The Denver Post’s Spot blog reported today that Colorado House candidate Don Beezley apologized to members of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition for his disparaging comments about the Americans with Disabilities Act.

As posted on a Broomfield Democrats website, Beezley said, that the “ADA took other human beings from being someone with a challenge whom it might be a joy to help, and turned them into a burden. An enemy.”

The Post did not ask Beezley if he opposes the ADA. So I asked him, to fill in the journalistic gap.

He told me he supports the government insuring that people with disabilities have “access.” But he’d prefer that the state, not the federal government, make its own laws like the ADA. He’d rather not see the federal government involved.

Nonetheless, despite his frustrations with the federal ADA, he supports it.

Before the memory of the primary elections slips behind us (yes, I know it’s been unforgettable, but still), I wanted to point out the media organ that’s moved off the sidelines to have the second greatest impact on the election.

The Denver Post gets top honors as the most influential media outlet in Colorado, of course, for reasons that are obvious and go beyond the McInnis plagiarism coverage.

But number two is pretty surprising. It’s the Caplis and Silverman show, which airs 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on KHOW 630 AM.

I can’t stand the show sometimes (especially when centrist/right Silverman idles as Caplis acts like a spinmeister for the Republicans), but I mostly like it a lot. And this election season I’ve been floored by the show’s impact, substance, and entertainment-value—on a regular basis.

The show’s string of major hits began in Aug. of 2009 when Scott McInnis inexplicably lashed out at both Caplis and Silverman and claimed to be more generous than they. The bizarre outburst, in which McInnis “went off the rails,” according to The Post, got quite a bit of media attention and in retrospect set the bizarre tenor of the McInnis campaign to come, including his comment on the show in April, also widely publicized, that he’s the kind of person who donates elk meat to folks in need, rather than giving to nonprofit groups.

That info came when McInnis was refusing to talk to The Post, after the newspaper had asked to review his tax returns. So McInnis explained himself on Caplis and Silverman.

In the same elk interview, Silverman became the first in the media to ask McInnis what he did to earn $150,000 from the Hasan Family Foundation, which was mentioned among McInnis’ 2005 income sources in The Post, where it might have died without Silverman. Silverman asked McInnis if he was trying to help the foundation foster a better understanding between U.S. citizens and Muslim cultures. But no no, McInnis eagerly corrected him and said the foundation paid him to “write” articles on Colorado water.

As the primary wore on, all the major GOP players and many Dems were regulars on Caplis and Silverman. In your car on the way home, it was like listening to a mix of live breaking news bits, in-depth discussions of politics and various issues, and five-star drive-time drama and comedy–and tragedy. It felt like a town hall, showing how great talk radio can be. Unfortunately, John Hickenlooper appears to be avoiding the show, after a contentious appearance earlier this year about his charitable contributions, and Michael Bennet didn’t materialize.

“Dan Maes was a frequent guest on the show, and while they didn’t treat him with kid gloves, his accessibility and willingness to step into the arena helped place him on an equal status with McInnis or even above McInnis,” said Westword’s “Latest Word” blogger and media critic Michael Roberts.

I asked Roberts if he agreed with me that Caplis and Silverman, now in its sixth year on the air, deserves the number two spot among media outlets for impact on this year’s primary.

“In terms of that specific primary, I think you can make a very good argument that it was second to The Post, which clearly had the biggest impact,” Roberts told me, adding that Channel 7’s interview with Rolly Fisher was also a major journalistic triumph. “But the Caplis and Silverman show wasn’t one hit or two, but had an impact over the long haul.”

Roberts also thinks that Caplis’ early abandonment of McInnis, days after the plagiarism scandal hit the news, contributed to the conservative rush away from him.

Silverman, who credits producer Brad Lopez for landing great guests, wrote me that regular interviewees Ken Buck and Jane Norton both had “huge” ad buys on their show, “so they must have thought voters were listening.”

