You want plagiarism, here's some plagiarism.

Obama using a rhetorical device from his friend and campaign co-chair Deval Patrick was leaped on by some in the press and got the flying monkeys of the right in a lather at the prospect that they might have been handed something worth faulting Obama for without having to make it up themselves.

But alas, like everything else, this ended up just looking silly and desperate on their part.

It's not plagiarism to share a few phrases designed to make a point from someone who willingly gives not only permission but urges you to do so.

It is plagiarism when you lift the published words written by someone else nearly verbatim and publish them under your own name.

And once again, for about the seven hundred and fifty-first time, we find that someone who toils in the vineyards of the lord and is heavily involved in trying to use and abuse religion to further the political power of the right wing, turns out to have a very glass house and not above serial intellectual thievery.

In this case, it's the White House liaison to fundy Christian outfits and a personal protege of Karl Rove.

A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitting that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other writers.
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The aide, Tim Goeglein, had worked for Mr. Bush since 2001, as a liaison to social and religious conservatives, an important component of the president’s political base. Mr. Goeglein was influential in decisions on a range of questions important to that constituency, including stem cell research, abortion and faith-based initiatives.
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Mr. Goeglein, 44, is little known outside Washington. He is a familiar figure to conservatives and evangelical Christians, who knew him as a spokesman for Gary L. Bauer, the conservative who ran for president in 2000.

When Mr. Bauer dropped out of the race, Mr. Goeglein signed on with Mr. Bush, eventually becoming a top aide to Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. He was the eyes and ears of the White House in the world of religious conservatives and an emissary to that world for Mr. Rove and the president.

Mr. Goeglein was often credited with turning out the evangelical vote that helped re-elect Mr. Bush in 2004.
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Mr. Goeglein had been publishing guest columns on the opinion page of The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne for more than a decade, according to the paper’s editor, Kerry Hubartt.

Nancy Nall, a former columnist for the paper, often used her Web site, www.nancynall.com, to poke fun at his writings, which she called “drippy and awful.”

Ms. Nall said she was struck by Mr. Goeglein’s most recent column, on Thursday, which included a reference to a “notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth,” Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey. Curious, she searched the Internet, and found that Mr. Goeglein had lifted major chunks of the column from an article published 10 years ago in The Dartmouth Review.
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By day’s end, more examples of plagiarism had turned up, including a column about John Wayne copied in part from an article in The New York Sun and passages from a column that tracked, almost verbatim, an article by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post.

A review by The News-Sentinel found that of the 38 columns Mr. Goeglein published since 2000, 19 included plagiarized material, according to Mr. Hubartt. He said the paper would no longer publish work by Mr. Goeglein, whom he described as “well respected here by a lot of people.”

“There was no reason for it that I can see,” Mr. Hubartt said, noting that Mr. Goeglein had submitted columns voluntarily and had no deadlines to meet. “He was not under any pressure.”