“Washington Times Ends Rand Paul’s Column After Plagiarism”

See, here’s the thing. Even though (wow – fun red helicopter landing at the White House as I write) Senator Paul assures us plagiarism is no biggie and the whole thing’s been cooked up by haters, newspapers really don’t appreciate being used as data dumps by people too busy and important to bother actually writing anything for them.

If you ask UD, the whole rich famous important person as plagiarist thing (as opposed to desperate pathetic high school superintendents and the like) is really about the culture of entitlement – a culture a lot of people (see another reference to helicopters, just below this post) really really don’t like. Monsieur Tea Party looks – post-plagiarism – like exactly what he is, which is just about as far from a populist as you can get. He looks like a high-handed give-a-shit SOB who breaks rules and blows things off because he can. Because he’s got a squad of staffers doing everything for him. Rand Paul’s initial response to the plagiarism revelation was echt entitled person. UD believes she can put it into two words. It is: Fuck You.

This response has made things worse for Rand Paul, so he’s gone to Entitled Option Two: He’s blamed it all on said squad and fired everybody in sight. Let’s see how that works out for him. Meanwhile, the Washington Times rightly rids itself of a parasite.

“Rand Paul Faces Yet Another Plagiarism Accusation; Will Probably Have to Start Dueling”

Headline of the day.

Rand Paul’s Plagiarism Gets a Spine

An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material.

… The copied text relates to the 2003 case of David McNab, a Honduran businessman who, along with three American businesspeople, was convicted of multiple felony counts related to the illegal harvest and importation of Caribbean spiny lobster tails in violation of the 1900 Lacey Act.

Ahem. As concerns the latest high-profile plagiarism story…

… recall UD‘s Tripartite A Scheme for plagiarism — i.e., plagiarism almost always falls into the category Atelier, Ambition, or Addicted (details), and it should be pretty easy for you to conclude that Jill Abramson is Atelier. Very busy successful high-profile people (Jane Goodall, Alan Dershowitz – and a raft of other Harvard law school profs – Doris Kearns Goodwin, Fareed Zakaria, Rand Paul) have ateliers of assistants who do much of their work for them, and … you know … it’s hard to find good help.

Senator Rand Paul Makes the New York Times.

But it’s all so trivial.

If things get any hotter for Paul on the plagiarism front, UD recommends his team dig up the spokesperson for Newt Gingrich during his presidential campaign. That guy really knew how to defend his guy.

It’s Rand. Isn’t it?

The Rand Paul Plagiarized Speech Song


That speech:

Isn’t it Rand? Isn’t it great?
Isn’t it swell? Isn’t it fun?
Isn’t it… plagiarized

There’s sources everywhere
Wiki everywhere, copy everywhere
Pasting everywhere, joy everywhere
… Plagiarized…

You can give the speech you’re givin’
You can lift the lines you like
You can shut the fed’ral gummint
And send it down the pike
And that’s good

Isn’t it, Rand? Isn’t it great?
Isn’t it swell? Isn’t it fun?
Nowadays…

“They have no U.S. historians in the department.”

The purge of the last intellectuals at Hillsdalesur-Mere (formerly New College) has outdone itself: No professors of American history remain in the history department.

President Richard Corcoran, himself under pressure because his last name reminds people of Johnnie Cochran, quickly appointed his replacement, “a man whose distinguished research career speaks for itself.”

Whoa! Meine Kleine George Washington University EMPLOYS the Dude!

From an email UD just received from the dean of GW’s law school.

We … have received requests from some members of the university and external communities that the university terminate its employment of Adjunct Professor and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and cancel the Constitutional Law Seminar that he teaches at the Law School. Many of the requests cite Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which he called the substantive due process doctrine a “legal fiction.” Justice Thomas has been a consistent critic of the Court’s legal philosophy on substantive due process for many years. Because we steadfastly support the robust exchange of ideas and deliberation, and because debate is an essential part of our university’s academic and educational mission to train future leaders who are prepared to address the world’s most urgent problems, the university will neither terminate Justice Thomas’ employment nor cancel his class in response to his legal opinions.

We really know how to pick ’em. Our next-best appointment after this one was plagiarist/madman Rand Paul. Why not ask Jim Jordan and Louie Gohmert to team-teach a course at GW on a subject of their choosing?

I agree that we shouldn’t fire the doodoo; the way to go here is boycott. Recall that both of John Eastman’s classes during a visiting gig at the University of Colorado were cancelled due to virtually no enrollment. Think of the movement at Harvard Law to make the school offer two sections of way-icky theocrat Adrian Vermeule’s course on administrative law. (Apparently the guy’s got a monopoly.) Ignore them, and they’ll go away.

A Life Crowded with Incident, as Lady Bracknell Would Say.

