The Slatest

What’s Rand Paul Been Caught Plagiarizing This Time? The Week.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul listens speaks at a ‘Get out the Vote’ rally for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia, October 28, 2013 in Fairfax, Virginia

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Another day, another example of Rand Paul playing fast and loose with the rules of attribution. After some digging, BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski found that sections of a Washtington Times op-ed that the Kentucky Republican penned in September appear “nearly identical” to those found in an essay written by Dan Stewart of The Week that ran only days before. One of several examples of the almost word-for-word cribbing, as flagged by Kacynski (who may want to think about practicing his dueling just to be safe).

Stewart:

“By design, mandatory sentencing laws take discretion away from prosecutors and judges so as to impose harsh sentences, regardless of circumstances.

“Mandatory sentencing began in the 1970s as a response to a growing drug-and-crime epidemic, and over the decades has put hundreds of thousands of people behind bars for drug possession and sale, and other non-violent crimes. Since mandatory sentencing began, America’s prison population has quadrupled, to 2.4 million. America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year.”

Paul:

“By design, mandatory-sentencing laws take discretion away from prosecutors and judges so as to impose harsh sentences, regardless of circumstances.

“Since mandatory sentencing began in the 1970s in response to a growing drug-and-crime epidemic, America’s prison population has quadrupled, to 2.4 million. America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year.”

Paul was caught last week by Rachel Maddow plagiarizing movie summaries from Wikipedia. He conceded over the weekend that he had been somewhat “sloppy” with attribution in the speeches in question, but largely brushed off the accusations as the work of a “bunch of hacks and haters.” His office has so far declined to comment on the latest revelation.

Update 12:44 p.m.: Kaczynski spots another example, this time of Paul apparently passing off portions of a Forbes article as his own writing in his book, Government Bullies.

***Follow @JoshVoorhees and the rest of the @slatest team on Twitter.***