Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?

Links (41)

GEORGIA: Raining Nazis, and McCain's Wikipedia Crutch
Published 8/11/2008 at Taylor Marsh
... knee jerk response to always rattle sabers is so ingrained that nobody even questions where someone gets their talking points or if where this vaunted veteran wants to lead the U.S. is anywhere we should follow. Who bothers to wonder what would happen if the U.S., instead of verbally stepping in something as a precursor to military nation building, an oxymoron at best, we simply said, as Obama did, to the U.N.? As for McCain, this is ridiculously embarrassing. From the Wikipedia editor: ...

Did McCain Plagarize His Speech Today?
Published 8/11/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Political Insider: Sen. John McCain's speech today on the Georgia crisis has many similarities to a Wikipedia article. 

McCain Lifts Russia-Georgia Speech From Wikipedia
Published 8/11/2008 by Chris Bowers at Open Left - Front Page
Via Political Wire, it appears that McCain's vast policy experience and knowledge of international affairs is derived from wikipedia: A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. They appear similar enough that most people would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia. First instance: one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia) vs. ...

John McCain's Wikipolicy
Published 8/11/2008 by The National Security Network at democracyarsenal.org
So John McCain apparently lifted huge portions of his statement on the unfolding crisis in Georgia from Wikipedia.  Here's a 3 AM question for you: do you want a President with a real strategy for containing such a crisis, or do you want someone who's stumbling over wikipedia entries after getting internet lessons from his wife.  I guess when it comes to McCain and foreign policy, it's a google!

Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech Today?
Published 8/11/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Political Insider: Sen. John McCain's speech today on the Georgia crisis has many similarities to a Wikipedia article. 

Did McCain campaign lift Georgia speech from Wikipedia?
Published 8/11/2008 by Think Progress at Think Progress
... entry on the country Georgia. “[M]ost people would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia,” Taegan Goddard writes: ...

Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? (Yes)
Published 8/11/2008 at Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News
... and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain) Granted the third instance isn't as close as the first two, which seem quite obviously taken from Wikipedia. It should be noted that Wikipedia material can be freely used but always requires attribution under its terms of use. Whether a presidential candidate should base policy speeches on material from Wikipedia is another question entirely. Read more: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/08/di...

McCain, Georgia, and change you can Xerox
Published 8/11/2008 by Carpetbagger at The Carpetbagger Report
... Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who are friends, shared some a few rhetorical lines. Politicians do this all the time, both Obama and Patrick had each other’s permission, and there was nothing untoward about it. The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on. I’m wondering if we may be poised for yet another “plagiarism” flap. CQ’s Taegan Goddard has the story. A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John ...

Ready to Cut and Paste on Day One?
Published 8/11/2008 by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo
Was John McCain so up to speed on Georgia that his campaign had to look it up and crib the entry from Wikipedia? ...

Did McCain Rip Off Parts Of His Speech On Georgia From Wikipedia?
Published 8/11/2008 at Say Anything
Maybe, maybe not.  But if so I guess it’s something he and Obama have in common. Not to defend McCain, but the passages he allegedly swiped from Wikipedia are basically descriptions of facts about Georgia’s history.  Given that facts are facts, it’s kind of hard write/speak about stuff like that without sounding like an encyclopedia entry. ...

Oops!
Published 8/11/2008 by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings
... I know that speeches are written by staffers, and that a candidate can't possibly run such an unbelievably tight operation that none of them ever does anything stupid. That said, I do think it's funny that part of McCain's speech on the crisis in Georgia seems to have been taken from Wikipedia. ...

McWiki?
Published 8/11/2008 by Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Well, at least someone knows how to use the Internets on McCain's staff.

DAY'S END ROUNDUP
Published 8/11/2008 by Andy Barr at The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
... gripes about the campaign, but complaining that smooth talking southern politician covering up the fact that he cheated on his wife isn’t one of them, The Corner's Jonah Goldberg writes. Open Left's Chris Bowers points out that, hypocrisy aside, the polling doesn’t back up Wolfson's claim that Edwards played spoiler to Clinton. Several passages from McCain’s speech on Georgia Monday bear a striking resemblance to the Wikipedia entry on the country, Taegan Goddard reports. Firedoglake's emptywheel blasts McCain for allegedly lifting the ...

An unwarranted shot at McCain
Published 8/11/2008 by deacon at Power Line
CQ's "Political Insider" asks whether John McCain "plagiarized" his speech today on the crisis in Georgia. The better question is why CQ is peddling what appears to be a non-story. The CQ post cites three instances of statements in McCain's speech that it thinks may be problematic in light of a Wikipedia article about Georgia. In two instances, McCain did use language similar to that which appears in Wikipedia. But the two instances are merely statements (1) that Georgia was one of the first countries to adopt Christianity as its official religion and (2) ...

