Whoops

We all know that Maureen Dowd has been writing one story over and over again for the last decade - Democrats are feminized losers - so I suppose that her blatant plagiarism of Josh Marshall represents an attempt at being original.

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/bubbling.php

I welcome her efforts to branch out (she actually calls for a full investigation of the torture regime in this op-ed). If she wrote it, we'd actually have a decent column here, aside from the Dowd-esque characterization of Nancy Pelosi as a "stammering child." Anyway, if you're going to steal, you could do worse than Josh Marshall. It would be fun to see Dowd behind a phalanx of flags answering questions about this incident, surely in the manner of a stammering child herself. But of course that would assume a certain level of media accountability.

Full-Spectrum Criminals

Blogger Nancy Nall nails White House official and Rove protege Tim Goeglein for plagiarism.

By the end of the day, he resigns.

A White House official who serves as President Bush's middleman with conservatives and Christian groups has resigned after admitting to plagiarism. Twenty columns he wrote for an Indiana newspaper were determined to have material copied from other sources without attribution.

Timothy Goeglein, who has worked for Bush since 2001, acknowledged that he lifted material from a Dartmouth College publication and presented it as his own work in a column about education for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind.

This is slightly more severe than borrowing lines in political speeches. Goeglein published as his own work an essay that he ripped off. If he received a financial benefit, and if the Dartmouth essay was copyrighted, it's actually a federal crime.

So you can add copyright violation to embezzlement, racketeering, invasion of privacy, shoplifting, voter intimidation and suppression, perjury, obstruction of justice, warrantless spying, torture, money laundering, solicitation, and the hundreds of other crimes perpetrated by Bush Administration and Republican officials. They really don't leave any stone unturned.

It Shouldn't Have Taken Down Joe Biden in '88, Either

These YouTubes of Hillary's (very strong) closing argument at the Democratic debate tonight show how silly the whole plagairism/change you can Xerox issue really is:





This is politics, not literature. Everybody steals lines from everybody. Nobody really cares.

Jonathan Chait Plagiarized From Me

You all know that I came up with the Maverick and Iseman thing first.

Look at TNR's forthcoming article: Maverick vs. Iceman.

This is hilarious because I went to school with Chait and he once accused one of my friends of plagiarism because he wrote a newsletter with an events calendar that was... similar to an events calendar he wrote in the school newspaper.

Revenge is mine!

Tales of the Genius Right Blogosphere

I don't spend enough time mocking the scribes on the other side of the e-aisle, mainly because Sadly No and TBogg and others have cornered that market. But this is really too previous to pass up.

Some dude named Liberty Pundit (I assume Why Do You Hate America Pundit was taken), whose entire site is a link back to himself because his code sucks, has BREAKING MUST CREDIT LIBERTY PUNDIT news!!!

Another Jayson Blair moment for the New York Times? Kinda looks like it, if you look at the article published yesterday and compare it to an article he wrote in October 2005 (reg. required).

Oh noes! Liberty Pundit is on the case of this obvious bit of self-plagiarism. Look at the evidence:

From yesterday’s op-ed:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

From the 2005 op-ed:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

That's right! Bob Herbert quoted Lee Atwater directly the SAME WAY in two different columns! He didn't even bother to change it to something Atwater didn't say! I'm expecting the resignation letter any day now.

This is a joke, right? Using direct quotes as an example of plagiarism? As far as the rest of his "evidence," it's clear that Herbert returned to the same theme and used new information to illuminate a long-standing point. That's called writing. Which is different from random linking while specks of Cheetos fly from the mouth, or as Liberty Pundit would call it, Tuesday.

UPDATE: Gavin from Sadly No offers the definitive text at Alternet on why it's important to wade through these fetid swamps of lying and misinformation on the right.