GEORGIA: Raining Nazis, and McCain's Wikipedia Crutch
Taylor Marsh — ... knee jerk response to always rattle sabers is so ingrained that nobody even questions where someone gets their talking points or if where this vaunted veteran wants to lead the U.S. is anywhere we should follow. Who bothers to wonder what would happen if the U.S., instead of verbally stepping in something as a precursor to military nation building, an oxymoron at best, we simply said, as Obama did, to the U.N.? As for McCain, this is ridiculously embarrassing. From the Wikipedia editor: ...

Did McCain Plagarize His Speech Today?
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Political Insider: Sen. John McCain's speech today on the Georgia crisis has many similarities to a Wikipedia article. 

McCain Lifts Russia-Georgia Speech From Wikipedia
Open Left - Front Page — Via Political Wire, it appears that McCain's vast policy experience and knowledge of international affairs is derived from wikipedia: A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. They appear similar enough that most people would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia. First instance: one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia) vs. ...

John McCain's Wikipolicy
democracyarsenal.org — So John McCain apparently lifted huge portions of his statement on the unfolding crisis in Georgia from Wikipedia.  Here's a 3 AM question for you: do you want a President with a real strategy for containing such a crisis, or do you want someone who's stumbling over wikipedia entries after getting internet lessons from his wife.  I guess when it comes to McCain and foreign policy, it's a google!

Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech Today?
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Political Insider: Sen. John McCain's speech today on the Georgia crisis has many similarities to a Wikipedia article. 

Did McCain campaign lift Georgia speech from Wikipedia?
Think Progress — ... entry on the country Georgia. “[M]ost people would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia,” Taegan Goddard writes: ...

Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? (Yes)
Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News — ... and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain) Granted the third instance isn't as close as the first two, which seem quite obviously taken from Wikipedia. It should be noted that Wikipedia material can be freely used but always requires attribution under its terms of use. Whether a presidential candidate should base policy speeches on material from Wikipedia is another question entirely. Read more: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/08/di...

McCain, Georgia, and change you can Xerox
Political Animal — ... Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who are friends, shared some a few rhetorical lines. Politicians do this all the time, both Obama and Patrick had each other’s permission, and there was nothing untoward about it. The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on. I’m wondering if we may be poised for yet another “plagiarism” flap. CQ’s Taegan Goddard has the story. A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John ...

Ready to Cut and Paste on Day One?
Talking Points Memo — Was John McCain so up to speed on Georgia that his campaign had to look it up and crib the entry from Wikipedia? ...

Did McCain Rip Off Parts Of His Speech On Georgia From Wikipedia?
Say Anything — Maybe, maybe not.  But if so I guess it’s something he and Obama have in common. Not to defend McCain, but the passages he allegedly swiped from Wikipedia are basically descriptions of facts about Georgia’s history.  Given that facts are facts, it’s kind of hard write/speak about stuff like that without sounding like an encyclopedia entry. ...

Oops!
Obsidian Wings — ... I know that speeches are written by staffers, and that a candidate can't possibly run such an unbelievably tight operation that none of them ever does anything stupid. That said, I do think it's funny that part of McCain's speech on the crisis in Georgia seems to have been taken from Wikipedia. ...

McWiki?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Well, at least someone knows how to use the Internets on McCain's staff.

DAY'S END ROUNDUP
The Hill's Blog Briefing Room — ... gripes about the campaign, but complaining that smooth talking southern politician covering up the fact that he cheated on his wife isn’t one of them, The Corner's Jonah Goldberg writes. Open Left's Chris Bowers points out that, hypocrisy aside, the polling doesn’t back up Wolfson's claim that Edwards played spoiler to Clinton. Several passages from McCain’s speech on Georgia Monday bear a striking resemblance to the Wikipedia entry on the country, Taegan Goddard reports. Firedoglake's emptywheel blasts McCain for allegedly lifting the ...

An unwarranted shot at McCain
Power Line — CQ's "Political Insider" asks whether John McCain "plagiarized" his speech today on the crisis in Georgia. The better question is why CQ is peddling what appears to be a non-story. The CQ post cites three instances of statements in McCain's speech that it thinks may be problematic in light of a Wikipedia article about Georgia. In two instances, McCain did use language similar to that which appears in Wikipedia. But the two instances are merely statements (1) that Georgia was one of the first countries to adopt Christianity as its official religion and (2) ...