John McCain - He's Wiki'ing to Protect AMERICA
Published 8/11/2008 by Hoffmania Himself at Hoffmania!
... Barack Obama says he'll only rely on smarts, diplomacy, prudency and common sense in dealing with the world. But on Day One, John McCain will mobilize a young American websurfer in front of Wikipedia to make sure he says things correctly. ...

Okay, the Cookies Were Stupid and Silly, But Plagiarizing Your Foreign Policy Too?
Published 8/11/2008 by emptywheel at Firedoglake
... . Now, apparently, McCain's stooped to stealing his foreign policy plans from others. And of all sources, he's stealing from Wikipedia! ...

Published 8/11/2008 by Pat (noreply@blogger.com) at Brainster's Blog
McCain Plagiarism Scandal? Oh, boy are they scraping the bottom of the barrel today : A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia. Most? Most what? Most liberals with an axe to grind? Check out these purported instances: one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official ...

Did McCain plagiarize his Georgia speech today?
Published 8/11/2008 by John Aravosis (DC) (noreply@blogger.com) at AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth
Kind of looks like it. Though in all fairness to McCain, he wouldn't know Wikipedia from the Google. Still, at some point McCain has to be held responsible for a campaign that he no longer seems to be in charge of. ...

McCain, Georgia and Wikipedia
Published 8/11/2008 by Dr. Steven Taylor at PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts
Taegan Goddard asks Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?. The passages noted in the post, especially the first two, would suggest rather convincingly that whomever it was that wrote that speech for McCain based a great deal of it on the Wikipedia entry on Georgia with a little bit of poor undergraduate-y word re-arrangement to try and make the new text “original.” I will say that sans attribution, the examples given are enough for me to have given the speech a zero (and failure of my course) had it been a paper handed in to me ...

Lefty heart-ache: McCain might have lifted three sentences from Wikipedia for speech
Published 8/12/2008 by Allahpundit at Hot Air » Top Picks
Lefty heart-ache: McCain might have lifted three sentences from Wikipedia for speech posted at 10:03 pm on August 11, 2008 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly Three background sentences , that is, one of which closely tracks Wikipedia’s entry on Georgia, two more of which contain some phrases in common, plus a third passage that’s being offered as evidence of plagiarism and … just isn’t. On a day when Russia’s threatening to absorb one of its satellite states, this is actually the top story on Memeorandum. Yes, really. In ...

A Case of Plagiarism
Published 8/12/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
... -- are convinced by my earlier post that Sen. John McCain used plagiarized lines from Wikipedia in his speech on the Russia-Georgia crisis today. ...

Links for 2008-08-11 [del.icio.us]
Published 8/12/2008 at FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
... CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.” Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance - Times Online Georgia’s army was in complete disarray tonight after troops and tanks fled the city of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot. Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? - Political Insider A Wikipedia ...

links for 2008-08-12 [delicious.com]
Published 8/12/2008 by Flap at FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
... Barack Obama Watch: The One's Fan Club (tags: Barack Obama) Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? - Political Insider A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities ...

McCain is so Good on the Republic of Georgia the Left Must Seek to Discredit Him
Published 8/12/2008 by Erick Erickson at RedState: Conservative News and Community
... Taegan Goddard, a man of the left, used his platform at CQ to kick it off. The left is accusing McCain of plagiarizing Wikipedia. ...

McCain Plagiarized Georgia Facts!
Published 8/12/2008 by James Joyner at Outside The Beltway | OTB
... Today’s Outrage of the Day comes to us from Taegan Goddard , who notes, in a CQ Political Insider piece entitled “Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?” that there are “some similarities between Sen. John McCain’s ...

Daily Digest: 'Tube Pong
Published 8/12/2008 by Joshua Sherman at techPresident
... Wiki-policy?? CQ Politics’s Taegan Goddard reports on similarities between a speech made by Sen. John McCain yesterday and a Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Look at it this way, if it is discovered that McCain lifted the material himself, at least we would know he’s using the internet! ...

McCain camp dismisses plagiarism rap
Published 8/12/2008 by media@politico.com (Jonathan Martin) at Jonathan Martin's Blogs
... lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia. "We did not copy Wikipedia in Sen. McCain’s remarks," said spokesman Brian Rogers.   Three portions of the GOP nominee's statement yesterday were seized upon by an editor for the online encyclopedia and sent to blogger Taegan Goddard with the claim that the words seemed to match the Wiki entry for Georgia. The first two instances, Goddard noted, seemed especially similar.   Wiki's entry has Georgia as "one of ...

GEORGIA v. RUSSIA: Negotiations or Threatdown
Published 8/12/2008 at Taylor Marsh
... As for who truly has the better knowledge of the area, one only needs to change all references of Tskhinvali to Walt Disney World on South Ossetia-??s Wikipedia page and see what Senator McCain says next. Why is that? Well, Senator McCain cribbed his speech from Wikipedia -?" thank goodness for Creative Commons rights, eh? ...

