Brown's Alito letter lifted from blogger

[BoomerSoonerOKU]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1131445870289970.xml&coll=2

"Rep. Sherrod Brown wrote to Sen. Mike DeWine last Friday, voicing concern about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's labor record.

Brown's language was crisp -- and was plagiarized. " <snip>

"Roughly 90 percent of what Brown, an Avon Democrat, wrote in his letter was lifted from an Internet posting by a blogger, as Brown's office acknowledged Monday when The Plain Dealer presented the similarities.

Brown had not credited the blogger, Nathan Newman of NathanNewman.org, or any other source."

_________________

I'm really disappointed with this. First off, how hard is it to come up with your own reasons for suspecting Alito's qualifications? It also shows how freely people will use content of the net.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Opinion and style can be plagiarized, not facts.

[BoomerSoonerOKU]

3. Agreed

I think this just shows how lazy poltician's staff members can be. Once you have the facts it's not hard to write something up yourself.

[aintitfunny]

2. Reasons are reasons, that he admired someone

else's style in expressing said reasons, should be a complement. Who gives a flying fig. This was a letter, not an article or op ed for the NY Times, he was not submitting something for a grade or to make money for Christ's sake.

More non-issues exaggerated because the Right has nothing going for it. Pitiful.

[OzarkDem]

9. Its an incredibly stupid mistake

Sherrod has a lot of new staffers, his older, more experienced ones never would have done something so ignorant.

Here's hoping he cleans house and dumps his labor advisers before they destroy the good reputation for hard work and honesty he's worked years to cultivate.

[ajacobson]

4. See Daily Kos on this

This is an attack piece masquerading as a news item.

[scarlett1]

6. Glad you pointed that out

I was at Kos earlier and read about this incident already.
Nathan wasn't upset.

[BoomerSoonerOKU]

7. Thanks

I hadn't checked it out there yet. Good info.

[Rowdyboy]

5. The words of the orioginal blogger say all I need to know...

As Nathan notes, "Did the Plain Dealer do an indepth analysis of Alito's labor record in response? No, they created a bullshit meta-story that was of such supposed breaking news value that they couldn't wait for me to get back from my mini-honeymoon to get my reaction."

For the record, the copyright notice at the bottom of this page basically gives permission to Brown and anyone else to use whatever they want from the site: "Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified." Note that I don't use a license that requires attribution nor any other type of citation. As long as diarists don't assert ownership of their content, it's public domain.

[OzarkDem]

10. Parsing

Its still a stupid mistake, one I've never, ever seen Sherrod make before. It looks incredibly bad for a respected Congressman to plagiarize a letter. I hope Sherrod fires whoever did this.

[mattclearing]

8. This is a dumb fucking move, and I'll tell you why:

You'd think that you would write this kind of letter yourself, especially when writing to the Senator you are running to unseat!!!

It speaks incredibly poorly of his judgment. You shouldn't have an aide writing this stuff, and you shouldn't be cribbing it from the Internet. That's just fucking stupid, I'm sorry.

The permission/plagiarism issue is secondary to the fact that Brown looks like an idiot for not just writing his own letter. It's not like it's a campaign letter auto-response.

It's a letter to the guy he's running against!!!

[seemslikeadream]

11. So sorry BoomerSoonerOKU

Congressman's office takes back plagiarism acknowledgment
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1910254