Who Came First? McCain or McCain

Think Progress thought it trapped John McCain in a plagiarism controversy. But McCain may wind up being the victim, here.

“The accusation of plagiarism is fundamentally and irrefutably false. The Senator has used that language as early, and possibly earlier, as 1995," writes campaign senior adviser Mark Salter in an e-mail. They point to a speech McCain gave before the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City.

Think Progress now "updates:"

It appears that Ziemer’s speech may have been plagiarized from McCain. According to the McCain campaign, the senator used these lines before Ziemer — in 1995.

Comments

TP is frequently embarrassingly stupid (just the latest example I noted chez moi). Some of the commenters there were brighter than you'd expect from such a site, but thanks to (apparently) Judd Legum they - like me - were banned. Now it's just one "joke" after another.

The only reason this is of note is because they're run by a Clinton-linked group, and one would think they could hire better people instead of the absolute idiots they have there now.

Posted by TLB | March 27, 2008 10:19 PM

Not to belittle the fine research effort undertaken by Think Progress, but if one goes to McCain's *SENATE* website and searches on the rarely-used "Wretched", there are only three hits, one from the VFW speech in 1995.

OK, hindsight is 20/20, but is checking his Senate site such a leap?

Posted by Tom Maguire | March 27, 2008 11:01 PM

Good to see the old man doesn't change with the times. Does using language from 1995 mean he has a pre-9/11 mindset?

Posted by NHCt | March 28, 2008 10:01 AM

NHCt, zuh?

Posted by Michael | March 29, 2008 11:29 AM