“Dan Caplis and I are both trial lawyers so we should have skills at questioning,” writes Silverman, who’s now an unaffiliated voter in contrast to partisan Republican Caplis. “We try to use courtroom etiquette including no interrupting. I fancy myself a political free agent and ask tough but fair questions to Dems and Repubs.” 

He continues: “Some talk radio hosts (i.e. Limbaugh) call opposition politicians schoolyard names or otherwise belittle or caricature them. I understand why politicos avoid such shows. We do not do that.  Our show is more like a friendly courtroom. Often, Dan and I are on different political sides, so there is usually some balance in the overall experience for the guest and listener.”

Some balance, yes, but no much if you look at the big picture. I mean, the show creates the illusion that the political spectrum in America runs from the center-right (Silverman) to the far-right (social-conservative Caplis). That drives me nuts, as I’ve written previously, and motivates me to find some real balance by listening to progressive David Sirota, who’s doing a great job in the mornings on AM760. But I have to agree with Silverman that pairing Caplis with a guy like Sirota would probably fail—and the number of quality guests would certainly decrease. Still, I’d like to see a talk-show experiment in Denver with a true lefty and Caplis-like righty.

But we have the Caplis and Silverman, and for this year at least, it’s been about as good as you could hope for from a political talk-radio show.

The Denver Post on Sunday became the first major news outlet in Colorado, with the exception of the Associated Press, to report that Ken Buck opposes abortion even in the case of rape and incest.

This leads to a second question, which will be the first in my regular series, “Question of the week.” The question-of-the-week will be my suggested query for reporters to ask a specific policymaker, activist, elected official, or candidate. It will not always focus on Ken Buck, like this week’s question.

It appears that Ken Buck not only opposes a women’s right to choose abortion if she’s a victim of rape and incest, but he also supports a ban on the use of the morning-after pill or possibly other types of birth control, even in the case of rape and incest.

On KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show Aug. 4, Buck suggests that he’s opposed the use of the morning-after pill, even in the case of rape and incest. Here’s the transcript:

Craig: …Let’s say, god forbid, that a 13-year-old boy impregnates his 14-year-old sister and does it by forced rape. You’re saying that the 14-year-old and anybody involved in the abortion should be prosecuted, if they choose to terminate the pregnancy, either through surgical abortion or a morning after pill?

Buck: I think it is wrong, Craig. I think it is morally wrong. And you are taking a very small group of cases and making a point about abortion. We have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of abortions in this country every year. And the example that you give is a very poignant one but an extremely rare occurrence.

Craig: Incest happens. I’m sure your office prosecutes it. And we know rape and sexual assault happen all the time, and your office prosecutes it. So it’s not completely rare. I agree that most abortions have nothing to do with that. I don’t know if I’d go with rare.

Furthermore, Buck’s support of the Personhood amendment, which grants zygotes citizenship rights, would presumably include complete opposition to the use of some birth control measures, including the morning-after pill, even in the case of rape and incest. The Colorado Independent has been on this here.

So, the question for reporters to ask Buck:

Do you support a ban on the use of the morning-after pill even for a woman who is raped by a family member?

Fox 21 reported Monday that Ken Buck held a “U.S. Senate unity rally” Monday night in Colorado Springs.

But Buck spokesman Owen Loftus told me today that Buck’s stop in Colorado Springs was a normal campaign rally, not a GOP U.S. Senate unity rally.

“That was just a mistake on Fox 21’s part,” he said, adding that “if we were to have a unity rally, we would make a big deal of that.”

“There were Norton supporters there,” he added. “They are coalescing around Ken now.”

He pointed out that Allison Sherry of The Denver Post covered the Colorado Springs event, and she did not describe it as a U.S. Senate unity rally.

Sherry reported that Buck encouraged his supporters at the Colorado Springs rally to support gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes as well as incumbent Attorney General John Suthers.

Fox 31’s weekday anchor and Vice President of News Operations Joe Cole reported:

Republican nominee Ken Buck was in town for a U.S. Senate unity rally. He’s trying to gain support from Jane Norton’s supporters whom he beat in the Republican primary. He is also turning his focus to incumbent Democrat, Senator Michael Bennet.