John McCain - He's Wiki'ing to Protect AMERICA
Hoffmania! — ... Barack Obama says he'll only rely on smarts, diplomacy, prudency and common sense in dealing with the world. But on Day One, John McCain will mobilize a young American websurfer in front of Wikipedia to make sure he says things correctly. ...

Okay, the Cookies Were Stupid and Silly, But Plagiarizing Your Foreign Policy Too?
Firedoglake — ... . Now, apparently, McCain's stooped to stealing his foreign policy plans from others. And of all sources, he's stealing from Wikipedia! ...

Brainster's Blog — McCain Plagiarism Scandal? Oh, boy are they scraping the bottom of the barrel today : A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia. Most? Most what? Most liberals with an axe to grind? Check out these purported instances: one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official ...

Did McCain plagiarize his Georgia speech today?
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — Kind of looks like it. Though in all fairness to McCain, he wouldn't know Wikipedia from the Google. Still, at some point McCain has to be held responsible for a campaign that he no longer seems to be in charge of. ...

McCain, Georgia and Wikipedia
PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts — Taegan Goddard asks Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?. The passages noted in the post, especially the first two, would suggest rather convincingly that whomever it was that wrote that speech for McCain based a great deal of it on the Wikipedia entry on Georgia with a little bit of poor undergraduate-y word re-arrangement to try and make the new text “original.” I will say that sans attribution, the examples given are enough for me to have given the speech a zero (and failure of my course) had it been a paper handed in to me ...

Lefty heart-ache: McCain might have lifted three sentences from Wikipedia for speech
Hot Air » Top Picks — Lefty heart-ache: McCain might have lifted three sentences from Wikipedia for speech posted at 10:03 pm on August 11, 2008 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly Three background sentences , that is, one of which closely tracks Wikipedia’s entry on Georgia, two more of which contain some phrases in common, plus a third passage that’s being offered as evidence of plagiarism and … just isn’t. On a day when Russia’s threatening to absorb one of its satellite states, this is actually the top story on Memeorandum. Yes, really. In ...

A Case of Plagiarism
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — ... -- are convinced by my earlier post that Sen. John McCain used plagiarized lines from Wikipedia in his speech on the Russia-Georgia crisis today. ...

Links for 2008-08-11 [del.icio.us]
FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog — ... CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.” Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance - Times Online Georgia’s army was in complete disarray tonight after troops and tanks fled the city of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot. Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? - Political Insider A Wikipedia ...

links for 2008-08-12 [delicious.com]
FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog — ... Barack Obama Watch: The One's Fan Club (tags: Barack Obama) Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? - Political Insider A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities ...

McCain is so Good on the Republic of Georgia the Left Must Seek to Discredit Him
RedState: Conservative News and Community — ... Taegan Goddard, a man of the left, used his platform at CQ to kick it off. The left is accusing McCain of plagiarizing Wikipedia. ...

McCain Plagiarized Georgia Facts!
Outside The Beltway | OTB — ... 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 ...

Daily Digest: 'Tube Pong
techPresident — ... Wiki-policy?? CQ Politics’s Taegan Goddard reports on similarities between a speech made by Sen. John McCain yesterday and a Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Look at it this way, if it is discovered that McCain lifted the material himself, at least we would know he’s using the internet! ...

McCain camp dismisses plagiarism rap
Jonathan Martin's Blog — ... lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia. "We did not copy Wikipedia in Sen. McCain’s remarks," said spokesman Brian Rogers.   Three portions of the GOP nominee's statement yesterday were seized upon by an editor for the online encyclopedia and sent to blogger Taegan Goddard with the claim that the words seemed to match the Wiki entry for Georgia. The first two instances, Goddard noted, seemed especially similar.   Wiki's entry has Georgia as "one of ...

GEORGIA v. RUSSIA: Negotiations or Threatdown
Taylor Marsh — ... As for who truly has the better knowledge of the area, one only needs to change all references of Tskhinvali to Walt Disney World on South Ossetia-??s Wikipedia page and see what Senator McCain says next. Why is that? Well, Senator McCain cribbed his speech from Wikipedia -?" thank goodness for Creative Commons rights, eh? ...

