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Title: Bush Aide Resigns After Admitting Plagiarism
Source:
nytimes
URL Source: [None]
Published: Mar 1, 2008
Author: SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Post Date: 2008-03-01 19:15:44 by kiki
Keywords: None
Views: 221
Comments: 3
WASHINGTON — A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitting that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other writers. The White House called his actions unacceptable. The aide, Tim Goeglein, had worked for Mr. Bush since 2001, as a liaison to social and religious conservatives, an important component of the president’s political base. Mr. Goeglein was influential in decisions on a range of questions important to that constituency, including stem cell research, abortion and faith-based initiatives. A blogger in Mr. Goeglein’s hometown, Fort Wayne, Ind., found the plagiarism. “This is not acceptable, and we are disappointed in Tim’s actions,” a White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said Friday morning, hours before Mr. Goeglein resigned. “He is offering no excuses, and he agrees it was wrong.” Mr. Goeglein, 44, is little known outside Washington. He is a familiar figure to conservatives and evangelical Christians, who knew him as a spokesman for Gary L. Bauer, the conservative who ran for president in 2000. When Mr. Bauer dropped out of the race, Mr. Goeglein signed on with Mr. Bush, eventually becoming a top aide to Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. He was the eyes and ears of the White House in the world of religious conservatives and an emissary to that world for Mr. Rove and the president. Mr. Goeglein was often credited with turning out the evangelical vote that helped re-elect Mr. Bush in 2004. With Mr. Bush traveling to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., for the weekend, the White House issued a statement late Friday saying that the president was disappointed and saddened for Mr. Goeglein and his family. “He has long appreciated Tim’s service,” the statement said. “And he knows him to be a good person who is committed to his country.” Mr. Goeglein had been publishing guest columns on the opinion page of The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne for more than a decade, according to the paper’s editor, Kerry Hubartt. Nancy Nall, a former columnist for the paper, often used her Web site, www.nancynall.com, to poke fun at his writings, which she called “drippy and awful.” Ms. Nall said she was struck by Mr. Goeglein’s most recent column, on Thursday, which included a reference to a “notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth,” Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey. Curious, she searched the Internet, and found that Mr. Goeglein had lifted major chunks of the column from an article published 10 years ago in The Dartmouth Review. “It is true,” Mr. Goeglein wrote in an e-mail message to another Fort Wayne newspaper, The Journal-Gazette. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.” He said he had apologized to the author of The Dartmouth Review article. By day’s end, more examples of plagiarism had turned up, including a column about John Wayne copied in part from an article in The New York Sun and passages from a column that tracked, almost verbatim, an article by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. A review by The News-Sentinel found that of the 38 columns Mr. Goeglein published since 2000, 19 included plagiarized material, according to Mr. Hubartt. He said the paper would no longer publish work by Mr. Goeglein, whom he described as “well respected here by a lot of people.” “There was no reason for it that I can see,” Mr. Hubartt said, noting that Mr. Goeglein had submitted columns voluntarily and had no deadlines to meet. “He was not under any pressure.”
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#1. To: kiki (#0)
His actions were consistent with the Bush presidency which is one built on lies and deceit. He was merely emulating the behavior he saw all around him at the White House.
Ha hahahahahahaha...fits perfectly.
The Bush Admnistration's strategy is to throw a scapegoat over the fence every once in a while (first Scooter Libby, now this guy) for some small offense, so that the big league corruption can go on unscrutinized and uninterrupted.
#2. To: kiki (#0)
Tim Goeglein, had worked for Mr. Bush since 2001, as a liaison to social and religious conservatives
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#1)
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