Andrew Ferguson of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard writes this for Donald Graham’s newspaper:
You can’t really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, “The Assault on Reason.” It’s a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I’d love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88.
Here’s p. 282 of The Assault on Reason:
Ferguson goes on to say the Lincoln quote that Gore uses is bogus, and actually dates from the 1880s. Perhaps this is true, but I don’t think I’d rely on his research skills.
(Ferguson’s flabbergasting mistake was first pointed out by Anonymous Liberal and Ron Chusid.)