In its report on the rally, Fox 21 pictured Buck with the tag “unity rally” at the bottom of the screen.

It appears that the Fox 21 reporter may have thought Buck’s statement of support for Maes and Suthers was a U.S. Senate unity rally when in fact it was just Buck getting behind the GOP candidates for governor and Attorney General.

Cole did not immediately return a call for comment.

GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck is saying his support of a ban on abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, is a personal belief.

In response to this, a fair-minded journalist – even a commentator – shouldn’t set up a false dichotomy between Buck’s “personal” political views and all the rest of his policy positions.

That’s what Denver Post opinion writer Chuck Plunkett did in a Spot blog post Aug. 13. He wrote:

“Some of Buck’s personal beliefs will hurt him. If he doesn’t get out in front of the labeling game, they could hurt him a lot. [Plunkett linked to a story about Buck’s abortion stance.] But his central interest – what truly animates him – isn’t the social-issue stuff that drove old-school conservatives in Colorado like Marilyn Musgrave.”

I asked Plunkett via email if he thought it was factually accurate to separate Buck’s position on abortion from his other policy positions, by describing it as “personal.”

I mean, any political belief can be defined as personal, as guided by ethics or religious morals, or at least a politician can claim that it is–just like a candidate’s belief about abortion.

The “personal” label unfairly implies that the issue should be taken off the table, or at least partially ignored.

Plunkett responded quickly, saying he’d amplify later but the short answer is that Buck’s abortion positions “stem from religious beliefs — so, beyond just ‘personal.’”

This gave me the opportunity to point out to Plunkett that Buck told KHOW’s Craig Silverman that his position on abortion wasn’t derived just religion anyway but from a combination of his “upbringing,” “faith,” and “life experiences.”

I wrote Plunkett that this looks like the same process I use as the basis for some of my own political views, and I’m an atheist. (So I’d re-define “faith” to mean “faith in fellow homo sapiens.”)

Ethics or religious morals can be tied up with almost any legislative decision, like, for example, whether everyone has a right to health care or how much money to spend on education or whether we should house the homeless. As Jim Wallis likes to say, the federal budget is a moral document.

Plunkett responded:

“I don’t think the way a person’s religious beliefs affect his views on abortion is the same — at all — as how that faith shapes his approach to policy issues involving the homeless, or educating children or ensuring that everyone has access to quality health care. There are many ways to approach those issues, but if you believe that life begins at conception and that it would be murder to end that life, what are you supposed to do? You don’t have a choice but to advocate for that fertilized egg to follow its natural course. If that means a baby is born, that means a baby is born — even if that child is the result of an unholy union brought on by a rape or incest.”

Trouble is, any ideology can control a person, whether it’s religious or, as I pointed out to Plunkett later, antinuclear.

I’ve seen this conviction in non-religious activists on the left, who come out, for example, against the entire nuclear fuel cycle from mining and uranium processing to nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and x-rays.

I mean, think of a political issue, from homelessness to education, and you can find an ideological advocate, often principled ones.

How about the hunger activists who says America’s wealth is unconscionable and we have no choice but to spend a tiny fraction of our federal taxes to feed the millions of children who die annually from Hunger? A personal view? Ideological? Whacko?

So Buck’s ideological religious faith shouldn’t give journalists the right to put his abortion views in a separate “personal” category, just like you wouldn’t expect journalists to label the marginalized views of ideological hunger or antinuclear activists as “personal.”

Plunkett, who’s pro-choice and finds Buck’s view “too extreme” yet “understandable,” didn’t accept my argument, but I think he hit the nail on the head when he wrote back:

“I could argue to you that anyone who lets their no-nukes belief get in the way of beneficial uses — like green (minus the radiation) energy — is a whacko. But in our society, if you want to be taken seriously, it’s difficult to say that about people with religious faith.”

