Patent Law

Biden plagiarism a non-issue?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

In 1988 plagiarism and exaggeration of his credentials were admitted by Biden and he had to forego his attempt to get the Democrat presidential nomination then. Only a few present day articles mention this but spurious charges against Palin make headlines. The governor is called to task for seeking the firing a public safety commissioner because he wouldn?t fire her former brother-in-law but there is almost no mention that the brother-in-law was in trouble for threatening to kill people.

IPBiz notes that the ex-commissioner did confirm he was never asked to fire the former brother-in-law.

There are media reports that Biden's Syracuse plagiarism was exonerated. Biden got an F in the course, and had to re-take the course. It is correct that Biden was not expelled.

The post notes the lack of coverage of Biden's plagiarism. IPBiz notes that, since the first Saturday, traffic on such searches is not high. Thus, the Obama team correctly predicted that these past events would not be showstoppers.

Negative terms were used far more frequently to describe Palin than Biden. For example, Biden was forced to exit the 1988 presidential race because he was involved in plagiarism and exaggerated his college record, but few articles mentioned those issues ? only 3 and 1 percent respectively.

***
A comment on beliefnet states:

Arguably, we could have avoided the worst of the last eight years if Dubya had had to write everything himself. So much attention is paid to Biden's acknowledged plagiarism without mentioning the almost 100% plagiarism by every politican who does not begin each speech by saying "according to __________, who wrote this speech for me . . . "

IPBiz notes:

#1. Biden's law school plagiarism, which was admitted, had nothing to do with a speechwriter, or a speech.

#2. Biden's copying of Kinnock, which may or may not be acknowledged plagiarism, involved Biden copying facts of Kinnock's life which did not apply to Biden. That's worse than plagiarism.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 04, 2008 (boomark / email).