October 30, 2013

I'm not so sure Rachel Maddow is right about this one, that Rand Paul just doesn't understand what plagiarism is, or that lifting whole passages from wikipedia pages for your own speeches is wrong, or makes you look like a dork. I suspect Rand Paul knows exactly what happened and just doesn't care. In fact, rather than retreat into some abject apology mode and make some ado about firing someone for it, he'll just go on his merry way, keeping his eye squarely on 2016 with absolutely no distractions. That's just how cynical Rand Paul is. His supporters don't care so why should he?

This segment is long, and is a rehash of a lot of stuff over the past few nights, with Rand Paul's non-apology tonight with Jorge Ramos. You may skip ahead to the last minute or so where Rachel ends with this.

RACHEL MADDOW: "Senator, you can call me whatever names you want few. Trust me, I have been called worse. This is not a personal thing for me at all. I feel no emotion about this. I do not hate you or try to spread hate on you. I am sorry you feel that way. Also you didn't borrow plot lines from these movies, you read the Wikipedia page out loud. The point is that you seem to have a frequent habit of plagiarizing part of your speeches. And perhaps that is explained by the fact that you do not understand what plagiarism is. Nobody is accusing you of pretending that you wrote Gattaca or Stand and Deliver, that's not what this is about. Not about explaining a plot line. This is about lifting entire sections of a website and Inserting them in your speeches and passing them off as your own original thoughts. This is something that high school students know not to do. You are presenting yourself as the potential candidate for president. It has nothing to do with me. You heard senator Paul there say, "nothing I said was not given attribution to where it came from." That is absolute and probably not true. Senator somebody else's published word ended up in your speech without attribution. How did that happen? Do you understand that is a problem? I'm grateful for Jorge Ramos and fusion that senator Rand Paul has been forced to respond to the plagiarism tonight given his incoherence in his explanation. I have a feeling this may not be the end of it."

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