Joseph:
This has nothing to with whether Shapiro is my ideological soulmate or not (I’m not sure why you would think that he is). What it has to do with is not accepting claims that I have been unable to verify. Just because Shapiro accepted something does not mean that I would have accepted that thing. I don’t rely on him for his opinions – if he quotes a source for something, I determine whether I think his source adequately proves what he claims it does. If I don’t have access to his source then I can’t make a determination. In fact, it is probably even more odd that Professor Shapiro doesn’t bring the source in his post, as, if you read his posts regularly, you can easily see that they are filled with fully typed out quotes or the actual pages from the sefer/book he is quoting from.