How hard is it to use a f#$%ing footnote?

Apparently, U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown sent a letter to Mike DeWine regarding the Samuel Alito nomination, and the letter essentially copied a Nathan Newman post about Alito’s take on labor rights. Brown’s staff admitted to Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Stephen Koff that “90 percent of what Brown, an Avon Democrat, wrote in his letter was lifted from an Internet posting by a blogger.” I’m quoted by Koff in the story:

While the line dividing politicians and online political commentary sometimes seems fuzzy, University of Chicago political scientist Daniel Drezner, himself a blogger and co-editor of a forthcoming book on politics and blogging, says Brown went “outside the bounds.” He compared it with Sen. Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat who dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after it was learned he plagiarized part of a stump speech. “It strikes me as pretty much the same thing,” Drezner said. “It’s plagiarism.” Brown’s office acknowledged that it should not have used Newman’s words without giving him credit. Spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler said she found Newman’s work when researching labor issues. Brown’s legislative staff confirmed its accuracy, and Brown then signed the staff-prepared letter, Kuebler said. “We should have cited it, and we didn’t,” Kuebler said.

Ordinarily I woldn’t post about this — I’ve reached the point where I’m bored with my own media whoredom. However, this story has some lefty bloggers very annoyed — including Newman:

Did the Plain Dealer do an in depth analysis of Alito’s labor record in response? No, they created a bullshit meta-story that was of such supposed breaking news value that they couldn’t wait for me to get back from my mini-honeymoon to get my reaction.

Duncan “Atrios” Black — who works at Media Matters, mind you, concurs:

Genuine plagiarism in this context is lifting out paragraphs of unique prose, not culling some information from a blog post.

While I have some sympathy with the idea of reporters focusing on actual policy substance, this is still a completely valid story. Consider this section of Koff’s story and compare it with Black’s defiinition of plagiarism:

For instance, Newman, an attorney and labor and community activist, posted this on his blog Nov. 1: “What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, much less interpreting the law in their favor.” Brown’s letter merely changed the last clause so the sentence read, “What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, not to mention interpreting the law against them.” Brown’s letter cited details of 13 rulings by Alito, who in early 2006 will face confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The problem is, Brown’s descriptions in 12 of the cases were almost verbatim what Newman wrote on his blog.

This is a case of sloppy staff work in Brown’s office and not much more — but it’s still a screw-up, which explains why Brown’s office immediately copped to the miscue. In NRO, Jonah Goldberg notes the special irony of Brown’s mistake:

[T]here’s a special irony here. I think all reasonable people can agree that plagiarism is a theft of intellectual property. Well, I did a very quick Nexis search and it seems Sherrod Brown’s been out front in opposing trade deals because they don’t provide enough protections for intellectual property.

UPDATE: Brown has sent another letter to DeWine acknowledging the failure to cite Newman. However, the press release accompanying the letter asserts that, “In coordination with an Ohio newspaper article published Tuesday, DeWine’s staff dismissed concerns expressed by Brown in the Nov. 4 letter, instead focusing on citation errors.” (emphasis added) That’s an interesting word choice — Brown is clearly implying that DeWine’s staff engineered the story in the first place. I have no idea if this is true or not — but I’d like to hear of any evidence Brown has to back this up.