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Desperate Democrats feed B.S. Gorsuch plagiarism story to Politico



Let me acknowledge upfront: I don't know who the Worst Web Site in the World's source is. I'm assuming it was Democrats because who the hell else would it be? And we've seen these Bolshevik plagiarism accusations before, where people take the most nitpicky, technical, extreme definition of what might be called plagiarism - don't even achieve that standard - and yet toss the charge around anyway just so politicians will have an excuse to declare themselves "troubled" and cast aspersions on the nominee and his supporters.
That they would feed this to Politico is no surprise, of course. This kind of crap is what Politico does. If you want to fill your head with stuff that a) people in Washington obsessively talk about; and b) is of no consequence whatsoever to the country, read Politico. It is their stock and trade. It's because this brand of journalism is so worthless that we call them the Worst Web Site in the World. And they've really outdone themselves here:
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article, according to documents provided to POLITICO. The documents show that several passages from the tenth chapter of his 2006 book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” read nearly verbatim to a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal. In several other instances in that book and an academic article published in 2000, Gorsuch borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works without citing them.

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The findings come as Republicans are on the brink of changing Senate rules to confirm Gorsuch over the vehement objections of Democrats. The documents could raise questions about the rigor of Gorsuch’s scholarship, which Republicans have portrayed during the confirmation process as unimpeachable. The White House on Tuesday pushed back against any suggestion of impropriety. “This false attack has been strongly refuted by highly-regarded academic experts, including those who reviewed, professionally examined, and edited Judge Gorsuch’s scholarly writings, and even the author of the main piece cited in the false attack,” said White House spokesman Steven Cheung. “There is only one explanation for this baseless, last-second smear of Judge Gorsuch: those desperate to justify the unprecedented filibuster of a well-qualified and mainstream nominee to the Supreme Court.” However, six experts on academic integrity contacted independently by POLITICO differed in their assessment of what Gorsuch did, ranging from calling it a clear impropriety to mere sloppiness.
What a crock. The Wall Street Journal took this hit job apart quickly and easily:

Politico reports—based on “documents provided to Politico,” you can guess by whom—that in his book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Judge Gorsuch used another author’s words to describe Down syndrome and a condition known as “esophageal atresia with tracheoesophageal fistula.” In a 1984 Indiana Law Journal article, Abigail Kuzma wrote that “esophageal atresia with tracheoesophageal fistula indicates that the esophageal passage from the mouth to the stomach ends in a pouch, with an abnormal connection between the trachea and the esophagus.” Judge Gorsuch used the same words in his explanation of the medical condition, a technical description of a specific ailment outside his area of expertise. Ms. Kuzma has issued a statement that she had “reviewed both passages and [does] not see an issue.” Because the passages “are factual, not analytical in nature,” she writes, and “both describe the basic facts of the case, it would have been awkward and difficult for Judge Gorsuch to have used different language.” Politico also criticizes Judge Gorsuch for citing primary sources when attributing portions of his writing, rather than citing secondary sources. But primary sources are an approved method of citation in academic publications. Judge Gorsuch describes Derek Humphry, a founder of the Hemlock Society and advocate for voluntary euthanasia, in similar terms as a book on the euthanasia movement written by Ian Dowbiggin, but he credits books by Rita Marker and Sue Woodman as the primary sources. Politico rolled out some left-leaning academics to call this and a couple of other examples plagiarism, but this is thin soup. Someone clearly subjected every word in all of Judge Gorsuch’s more than 5,000 pages of writing to a Big Data plagiarism analysis, and this is all they found. Oxford University Emeritus Professor John Finnis, who supervised Judge Gorsuch’s doctoral thesis, reviewed the allegations and says that “in all four cases, Neil Gorsuch’s writing and citing was easily and well within the proper and accepted standards of scholarly research and writing in the field of study in which he was working.” Georgetown professor John Keown was an outside examiner on Judge Gorsuch’s dissertation and called the allegations “entirely without foundation.”
This is the sort of thing Democrats love to do when a Republican nominee terrifies them, but is sailing to confirmation because there is no legitimate reason to oppose him or her. Wait until the last minute and bring forth some B.S. allegations that consist of nothing, but can be packaged in just such a way that they're made to sound "troubling" and allow Democrats to demand a vote be delayed until "we get to the bottom of this" or whatever. But in this case, the bottom is all there is. Just because you can find a few liberal professors to give voice to this nonsense doesn't mean there's any legitimacy to it whatsoever. I suppose their end game here is to scare one or two Senate moderates or traditionalists away from nuking the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations, by making the case that Gorsuch the plagiarist is too flawed a nominee to justify such a radical blowing up of Senate fules. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. Gorsuch is an exceptionally well qualified nominee, and using the filibuster to try to stop him is the height of insanity. If that were not the case, Democrats wouldn't need to resort to desperate nonsense like this at the last minute to try to stop the fate they've brought upon themselves.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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