McCain Advisers Keeping Quiet On Allegations They Lifted From Wikipedia
Published 8/12/2008 by Eric Kleefeld at TPM Election Central
... Taegan Goddard first pointed out the similarities, noting that in some instances it looked like only a few words had been changed. If this is true, it would obviously contradict the idea that McCain knows everything he has to know about foreign policy and the intricacies of different regions. ...

McCain Campaign Denies Plagiarism
Published 8/12/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Sen. John McCain's campaign "is denying a suggestion made yesterday that the candidate's lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia," according to ...

McCain, Georgia, and change you can Xerox
Published 8/12/2008 by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars
... of “plagiarism.” Apparently, Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who are friends, shared some a few rhetorical lines. Politicians do this all the time, both Obama and Patrick had each other’s permission, and there was nothing untoward about it. The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on. I’m wondering if we may be poised for yet another “plagiarism” flap. CQ’s Taegan Goddard has the story. A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John ...

He Doesn’t Really Exist
Published 8/12/2008 by Spencer Ackerman at Firedoglake
I'm late in seeing this, but LOLOLOLOL John McCain basically cut and pasted his bellicose posturing on Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia from Wikipedia. Lots of people have had fun with this, but I think it has a deeper significance. Namely: I don't believe senior McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann actually exists. I believe Randy Scheunemann is the human face of a series of Wikipedia searches. An actor portays the character of "Randy Scheunemann" to keep the truth from coming out. Let's explore how this ...

Reactions to the McCain-Wikipedia Story
Published 8/13/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Political Insider: A round up of opinions on the McCain campaign's apparent use of Wikipedia in speech writing.

Political Insider on the Colbert Report
Published 8/14/2008 at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
The Colbert Report used our post about Sen. John McCain's use of Wikipedia as the basis for a skit last night. Very amusing.

Cold War Mentality + Lobbyists + Hypocrisy = Foreign Policy: McCain is our GOP Hypocrite Again
Published 8/14/2008 by meg at BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash
... that McCain's lobbyist connection with Georgia is a plus!  Yet with the MSM at his back and an "expert" lobbyist at his front, McCain still managed to demonstrate both his ignorance about the region and the haphazardness of his campaign message. His speech about the country and the conflict has chunks that appear to be lifted directly from the Wikipedia page about Georgia. Regardless of whether you agree that his lobbying connections are suspect, or whether you worry McCain's hot temper and desire to win the election might drive us into a new war, any elementary school ...

Wiki-Gate or Silly Season?
Published 8/14/2008 at Real Clear Politics - TIME.com
A couple of days ago CQ Politics noticed some eerie similarities between John McCain's speech on Georgia and Georgia's Wikipedia entry . Judge for yourself the validity of the plagiarism charge -- and some of the language does look very similar -- but while we can criticize McCain's lazy speech-writing team, this , from the New York Observer's Joe Conason, is taking Wiki-gate to an absurd level: The discovery that John McCain's remarks on Georgia were derived from Wikipedia, to put it politely, is disturbing and even depressing -- but not surprising. Under the ...

Talking points from teh intarwebs
Published 8/14/2008 by maru (noreply@blogger.com) at WTF Is It Now?!?
... A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out the similarities between Sen. John McCain’s speech on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia... ...

Friday McBush Bashing (Olympic Edition)
Published 8/15/2008 by Michael at Discourse.net
... Georgia, and McCain’s reckless belligerence; Cosmic Iguana, McCAIN - READY FOR WAR … WITH RUSSIA? Slightly unfair but likely effective ad being run in Ohio called Job Killing John Unfair because no one could keep them all in America, so for once McCain is being honest here. Taegan Goddard, Political Insider, Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis? — and from Wikipedia??? ...

McCain Cross Story Raises Eyebrows
Published 8/18/2008 at Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
... Political Insider: Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia. Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity—or as he said, “just two Christians worshiping together”—is very similar to a story about Alexander ...

Biden--Even Less Downside Than You'd Think
Published 8/23/2008 by Noam Scheiber at The Stump
... which he's repeatedly acknowledged and abjectly apologized for. More importantly, as my wife (Time correspondent Amy Sullivan) argued this morning, something tells you the McCain campaign doesn't want a fight over 20-year-old scandals. (In fact, you could argue that McCain himself is proof of the first point.) Anyway, would you prefer a guy who cribbed from a prominent British politician in the late '80s or a guy who cribbed from Wikipedia a few weeks ago? Just askin'... 2.) The ...

Rob Kall: Biden's Biggest Vulnerability Should Be Neutralized, Running Against McCain
Published 8/24/2008 by Rob Kall at Politics on HuffingtonPost.com
... and John McCain has been accused of plagiarizing parts of his speech on the Georgia crisis-- with language very close to that found in Wikipedia. People magazine, even titled an article, published two days ago, ...