One third of Daines’ $5 million is from MT

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
"Hadouken," Daines retorts

“Hadouken,” retorted Daines

The Democratic Party of Montana has found a replacement for lurching plagiarist John Walsh: Amanda Curtis, high school math teacher and Butte resident, presumed plucky. And she is getting the full disbursement of leftover Walsh funding allowed by law: two thousand dollars. Meanwhile, an entity called the Lee Newspapers State Bureau reports that about one third of Republican Steve Daines’s $5 million in campaign funds came from within the state. That’s actually a lot for a small-population Senate race.

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Times finds that Walsh plagiarized large portions of War College thesis

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
Senator John Walsh (D–MT) wears a facial expression he plagiarized from a box of Lemonheads.

Senator John Walsh (D–MT) wears a facial expression he plagiarized from a box of Lemonheads.

It is extremely generous of the New York Times to say that Montana Senator John Walsh “confronts questions of plagiarism,” given that the last 800 words of his master’s thesis are taken verbatim from a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The document that Walsh turned in to get his degree from the US Army War College in 2007 contains several uncited passages from related papers on the internet, along with several passages that are footnoted but not quoted, despite being copied from the original sources word-for-word. I encourage you to read the Times article, if only to get a sense of what a mash-up Walsh’s thesis appears to be. There’s also a rad denial from the Senator himself, but you’ll have to click on the jump to read that.

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George Zimmerman to box DMX for “charity”

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 2 Comments
George Zimmerman prepares to make the second-worst mistake of his life.

George Zimmerman prepares to make the second-worst mistake of his life.

First of all, eff CNN for the lede of this story, which is not only unfunny but also applicable to pretty much any story about anything anywhere. The ellipses don’t help. Second, props to A. Ron Galbraith for again sending me a delightful link. And third, is it really such a good idea for George Zimmerman to box DMX? Obviously its a bad idea for America as a culture, but it also seems to be a bad idea for Zimmerman, who two years ago was taken down an badly beaten by an opponent he outweighed by 70 pounds. Plus DMX has announced that he intends to pee on him.

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