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A Case of Plagiarism
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — At least two political science professors -- Steven Taylor and Mark Kleiman -- are convinced by my earlier post that Sen. John McCain used plagiarized lines from Wikipedia in his speech on the Russia-Georgia crisis today. These are just some of the dozens and dozens of reactions on this story today. It was also mentioned by Keith Olbermann on Countdown tonight (about three minutes into this clip).

McCain Plagiarized Georgia Facts!
Outside The Beltway | OTB — McCain Plagiarized Georgia Facts! Did McCain plagiarize this? Today’s Outrage of the Day comes to us from Taegan Goddard , who notes, in a CQ Political Insider piece entitled “Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?” that there are “some similarities between Sen. John McCain’s speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia.” Wikipedia and McCain You can click Goddard’s name to see the examples in full but they’re rather weak.  There are three examples where purely fact-based assertions about Georgia are somewhat similar.  The first is incredibly short — less than a sentence — ...

Mike’s Blog Roundup
Crooks and Liars — MediaBloodhound: The Ivins anthrax case is yet another black eye for Network News Martini Revolution: I wonder if all the rightwigers who give sole credit to Ronald Reagan with winning the Cold War will blame Bush and his epic failure of leadership in losing the post-Cold War? Now, John McCain wants to compound the blunder! If McCain’s speech had been part of a college term paper, he’d have flunked. EconoSpeak: Who are the Ossetians? Corrente: We need Health Care, not Health Insurance The Pump Handle: Anthrax is in the news but which bacteria should ...

Leading by example
The Reality-Based Community — [image] Leading by example Plagiarism is cheating. Students who cheat are suspended. Students who cheat and lie about it are expelled. McCain's defense is that " there are only so many ways to state basic historical facts." Right. If the Wikipedia entry had said "Georgia was among the first countries to convert to Christianity" and the McCain speech had said the same thing, it would be hard to guess whether the McCain speech was a copy or an independent recitation of the same fact. But the actual phrase (in McCain's version "one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion" and in the Wikipedia version ...

More Reactions to the McCain-Wikipedia Story
Political Insider — Here's a round up of some of the more interesting reactions from our post on the McCain campaign's apparent use of Wikipedia: Joe Conason: "The discovery that John McCain's remarks on Georgia were derived from Wikipedia, to put it politely, is disturbing and even depressing -- but not surprising. Under the tutelage of the neoconservatives, who revealed their superficial understanding of Iraq both before and after the invasion, he favors bellicose grandstanding over strategic thinking. So why delve deeper than a quick Google search?" Newsweek's Andrew Romano: "I don't doubt that whomever wrote the historical passage consulted ...