He’s right, unfortunately, even if religious people make marginalized, whacko arguments like abortion should be banned if a father rapes his daughter.

But journalists shouldn’t implicitly excuse them by calling these beliefs “personal.”

I love it when any candidate (Democrat, Republican, or American Constitution Party) tells a reporter to prove him wrong and the reporter proceeds to prove him wrong. You’d think even talk-radio hosts would jump at such opportunities.

Back in May, and I apologize for getting to this so late, Scott McInnis threw down such a challenge during an appearance on the Jim Pfaff show on KLZ radio.

McInnis said:

“My record is pro-life. When I was in Congress, I had zero rating by NARAL. And that’s very easy for people to look at.”

He’s right, it is very easy to look at, and Pfaff himself should have gone and looked for it, but he didn’t. So I did, like others have done, at least partially, in the past.

It turns out McInnis indeed got a zero NARAL rating for five of 12 years in Congress, but for seven years he did not, meaning he got a greater-than-zero rating (between 7% and 45%) more times than he got a zero rating.

Here are scores from NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Congressional Record on Choice for McInnis when he served in Congress, and please email me if you want documentation: 1993, 25%; 1994, perfect record (Same as Pat Schroeder); 1995, 45%; 1996, 33%; 1997, 13%; 1998, 22%; 1999, 7%. Then he got a zero rating in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Even McInnis campaign strategist Mike Hesse told the Denver Post back in November that McInnis got a zero NARAL rating only near the end of his time in Congress. So Hesse was more clear than McInnis.

Pfaff is known to ask pointed questions to all his guests on the abortion issue, so I asked him if it occurred to him to check McInnis on his assertion that when he was “in Congress,” he got “zero rating by NARAL.”

“I believe that you see a pattern with him of moving forward on the issue and realizing he needed to come to better conclusions,” Pfaff told me. “He was wrong on that issue for many years.”

I pointed out to Pfaff that, regardless of McInnis’ evolving position on abortion, he made a misleading statement on his radio show, and Pfaff is the host.  I suggested to Pfaff that on his next talk-radio show, he set the record straight for his listeners, who might think McInnis got a zero rating by NARAL throughout his career in Congress, not just for five of 12 years.

“We’ll have to see,” he responded. “I mean, we’ll talk to him about whatever is most important to talk about. As a conservative, and I have a strong track record in the pro-life pro-family movement, I don’t limit my viewpoints to those opinions.  I believe in free market economics. I believe that we should protect life from conception to natural death, but I also believe we should protect life all the way in the middle by keeping government off our backs. I’m going to question candidates on a whole range of issues.

He added later: “I want to know why media critics aren’t criticizing the media for not pointing out that Democrats shut out pro-lifers, shut out free-market- thinking blue dog Democrats. They get shut out. The media never point out that there’s an assault on pro-life free market Democrats.”

I told Pfaff I would not criticize the news media for this because I don’t believe it’s true, but I said I’d talk to him more about it sometime.

Excerpt of Interview with Scott McInnis, May 17, Jim Pfaff show, KLZ radio, 560-AM.

Jim Pfaff: What is, though, very important is the discussions that have happened regarding your position on the life issue and your participation in an organization that’s been called Republicans for Choice. Your name showed up on a letterhead in 1998 while you were in Congress. And you’ve obviously taken some steps to try to explain what all this meant. First of all, how did your name end up on that letter? Explain that first.

Scott McInnis: Let’s start at the very beginning by saying I’m pro-life. I’ll be a pro-life governor. And when I become governor I will do just exactly like Gov. Owens did and that is we will defund the funding that Ritter and Hickenlooper would keep in place in regards to Planned Parenthood. So there’s no question about that. Second, in regards to my record, which is the beauty of what I have. Nobody else out there, they all say they are pro-life, but nobody has a record. My record is pro-life. When I was in Congress, I had zero rating by NARAL. And that’s very easy for people to look at.

Should we hold public officials to the same standards as writers when it comes to plagiarism?

