All this is grist for debate on literary civility, of course, but Coulter's tome landed in my crosshairs on account of the third of her book (the last 4 of 11 chapters) devoted to assailing the Liberal's Creation Myth, Darwinian evolutionary theory. Her sashay into matters scientific delightfully illustrates a common theme in sloppy thinking. Coulter is a secondary citation addict.

Like a scholarly lemming, she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true. It never once occurs to her that she might find it prudent to check on the reliability of those sources before accompanying them off the cliff, either by investigating critical takes on those sources, or by actually inspecting the original technical literature directly.

This starts naturally enough with the commonest activity of antievolutionists: fielding the "usual suspects" of authority quotes mined over the years by critics more concerned with succulent text strings than evaluating far more recalcitrant data.