stolen words, stolen deeds, stolen accolades

A fabulizing triptych.

Gerald Posner, compulsive plagiarist.

Posner has offered a variety of defenses. He apologized after Shafer's stories and blamed the "warp speed of the Net" for screwing up his Beast stories. He told us this past May 16 that a new system of "trailing endnotes" may have caused problems in Babylon. By our third story, Posner said there was a "concerted effort" afoot to "discredit" his work.

Now comes new evidence, again courtesy of Gelembiuk. The 48-year-old Wisconsin student purchased ebook copies of Why America Slept and Secrets of the Kingdom, and ran them through Viper, a free online plagiarism software.

The program found Posner had taken from 24 sources in the two books. Most egregious seems to be his theft from a 1998 book by David Hoffman called The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror. Posner appears to have lifted three passages from the book totaling 927 words in Why America Slept.

Richard Blumenthal, hypocritical pseudo-Vietnam vet.

Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, has a problem. He's running for the U.S. Senate, and he's been caught on video implying falsely that he served in Vietnam. He'd like your understanding as he explains that he simply "misspoke" about his service. He'd like you to give him a break.

But Blumenthal has never given anyone a break. He has made a career out of holding others to the strictest standards of truth—and mercilessly prosecuting them when they fall short.

Adam Wheeler, faux super-student?

Prosecutors said that Wheeler defrauded Harvard out of over $45,000 in the form of an $8,000 research grant, $6,000 in English prizes, and $31,806 in financial aid.

"Mr. Wheeler pled not guilty. He'll have his day in court," said Steven Sussman, the defendant's lawyer, who was surrounded by a thick crowd of reporters and cameramen. "He's not convicted of anything."