"Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength..."

"... if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information," writes Oliver Sacks in an essay about memory.

Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

"Romney’s tongue-tied eloquence."

Fareed Zakaria is back, back to kick Romney in the mouth, back from exile, presumably now purged of his plagiarism sins. Let's see how eloquent his eloquence critique is:

As President Obama has surged in the polls, Republicans have been quick to identify the problem: Mitt Romney. Peggy Noonan eloquently voiced what many conservatives believe when she said that Romney’s campaign has been a “rolling calamity.” Others have been equally critical of his candidacy. And yet, shouldn’t it puzzle us that Romney is so “incompetent” (also from Noonan), given his deserved reputation for, well, competence? He founded one of this country’s most successful financial firms, turned around the flailing Salt Lake City Olympics and was a successful governor. How did he get so clumsy so fast?

Rasmussen has the candidates locked in a tie. They're 46/46 again today, same as yesterday, and pretty much the same for the past week.  But if you want to find Obama surging, there are polls to satisfy your urge for the surge. These polls are grotesquely oversampling Democrats, to the point where the joke has become obvious, but maybe you can find your pleasure there, if you're also the sort that listens to Peggy Noonan as the exemplar of what conservatives are thinking. She eloquently voiced the opinion you want to hear: Romney’s campaign has been a “rolling calamity.”

If you bother to keep reading — and it's likely both Obama fans and Romney fans stopped at "rolling calamity," either pleased or disgusted — you'll see many paragraphs asserting that Romney doesn't want to talk about taxes and illegal immigration. He's "tongue-tied" because there's "a new kind of political correctness" in the GOP:

They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden.... As a result, he has twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously... That’s a straitjacket that even Peggy Noonan’s eloquence cannot get him out of.

I'm picturing Peggy using her tongue to untwist a pretzel. Or is she unbuckling a straitjacket? Marvelous writing, Fareed. Did you make that all up yourself?

"[T]here is a big difference between being a plagiarist — at bottom, lazy or sloppy — and being a fabulist."

David Carr on Fareed Zakaria and Jonah Lehrer.

It's tougher to make things up than to copy, and yet it's Lehrer who's screwed himself more deeply.

Fareed Zakaria plagiarism screwup.

How is it possible for someone in his position to make a mistake like this?

The risk far outweighs any convenience in copying material like this. It can't be deliberate. It's easy these days to copy something for your notes and later simply mistake it for something you've written. It's also possible that someone else, someone untrustworthy, ghostwrites for him. Or perhaps there are talking points floating around in email and both LePore and Zakaria cut and pasted the same thing.

Are you excited about the new Lady Gaga single or did you feel compelled to hit pause and start singing Madonna's "Express Yourself"?

You can listen to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" here. And here's Madonna over at YouTube, where there are lots of new comments about "Born This Way."

Gaga is singing about self-affirmation in this form:

Rejoice and love yourself today
'Cause baby you were Born This Way

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life
I'm on the right track baby
I was born to survive

Madonna's "Express Yourself" had you expressing yourself and demanding that your man express himself:

What you need is a big strong hand
To lift you to your higher ground
Make you feel like a queen on a throne
Make him love you till you can't come down

"Simpson is not only a misogynistic old geezer, he's a plagiarizing old geezer."

My dear, it's called an allusion. The error isn't stealing, it's assuming people get it.

"If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words..."

"... it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade... And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit."

The internet is changing the way students think about plagiarism... or — I would add — they way they lie about it.

"Chronicle Review Admits Bellesiles’s Story is False — Blames Student, not Bellesiles."

"Bellesiles is a demonstrated scholarly fraud, and doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that many people are giving him. Once you’ve been busted for making stuff up, you need to be sure that what you publish is reasonably accurate. Bellesiles illustrates, once again, that he cares more about the narrative than about being sure his facts are correct, though I suppose that passing on other people’s fabrications is arguably a modest improvement over creating his own."

When do we believe the teacher who blames the student? Ask Elena Kagan.

Being Prime Minister was Tony's idea first!

A hilarious use of YouTube (found via Drudge). I'm jumping over the first minute or so to make it funnier, but feel free to drag the slider back to the beginning if you're the leisurely sort:

Stealing that joke about shoplifting?