Rand Paul Tests Positive for Coronavirus Days After His Father Dismissed Panic Over the Disease as a Hoax

Rand Paul Loses Part of Lung After Attack by Neighbor

Rand Paul Stops Unanimous Passage of 9/11 First Responders Funding Bill

Rand Paul, Angry Over Plagiarism Charges, Wants to Sword Fight

“Titillating” doesn’t begin to describe how exciting UD finds it…

… when big ol’ macho men accused of plagiarizing counterattack. Rand Paul drew himself up to his full Randian height and spat the following out to the “hacks and haters” who exposed him:

“I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting — I have never intentionally done so and like I say, ‘If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know it’d be a duel challenge.’”

Here he is in all his finery up against Rachel Maddow. (Gets a little gross at the end.)

But now there’s David Clarke, and you just know this dude is also going to challenge someone to a duel.

So far he’s only done ye olde it’s a political smear thing. UD predicts his next move will up the ante and thrill her right down to the ground.

***************

UPDATE: YES!! Calls guy who outed him a “sleaze bag.”

Things are coming along nicely, and UD pants for Clarke, like Rand Paul, to upgrade to direct threats.

Could Clarke take it one step further than Paul’s mere fantasies about duels? Be still my heart…

The Plagiartarian Wing…

… of the Republican party.

Its leader.

Most career plagiarists collapse into apologies when unmasked…

… but – as we learned from that ol’ rascal Rand Paul – some opt for snarling full-frontal attack on the unmaskers. It’s not, in the long run, a winning strategy, as the latest snarler will soon learn.

She’s Sulura Jackson, principal of Chapel Hill High School, and if reports are correct she’s been plagiarizing as long as the senator. And just like Paul, she’s royally pissed that anyone has the unmitigated gall to call her on it.

Jackson acknowledged she will use form letters, books and articles to inform her writings, but she denied any wrongdoing.

“I’m not under the impression that I can’t use that,” Jackson said. “This is not anything that I’m selling. This is not anything that I’m using for personal gain.”

Jackson indicated she was surprised some teachers are angry, adding that had they questioned her, she would have cited her sources.

“I’ve never intentionally said these are my words, these are my thoughts,” she said. “I’m getting these thoughts from other places. I don’t pull them out of thin air. I’m always reading.”

But the documents, which are signed by Jackson, seem to contradict that statement.

…Jackson [further] said it’s unfair to [compare her plagiarism to her students’ plagiarizing]. “It’s like apples and oranges,” she said. “I don’t think you can put those two together because students are submitting work for a grade. I’m not submitting it for a grade. I’m not submitting it for any kind of compensation.”

That last bit is … UD doesn’t know what to call it. It goes beyond the president of Kean University explaining that the conduct code for students certainly doesn’t apply to him. The bit about compensation is … I dunno. It’s only 8:30 AM and … you know… you need to draw together some energies to deal with these things… She’s not being paid for her writing … But of course this is a crucial part of her job for which she’s compensated… Giving speeches and releasing statements and all… Whereas … Did she say students are getting compensation for their writing…?

For an award-winning principal this woman is both confused and – like the senator – queenly. Rand Paul and Sulura Jackson have perfected off with their heads arrogance. UD doubts it will carry either of them through.

*************************

UPDATE: The school board will discuss a personnel matter in their meeting this evening. It is appalling but not surprising that leaders of the school system have defended this woman. UD has seen this haughty contempt for students and their parents in several of this country’s public school systems.

Gained in Translation

This is a tricky sort of plagiarism charge.

The allegation [is] that [the novel] Gold Mountain Blues, written in Chinese [and in the process of being translated into English and published in Canada], plagiarizes the works of well-known Chinese Canadian authors who write in English, including Denise Chong, Wayson Choy, Sky Lee and Paul Yee.

… The key blogger leading the attacks, known as “Changjiang,” and identified on his site as Robert Luo, alleges that Zhang [Ling] has been playing the margins: taking advantage of the fact that Canadian Chinese writers cannot read Chinese, and Chinese readers and critics do not understand English.

The plagiarism obviously can’t involve verbatim lifting.

[The] website accuses Zhang of borrowing the key character of [Denise] Chong’s book — her grandmother May-ying, the hard-drinking, smoking, gambling “concubine” of the title — then fashioning it into a character in Gold Mountain Blues. … [Another book] opens with a powerful narrative of a male Chinese immigrant who finds himself in peril in the western Canadian wilds of the 19th Century, is rescued and brought back to a native camp, falls in love with a native woman, lives with her, and then abandons her to marry a Chinese wife. Later, he learns that his abandoned lover bore him a son. A very similar set of circumstances occurs to a Chinese man in Gold Mountain Blues.

Penguin has held up publication until the controversy is resolved.

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