>This reminds me of the Bully on the playground that gets to smack up the
>defenceless off camera.
No, because you could simply level Brad's claims on the basis of his lack of substantive criticism and point out the ad hominem (he does it enough, e.g., recent crits of Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed where implied he wasn't free to criticize until recently when his sister's tenure promotion was safe, since Ehrenreich's daughter was on the committee. Which, of course, was untrue. De Long had already posted his crits of Ehrenreich on his blog)
Hurling more ad hominem against Brad does as much for the critic's claims as it does for Brad's: squat.
Kelley