McCain Advisers Keeping Quiet On Allegations They Lifted From Wikipedia
TPM Election Central — ... Taegan Goddard first pointed out the similarities, noting that in some instances it looked like only a few words had been changed. If this is true, it would obviously contradict the idea that McCain knows everything he has to know about foreign policy and the intricacies of different regions. ...

McCain Campaign Denies Plagiarism
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Sen. John McCain's campaign "is denying a suggestion made yesterday that the candidate's lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia," according to ...

McCain, Georgia, and change you can Xerox
Crooks and Liars — ... of “plagiarism.” Apparently, Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who are friends, shared some a few rhetorical lines. Politicians do this all the time, both Obama and Patrick had each other’s permission, and there was nothing untoward about it. The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on. I’m wondering if we may be poised for yet another “plagiarism” flap. CQ’s Taegan Goddard has the story. A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John ...

He Doesn’t Really Exist
Firedoglake — I'm late in seeing this, but LOLOLOLOL John McCain basically cut and pasted his bellicose posturing on Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia from Wikipedia. Lots of people have had fun with this, but I think it has a deeper significance. Namely: I don't believe senior McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann actually exists. I believe Randy Scheunemann is the human face of a series of Wikipedia searches. An actor portays the character of "Randy Scheunemann" to keep the truth from coming out. Let's explore how this ...

Reactions to the McCain-Wikipedia Story
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Political Insider: A round up of opinions on the McCain campaign's apparent use of Wikipedia in speech writing.

Political Insider on the Colbert Report
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — The Colbert Report used our post about Sen. John McCain's use of Wikipedia as the basis for a skit last night. Very amusing.

Cold War Mentality + Lobbyists + Hypocrisy = Foreign Policy: McCain is our GOP Hypocrite Again
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash — ... that McCain's lobbyist connection with Georgia is a plus!  Yet with the MSM at his back and an "expert" lobbyist at his front, McCain still managed to demonstrate both his ignorance about the region and the haphazardness of his campaign message. His speech about the country and the conflict has chunks that appear to be lifted directly from the Wikipedia page about Georgia. Regardless of whether you agree that his lobbying connections are suspect, or whether you worry McCain's hot temper and desire to win the election might drive us into a new war, any elementary school ...

Wiki-Gate or Silly Season?
Real Clear Politics - TIME.com — A couple of days ago CQ Politics noticed some eerie similarities between John McCain's speech on Georgia and Georgia's Wikipedia entry . Judge for yourself the validity of the plagiarism charge -- and some of the language does look very similar -- but while we can criticize McCain's lazy speech-writing team, this , from the New York Observer's Joe Conason, is taking Wiki-gate to an absurd level: 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 ...

Talking points from teh intarwebs
WTF Is It Now?!? — ... A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out the similarities between Sen. John McCain’s speech on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia... ...

Friday McBush Bashing (Olympic Edition)
Discourse.net — ... Georgia, and McCain’s reckless belligerence; Cosmic Iguana, McCAIN - READY FOR WAR … WITH RUSSIA? Slightly unfair but likely effective ad being run in Ohio called Job Killing John Unfair because no one could keep them all in America, so for once McCain is being honest here. Taegan Goddard, Political Insider, Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? — and from Wikipedia??? ...

McCain Cross Story Raises Eyebrows
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines — ... Political Insider: Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia. Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity—or as he said, “just two Christians worshiping together”—is very similar to a story about Alexander ...

Biden--Even Less Downside Than You'd Think
The Stump — ... which he's repeatedly acknowledged and abjectly apologized for. More importantly, as my wife (Time correspondent Amy Sullivan) argued this morning, something tells you the McCain campaign doesn't want a fight over 20-year-old scandals. (In fact, you could argue that McCain himself is proof of the first point.) Anyway, would you prefer a guy who cribbed from a prominent British politician in the late '80s or a guy who cribbed from Wikipedia a few weeks ago? Just askin'... 2.) The ...

Rob Kall: Biden's Biggest Vulnerability Should Be Neutralized, Running Against McCain
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... and John McCain has been accused of plagiarizing parts of his speech on the Georgia crisis-- with language very close to that found in Wikipedia. People magazine, even titled an article, published two days ago, ...