I emailed this question to former Rocky Mountain News Editor John Temple,  who’s now leading an online journalism experiment in Hawaii.

As a veteran editor, he’s obviously thought a lot about plagiarism. In what was, I believe, the last major instance of plagiarism in Denver, the Rocky’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor Thom Beal resigned in 2005 after it was revealed by 5280 Magazine that he lifted wording from a Washington Post article. Beal also copied a phrase from the Daily Howler. Temple wrote an item in the Rocky personally apologizing for “this breach of our trust with you, our readers.”

Temple emailed me:

“I don’t think plagiarism is governed by professional boundaries. We saw what happened when Joe Biden plagiarized Neil Kinnock. Nobody should take somebody else’s words and use them without crediting the original source.”

I don’t know who would disagree with this. It’s clear that plagiarism is wrong, regardless of who commits it.

But how big a deal should be made of it? Did yesterday’s news, that McInnis plagiarized a couple passages for an op-ed and floor speech, merit The Post’s front page? I’d say yes, but only because of the context—that he had been caught in a bigger plagiarism scandal the day before, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars of foundation money.  The op-ed lapse would have been news either way, even if accepting opinion pieces from interest groups is common practice in Washington. But I don’t think it would have merited front-page treatment had McInnis’ water plagiarism not been on the front-page the day before.

Today’s news that Former Heritage Foundation scholar Daryl Plunk allegedly gave McInnis permission to use passages of his work does not change the news calculus. As Post Editor Greg More told The Post:

“It is an old ploy to blame the media for bad news. Allegedly having permission to copy someone else’s words or thoughts doesn’t necessarily mean that’s OK, but that is for others to decide.”

I think Moore got it right. And he’s also right that others will decide the fate politicians, while editors dictate what happens to reporters who plagiarize. 

“In my industry, an abuse like this one means you clean out your desk and go begging,” Chuck Plunkett wrote in the Spot blog Tuesday.  

So the immediate fate of a writer who plagiarizes is clear, while the immediate remifications for a politician are obviously not. Witness McInnis.

It’s natural that journalists would be focusing on plagiarism in the strange story of Scott McInnis, the Hasan Family Foundation, and the water articles. Writers think about plagiarism all the time. And McInnis’ assignment as a Hasan Fellow was mostly to write a “series of in-depth articles on water.”

But what’s more germane, going forward, is probably fraud, not plagiarism. And this is a story line that journalists should track closely.

That’s because McInnis had apparently entered into a contract with the Hasan Family Foundation to write the water articles. McInnis is correct when he says that the articles were never published, but, still, McInnis probably had a contractual agreement with the foundation to produce original articles, not to copy Judge Gregory Hobbs’ work.

His plagiarized articles appear to constitute a breach of his contract, and breach-of-contract is a common type of fraud.  Even if the work was being done for a foundation, it was a business transaction, and in the business world, unlike the day-to-day world journalists occupy, breach of contract, not plagiarism, rules the day.

And the Hasans look like they are in just the right mood to file the civil fraud lawsuit, given that they’re pissed (“shocked, angry, and disappointed,” according to an Hasan news release), and they’re conducting an internal investigation that might result in their asking for their money back from McInnis.

One might think McInnis would be jumping head over heels to calm the Hasans, given the media frenzy that would emerge from a lawsuit, but not really.

On the Caplis and Silverman show yesterday, McInnis stopped short of promising to return the money to the Hasans, if necessary, though he did say he’d try to work things out with them.

Silverman: Are you going to give the Hasan family their money back?

McInnis: As I say, I’m going to sit down and talk with them and do what we need to do to make it right.

To win a fraud case against McInnis, according to lawyers I spoke with, the foundation would have to prove four general elements, which hinge on  whether McInnis knew his articles were plagiarized. 

Asked by Craig Silverman yesterday whether he had signed a form stating that his work was “original,” McInnis said no.  But as has been widely reported, a 2005 memo submitted to “Seeme Hasan, Chairwoman; Hasan Foundation” under the name of “Scott McInnis, Senior Fellow” states, “All the Articles are original and not reprinted from any other source.”

