Alito Moments
A) Stephen Koff,"Brown's Alito Letter Lifted from Blogger," Cleveland Plain-Dealer, 8 November, reports that about 90% of a letter by Representative Sherrod Brown (D, Ohio) to Senator Mike DeWine (R, Ohio) outlining concerns about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was plagiarized from Nathan Newman. Opinion about the seriousness of the issue seems divided along political lines among bloggers. Newman, himself, claims that what he had written was in the public domain. Citing comparison with the case of Senator Joseph Biden's plagiarized speech that embarrassed his presidential campaign years ago, Daniel Drezner insists that it is plagiarism. In both cases, it is likely that the politicians were badly served by staff ghost writers. If they want to take credit for what hired help produces in their names, the politicians must also take the blame for it. See also: Hiram Hover. [more ...]
B) I don't ordinarily follow the activity over at Bitch PhD, but there's been quite a stir over there. She posted some comments about the Alito nomination at her site. They provoked this discussion thread, from which she deleted some comments by Paul Deignan, a Ph.D. candidate at Purdue, and banned him from her site. Another of Bitch PhD's readers, Wallace Hettle, a historian at the University of Northern Iowa, claims that Deignan was trolling at the site and that he sent Hettle threatening e-mail. Hettle contacted Deignan's dissertation advisor at Purdue about Deignan's behavior. So, Deignan is threatening to sue both Bitch PhD and Hettle and to out her. In doing so, he challenges some common agreements among bloggers: that a blogger has a right to delete comments they think are unconstructive and common courtesy respects a blogger's pseudonymity. Some bloggers on the right, like ProteinWisdom, line up behind Deignan and are particularly critical of Hettle's contacting Deignan's academic advisor. On the left, Adam Kotsko at The Weblog and P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula have colorful words for Deignan:"pissant of the week," a"dumb fuck," etc. Others who weigh in on the controversy: Hiram Hover and Brandon Watson at Siris, to whom I'm indebted for clarifying matters.