really think he was trying to deceive, but if you're going to make a huge issue out of someone else's treatment of quotes, you better damn sight make sure you treat them properly yourself--a Caesar's wife kind of thing. The violence of his reaction now makes me wonder if he knew full well what he was doing.

The Issue was never about leaving out some of a quote. Many quotes are too long anyways, the issue is leaving out THE section of a quote which COMPLETELY changes it's meaning. What Jeff intentionally left out rebukes his argument. What I left out was immaterial elaboration on what Madison had already said, and it did not add anything appreciable to it's meaning.

And then you come along and say the one thing is exactly like the other, And then you grab the rest of the text and stick it back in while highlighting it as if it was some great revelation? The omitted text was trivial and irrelevant, but you acted like it completely reversed the meaning. I could only interpret this as behaving like a Pr*ck. I'm fed up with dealing with these sorts of misdirections. I waste time enough arguing with Jeff.

What I left out was immaterial elaboration on what Madison had already said, and it did not add anything appreciable to it's meaning.

Because you say so, right? (I think it provided important context.) And that's the problem--you can't see anything outside your own head. A court disagrees with you? It couldn't possibly be that they know as much as or more than you do about the issue and came to a reasoned, honest conclusion. No, they must have been compromised or doing someone else's bidding or had a political axe to grind. Somebody else truncates a quote? They're a font+5 liar. You truncate a quote? "It was irrelevant." It all comes down to "reality is what I say it is." Sorry if I'm a pr*ck for pointing that out.