Sorry that joke was lying on the sidewalk, there for anyone with a sharp eye to pick it up. The first person to blurt it out on Twitter doesn't get to attach his name to it. Not guilty.

Rush Limbaugh answers my question about how President Obama, a law professor, could have responded to the Citizens United case the way he did.

Yesterday, at 8:42 a.m. CT, I wrote:

So, the Supreme Court came out with a big free-speech decision yesterday, and President Obama's response was that he needs "to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less."...

The President was a law professor — technically, a "senior lecturer" at the University of Chicago Law School — for 12 years. Why would a law professor oppose a Supreme Court decision on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the Court and honor our system of separation of powers?

And here's Rush Limbaugh, on yesterday's show (which begins at 11:00 CT):

Now, the Supreme Court came out with this big free speech decision yesterday. It's sweeping. It is huge. Did you hear Obama's response? Obama said that he needs to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing else, a forceful response. Now, I want to point out that Obama was a law professor, or technically a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago law school for 12 years. Now, why would a law professor oppose a Supreme Court decision on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the court and honor our system of separation of powers? Why? Of course it's easy. Because he doesn't like the Constitution. And this we know. He thinks the Constitution restrains him and restricts him for doing things to people. The Constitution spells out what the government may not do, and that's what he doesn't like.

IN THE COMMENTS:  El Pollo Real wrote:

So, are you peeved that he didn't mention you, curious about why he didn't, or flattered even though he didn't?

I said:

The similarity of the language — especially "on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the court and honor our system of separation of powers" — makes it unquestionably mine. He did this once before that I noticed, but I declined to post about it.

I'm happy that he or somebody who prepares material for him reads my blog, but certainly if you're going to quote me like that, you ought to say my name.

If you go to the link, you'll see that the very next paragraph begins: "Thomas Lifson writing about this in the AmericanThinker.com." Why didn't I get that? Lifson even got his URL said aloud.

He has used things from my blog a couple times and named me. That needs to be the standard form, certainly when a quote is used. I think there are other occasions when a topic is inspired by a blog post, and I think in at least some of those cases, the blogger whose idea is used ought to be credited by name.

It's quite possible that my material arrived chez Rush in email form without attribution, but all they'd have to do is put a distinctive phrase in Google and they would see if it's a quote so they could give credit.

I think perhaps Rush has text in front of him that he is intending to paraphrase -- as he started to do with my post -- and then for one reason or another he lapses into outright quoting. Maybe he's in a hurry or he can't, in real time, quite understand the text so he can't paraphrase it.

I don't think it's outrageous and deliberate presentation of my work as his. I just think I should get named.

Another thought is that maybe they're trying to protect me from the wrath of Madison, Wisconsin and law professors everywhere. They should email me if they have questions in that vein. In case you are wondering, Rush and his people have never corresponded with me about anything.

"As a college professor, I've heard many excuses for plagiarism over the years, but I don't believe that I've ever heard one quite that lame."

Language Log shows why you shouldn't believe Maureen Dowd. People just don't remember that sort of thing verbatim. Or is the non-lame response: Everyone these days understands that "talking to" includes emailing and IM'ing?

Certainly, in blogging, we say "X said" to mean "X wrote." And I see that I just said "we say" to mean "we write"... And I just said "I just said" to mean...

Oh, enough! Let me say instead that I didn't even bother to blog the Maureen Dowd "plagiarism" story (until now) because I don't consider that kind of thing serious plagiarism. It's sloppy and embarrassing, but it's completely unintentional and not a deliberate effort to pass off someone else's writing as one's own.

It was dull prose, not an eloquent phrasing or snappy quip. So this was was the sort of faux-plagiarism that constantly threatens all of us in these days of quick cutting and pasting. You think you know what is a quote when you're compiling your notes, but maybe later you see it and think it's yours.

Now, I like to believe I'll remember what blocks of text I dropped into my documents, and if I'm not too rushed or I think I might forget, I put quote marks or indentations to remind me what's not mine. Also, I think if I look back on something that I didn't write, I'll recognize that it's not my style.

But it's possible to slip up, and what Dowd did looks like exactly the sort of thing that can only be a slip.

The real fault is not making it a point always to write sharp, distinctive prose. Prose like the stuff Dowd lifted called out for rewriting. She might not have known to think I can't use that because I didn't write it. But should should at least have thought I can't use that because it's dull.