McInnis is claiming that his researcher made the writing mistakes that resulted in the plagiarism. This would make McInnis’ deceit unintentional.  But his researcher, Rolly Fischer, is blaming McInnis for the plagiarism, so there looks to be lots of material for a court fight, with McInnis, Fischer and the Hasans as the star witnesses.

“A civil fraud claim by the Hasan Foundation is one of many things that Scott McInnis needs to be worried about today,” Craig Silverman wrote me via email. “$300,000 is a lot of money to make, and a lot of money to return.  If a lawsuit happens, then there are the costs and attorney fees to be considered. If this is fully played out,there would be brutal lengthy depositions and other forms of discovery before you ever get close to a trial.”

Drew Dougherty, media contact for the Hasans, told me today that the foundation will not make any decisions about next steps until after its internal investigation is completed.

Journalists should discuss the fraud option with lawyers and the Hasans themselves, as this story plays out.

As a Mother Jones blog headline yesterday put it, “McInnis in hot water.”

You know that’s the case when, as a reporter, you have so much material to investigate, you don’t know where to go first. That’s where things stand this morning.

But among the unwritten articles out there, perhaps one of the biggest is the story of McInnis research assistant, Rolly Fischer, whom McInnis is blaming for the plagiarized water articles.

Here’s what McInnis told 7News yesterday:

“I had staff assistance, I had research, and as you know, the research – that’s where the problem is here,” McInnis said.

 ”But who wrote the articles?” Ferrugia asked.

 ”Well, I had staff assistance and I edited the articles, they went in under my name,” McInnis said. “Well, I edited them but I didn’t run them through a check to see if they, I mean, from our expert, Rollie, you know he’s an expert in water for three or four decades. So I took what he said at face value.” ”I had staff assistance, I had research, and as you know, the research – that’s where the problem is here,” McInnis said.

“But who wrote the articles?” Ferrugia asked.

“Well, I had staff assistance and I edited the articles, they went in under my name,” McInnis said. “Well, I edited them but I didn’t run them through a check to see if they, I mean, from our expert, Rollie, you know he’s an expert in water for three or four decades. So I took what he said at face value.”

Later McInnis told KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman that Fischer was “remorseful” and “sick about this.” McInnis said:

“No I had a research assistant. And he was 29 or 30 years as the head of the Colorado Water Conservation District. He was an expert on water. Great guy. He feels very remorseful about this. He is sick about this.”

Trouble is, both McInnis statements about Fischer, that he’s responsible and remorseful, don’t look to reflect what Fischer himself is thinking.

Yesterday Fischer reportedly told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

“Scott’s responsible for it.”

That doesn’t sound like a guy who’s taking responsibility for something he’s sorry about.

At this point, I think landing the interview with Fischer is the biggest journalistic catch to be made, in a sea of water where there’s plenty of stuff to catch (and we’re not talking catch-and-release here).

Trouble is, landing the interview with Fischer won’t be easy for reporters.

When The Denver Post went to his home yesterday in Glenwood Springs, Fischer told a Post reporter, “I don’t trust the press.” (Coincidentally, McInnis has been awfully hostile to the press himself, refusing to discuss his plagiarism with The Post and, during the campaign, dissing journalism generally.)

So it’s going to take some work to get Fischer to tell his story, which deserves to be told. Maybe a blogger is the right person for the job? Someone who’s not a journalist.

UPDATE: Today’s Denver Post quotes an expert saying McInnis committed plagiarism, but the body of The Post story still does not describe McInnis’ lapse as plagiarism. The Post reported today: “A Clemson University expert who reviewed McInnis’ work next to Hobbs’ essay called it a clear case of plagiarism of both words and ideas.”  Particularly because the McInnis campaign has said that passages of the water articles should have been attributed, reporters can fairly and accurately characterize McInnis’ as having plagiarized the work of Justice Gregory Hobbs. McInnis may say it wasn’t intentional, but it’s still plagiarism.

