As Jonah noted, Ohio Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown has been caught in an apparent act of plagiarism in a letter to his Republican rival, Sen. Mike DeWine, criticizing Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Brown’s letter contained passages apparently lifted from a liberal blog run by a New Jersey lawyer named Nathan Newman. For example, according to the paper, Newman wrote on his blog on November 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.

In his November 4 letter, Sherrod wrote:

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.

The Plain Dealer also reports that “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.”

It might seem a clear-cut case, but the pro-Democratic Newman dismissed the lifting of his words as no big deal. “Who frigging cares?” he wrote. Perhaps more importantly, Brown also received support from the popular left-wing blogger Atrios, who wrote:

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

For those who don’t know, Atrios is Duncan B. Black, a senior fellow at David Brock’s media watchdog group Media Matters for America, which, among its other causes, strongly criticized the disgraced reporter Jeff Gannon for copying material straight from Republican National Committee talking points.