It's sad, because Dowd tends to err in the other direction — rewriting things into the snappiest possible prose. That quirk should have saved her from this slip. It didn't this time. She's been embarrassed. That's all.

"Has the man who writes best selling books about his ‘Conversations with God’ also heard God’s commandments? Thou shalt not steal...."

Well, if you have conversations with God, you're pretty special. Maybe you get some special rules. Perhaps, those generic commandments are for the little people.

Neale Donald Walsch accused of plagiarism, would like you to believe that "he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually happened to him."

Except for a different first paragraph in which Mr. Walsch wrote that he could “vividly remember” the incident, his Dec. 28 Beliefnet post followed, virtually verbatim, [Candy] Chand’s previously published writing, even down to prosaic details like “the morning of the dress rehearsal, I filed in ten minutes early, found a spot on the cafeteria floor and sat down.”

Aw. Come on. Give him a chance. Here's how I'm picturing it:

GOD: Yo, Walsch. Conversation time.

WALSCH: What is it now, Lord?

GOD: You know that that thing Candy Chand wrote? Where she went to that Christmas pageant and one of the kids holds the M upside-down? "Christmas Love" becomes "Christ Was Love."

WALSCH: Why you lap up that sentimental crap, I will never understand.

GOD: LOL, do not try to understand my ways, Walsch. I invented cute. And I also invented practical jokes, so here's my idea. I want you to copy that story, word for word, and publish it on the intertubes...

WALSCH: That's supposed to be funny?

GOD: "Intertubes"? That will never stop being funny.

WALSCH: No, I mean me blatantly plagiarizing something.

GOD: You copy the whole thing word for word, but then — here's the hilarious part — you add a first paragraph all about how you "vividly remember" that time you went to the Christmas pageant.

WALSCH: This will be so easily discovered...

GOD: Yeah, it used to be just me that knew about all the lying and cheating. Now, with the intertubes...

WALSCH: Am I allowed to say that gets on my nerves?

GOD: Now, with the intertubes, a lot more people can discover lying and cheating. Hijinks ensue. And when you are discovered, because, of course, you will be discovered...

WALSCH: Obviously...

GOD: When you are discovered, I want you to claim — really sincerely — that you actually mistakenly believed that you remembered the incident as if it had happened to you. You can be all: "I am chagrined and astonished that my mind could play such a trick on me."

WALSCH: You think that's funny?

GOD: Mmm-hmmm.

WALSCH: People aren't going to believe that.

GOD: The believe you have conversations with God, don't they?

Is Justice Alito harboring a grudge against Joe Biden?

AP seems to think so, in this report on a speech he gave last night at a dinner celebrating the anniversary of the "conservative" American Spectator magazine:

Alito made several joking references to Vice President-elect Joseph Biden... including Biden's withdrawal from the 1988 presidential campaign over plagiarizing parts of a speech from a British politician.

"To coin a phrase, in the spirit of the vice president-elect, you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need," Alito said, an imperfect rendering of a Rolling Stones lyric.

Then, he added, "Did someone say that before?"

A bit later in his talk... Alito said he was about to quote liberally from a magazine article. "In the spirit of the vice president-elect, I want to honor the copyright laws," Alito said.

AP surmises that he's still pissed about questions Biden asked at Alito's confirmation hearings.

In case you've forgotten, here's how Biden acted back then:

"I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," he began, with some promise.

Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito's failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge's investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds - short for the senator - Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito's membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who "ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania."

Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden's musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for "being responsive," then said to Mr. Specter that "I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time."

But I don't think it's necessary to infer that Alito's still pissed about that and getting back at the garrulous old VP-elect. We all make fun of Biden whenever we feel like it.

You know what's terrifying?

Jerry Seinfeld cracking jokes about you.

Jerry Seinfeld's late-night rant about his wife's cookbook rival was no joke to the author's family.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Missy Chase Lapine said her young daughter was unnerved by Seinfeld's comments on the David Letterman show, which compared her to some of history's most notorious killers.

"I have never felt so frightened and vulnerable as the day my daughter, 7 years old, came home from school and asked, 'Mom, what is an assassin?,'" Lapine writes in papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court.

Here's the video, copied from TV in makeshift fashion: