Howdy folks; Im sorry im so late to this thread -- its one i wouldnt want to miss! Aggie has already covered most of what I would have said, but let me make a couple of points (and reiterate a few more):
1) Although the "Archaeoraptor" material was not conspecific, it contained two great finds, Micoraptor and ornithurine Yanornis. Why havent the creationists addressed this?
2) Feduccia's "Sauriurae" is almost certainly paraphyletic, and the closest I think that man has ever come to advancing an explicit, falsifiable phylogeny for any group of basal birds. All their characters are either plesiomorphic, absent in Enantiornithes, or incoherent (like Chaippe 2001 asks, what exactly do they mean by a "broad furcula"? Wide interclavicular angle? Large width? Who knows)
3) Aggie rightly pointed out that paleontological opinion is firmly in the theropod origins camp. The small cadre of hold-outs (principally Martin, Feduccia, Ruben, Tarsitano, Olson and Hecht) have all but abandoned their classical arguments, and have been forced to even more absurd positions. For example, I have on good word that at the last SVP gathering, Larry Martin has conceded that all maniraptorans were feathered -- because all maniraptorans were neoflightless birds! Even Doc Feduccia (2002) has tentantivly said this. Clearly, these poor saps are no longer practicing science.
4) Longisquama is a funny story, and I think its related to point 3. In the 1996 edition of The Origin and Evolution of Birds, Feduccia dismissed Longisquama as irrelevant to the issue of avian origins. In the 2000 Science paper with Ruben, its dorsal appendages -- if they are appendages at all, and not vegitations -- become homologous with feathers, and the animal itself the closest known non-avian archosaur to birds! What caused this sudden change of heart? I submit its the last gasp of a dying hypothesis (assuming it could be called a hypothesis to begin with).
Quite obviously too, these appendages are in no way related to feathers, and its possible that Longisquama is not even an archosaur at all!
5) Did Compsognathus have feathers? Probably. Other basal coelurosaurians -- indeed, compsognathids (Sinosauropteryx) -- did, so its extremely probable, if not certain. Reversals do happen, however.
6) There is no evidence to indicate that either species of Microraptor had an anisodactyl pes. The halluces of all known specimens are disarticulated. So far as we know, a reversed hallux is still a valid avian synapomorphy. I must also disagree with Aggie's phylogenetic placement of Sinornithosaurus, and submit that Microraptor is most basal know dromaeosaurid. It's quite similar to the basal troodontid Sinovenator.
-GFA