If you read Westword, you might think that Scott McInnis had an utterly uniqe writing style on display in his 150 pages of water articles for the Hasan Family Foundation.

If so, you were wrong, because the writing wasn’t unique to McInnis. Some of it was penned by now Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs, according to a Spot Blog post in The Denver Post.

The Spot post reports that sentences and paragraphs in McInnis’ Hasan writings are identical to Hobbs’ work.

According to the Spot, The Post will publish more details, including samples of the identical writings, in the newspaper tomorrow.

Strangely, however, The Post did not use the word “plagiarism” to describe the identical writings.

Neither did The Post use the word “plagiarism” in a blog post earlier this year when Jane Norton lifted a quote, almost exactly, from Gerry Ford. She used it in the announcement of her U.S. Senate bid.

I blogged at the time that The Post should have used the word “plagiarism” to describe Norton’s lapse–and that reporters should have demanded an explanation from Norton, even though the plagiarism looked relatively minor to many people.

Norton said, “I believe a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government that’s big enough to take everything you have.”

Ford said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

This may look like simple sloganeering, but for writers and people in public life, this is serious stuff.

One of the most respected ethicists in the journalism world, Prof. Robert Steele, who is the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute and the Director of the Jane Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, agreed with me about the Norton quote. Here’s what he wrote me regarding Norton:

If one uses a common understanding of plagiarism — using the specific words or nearly exact thoughts of someone else and claiming them as your original writing or thoughts — then Norton’s use of this quote falls into that category.

My guess is that many politicians have used a variation of this phrase over the years to capture an ideological position about the role of government in our society. If Norton had just taken the broad concept and stated it in her own words, she might have been OK. For instance, if she said something like, “A government that gives can take. We should be wary of big government that promises too much and makes us pay back all we receive,” she would have made her point (albeit with a less resounding quote) and avoided the plagiarism trap.

Given her use of the exact wording, Norton should have attributed the phrase to Ford (assuming he was the originator of the phrase and didn’t borrow it himself from someone else). 

If a journalist used this same exact phrase without attribution, I would want to know how it happened. I would ask the journalist how and why she/he used that phrase and why it wasn’t attributed. I would also check other work produced by that journalist to see if there are other problems with attribution. I would discipline the journalist based on the extent and reason for the failure in this case and whether the journalist has a history of plagiarism. That discipline could range from a serious reprimand to a suspension to dismissal.

In this case, I would ask Norton some questions. How did this happen? Did you write this speech? If so, where did you get that line? If not, who wrote the speech and/or that line? Perhaps one of her speech writers did this. Norton, as the person who used the words is still primarily responsible, of course. I would also do some plagiarism checking of her other speeches to see if this is a recurring problem.

I made certain that Steele saw that Norton’s words weren’t exactly the same as Ford’s.

“Norton’s words are very, very close to the exact wording of the Ford quote and her expression of this thought is almost verbatim to Ford’s expression,” he wrote back.  “Norton should have attributed the statement to Ford. By not doing so, she claimed it as her original thought. That’s wrong.”

If that’s what Steele had to say about Norton’s plagiarism, you can only imagine what he’d say about McInnis’, which amounts to numerous sentences and paragraphs, according to The Spot.

Norton’s plagiarism is likely tiny potatoes compared to what everyone expects to see from McInnis in tomorrow’s Denver Post.

If that’s true, then journalists should definitely call it plagiarism, and all the questions suggested by Steele are in order.

Interestingly, Post reporters did use the P word at least once this year. When Vice President Joe Biden came to Denver in April, GOP chair Dick Wadhams joked to a Post reporter about Joe Biden’s past plagiarism problems. In a piece quoting Wadhams, The Spot reported that Vice President Joe Biden was “accused of plagiarism.”

I emailed a Post editor and reporter asking why the word “plagiarism” wasn’t used to describe McInnis’ lapse, but I did not get an immediate response.