The Rand Paul plagiarism accusation is absurd

That's bullshit. How about not being a lazy-ass speechwriter, and coming up with your own words? Also, when items are footnoted, it's not because they are lifted word-for-word from the source material. It's to denote where the information came from. If something IS quoted word-for-word, it has quotes around it, and it's attributed to a speaker or source. For being one of the so-called makers, Rand Paul sure is a taker.

 

Maybe Paul's crack writing staff could come up with a nifty phrase of their own?

Or even the mighty man himself?

Nahhhhh.

 

Maybe Rand Paul should have used air quotes.

 

Interesting take in Slate on political plagerism:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2008/08/the_write_stuff.html

 

No lawyer quotes from law books in a legal pleading without citing the book and page number of the quote. And most lawyers only quote from statutes, rules, regulations and cases; sometimes from the Restatement of whatever particular substantive subject matter you are dealing with, Torts, Contracts, Damages ...and Law Review Articles are occasionally quoted.

There are legal form books, but most are essentially templates and designed to provide a bare structure of a complaint or answer.

If the rule in Middle Schools across the country are that you cannot quote from Wikipedia in a book report, United States Senators should be avoiding wiki pages for anything.

Paul is another one of these intellectually bankrupt neo-libertarians, you should have the freedom to do what ever you want, as long as Jesus Christ, as interpreted by Rand Paul, would agree.

 

Blessed are the Cheesemakers...

 

Which lawyers copy word for word, for the most part. It's encouraged. When it's time for me to draft a motion for a superior, the first thing I'm told is to find a prior one and copy the boilerplate. By the board's zero tolerance definition of plagiarism adopted here, this qualifies.

 

A lot depends on who the plagiarizer is.

 

How many times does something inconsequential (like a movie description) have to be repeated before it's filed under "common knowledge?"

 

Do tell.

 

Eleventy zillion minus one, if you are supposed to be an 'idea man' and one of your party's (or your sub-party's) deep theoretical thinkers.

 

Common knowledge. How many people do you know who can quote Wiki entries?

If Paul wants to sprinkle quotes from Casablanca or This is Spinal Tap or *cough* Month Python and the Holy Grail, he doesn't need to attribute. If he then says, "By, now you've noticed I've been using quotes from X. That's because X reminds me that ...," he either needs to use his own [speechwriter's] words, or give credit if he lifts multiple sentences word-for-word from somebody else.