Cliopatria welcomes American Amnesia to its blogroll. The Amnesiac is a University of Chicago alum, a specialist in Near Eastern Studies, and a documentary film maker. Perhaps of particular interest is his series of interviews, so far with Noam Chomsky, Benjamin DeMott, and Howard Zinn. American Amnesia promises forthcoming interviews with Gar Alperovitz, Niall Ferguson, and Errol Morris.

The discussion of historiography provoked by Simon Schama and taken up here by Tim Burke continued in contributions by Invisible Adjunct and Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber. Like the best of conversations, it continues, most recently in posts by the University of Chicago's Amy Lamboley at Crescat Sententia and the University of Wisconsin's Brian Ulrich at Brian's Study Breaks.

At Oxblog, Josh Chafetz has been counting declared noses (hmm, what would a"declared nose" be?) in the United States Senate on the Federal Marriage Amendment. It seems unlikely to receive the required 67 votes there. According to Chafetz's most recent count of 66 senators, 28 (27 Republicans and 1 Democrat) are likely to vote in favor of it; 33 are likely to vote against it (27 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 1 Independent); and 5 are playing hooky on this one. Actually, the hooky pucks may be the key to it, Josh Marshall suggests. Divisive, single issue politics are high risk, bring out the public's instinct to vote against, and likely to create more enemies than friends for politicians. Who needs it?

Meanwhile, over at Liberty & Power, ordinarily the more pacific of the blogosphere's Libertarian dominions, Naomi Wolf's high profile allegations against Harold Bloom have set off a donnybrook. It is fed by the criticism of Wolf by Camile Paglia, Anne Applebaum, and Sheila O'Malley, but Gene Healy and Rod Long are determined not to let the women have all the fun. Let's see, first there was Afghanistan; then there was Iraq; now there's Haiti. Don't anyone tell George Bush what's going on at L & P.