Here's what an official Red State contributor had to say:

Here's what we'll do.     By: Leon H Wolf
I notice from the date of that posting that Ben would have been either 16 or 17 when he wrote those pieces. Maybe you were fluent in APA guidelines for blockquoting and attribution at that age, but I wasn't.

Nonetheless!

I think you may be on to something here.

What we'll do is we'll go back to everything everyone ever wrote from when they were 16 years of age or older. If we find anything that is not properly attributed according to APA/Blue Book/some other professional standard of writing, we disqualify them from holding a job, forever.

Sounds like a plan to me.

When I was 17, I had already had years and years of extremely strict guidance about plagiarism, copying, and other forms of cheating or stealing.

That education took place both in a pretty standard public school and in my high school, which was a mixed "semi-private" day- and boarding- school in rural Maine.

There were several instances in both Freshman and Sophomore English Lit Classes where people were caught copying others' work, either in class or on homework, OR in terms of cliff's notes or other forms of plagiarizing on take-home book reports or essays...

They were given failing marks on that work, were often given extremely severe punishments including detentions or the like, and were told that any further examples of that behavior would result in either suspension or expulsion.

Period.

Leon H. is a moron, has no scruples and is a hypocritical turd.

Ben "Augustine" Domenech is a plagiarist, a Confederate-lover, and a racist.

It wasn't cool when Sherrod Brown was caught doing it and it isn't cool when GOP mouthpieces get caught doing it and it also stinks when the GOP does it. The blogosphere respects writers by offering links to credit. Both sides of the blogosphere should strongly come out against those who pass off others writings as their own without giving credit where credit is due.

The Post should be ashamed that they have yet to fire him.  If they actually were concerned about, say, covering the news, then it would be mentioned anywhere on their website by now.  Pathetic.

If you're going to be fair, check memeorandum. There are already a few conservative blogs speaking to the issue. My own post is below.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorou s_conservative/2006/03/domenech_has_to.h tml

...or we're misinformed about the fact that all of those writers actually gave Domenech permission to copy their work.

In the long run, does that matter?  Does getting the permission of the author give one license to present their words as your own original work?

As far as I know, permission or no permission, academic ethics still require you to identify the author of material that is not your own.

Joe Conason at salon has written about it.

His college paper is looking into the charges, so they are taking it seriously.  So far the National Review isn't.  But I expect Editor & Publisher, etc. to weigh in, and the Post is going to have to respond.

I hate to say this but from what I can tell, the this has nothing to do with integrity, journalism or balance, but has everything to do with WashingtonPost.com's knowledge of the blogosphere, Google, the web, and knowledge that its audience is different then the paper's.  

Key thing folks: the web site wapo.com, is ran by a different team then the paper's.  

I wrote more about it here:
http://www.paradox1x.org/weblog/kmartino /archives/004496.shtml

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/03/ wash-post-ombudsman-blows-off.html

The pape will deny any responsibility for the site.  

The site knows exactly what it is doing.

it would appear that in 2002 Domenech fabricated a Tim Russert quote

or is this some other thing that Ben made up?  

There are just so many, they're hard to keep straight.
.

I notice that Ben hasn't posted anything to his WaPo blog since about 2 PM yesterday.  Coincidence?

Boy, I'd love to be a fly on the wall over at the WaPo right now.

A few comments:

First off, if The Washington Post is actually denying responsibility for its website, that is one of the thinner and smarmier lies I've heard for a while, and is really disturbing.

Secondly, if Domenech had on a couple of occasions plagiarized minor amounts of content that appeared in his high school or college newspapers, those would be venial sins and they wouldn't matter. But it looks like he was a serial plagiarizer whose stolen content appeared on the national scene. That's a horse of a different color.

I need to tell a story here. When I was 16 years old I attended a summer journalism program at a major university. They sent us out to cover "the world's largest garage sale." I was a very shy kid, and I simply fabricated the quotes for the story I filed. I made up some names, and I attached one fictitious quote to the name that I had gotten from someone who I had interviewed.

Lo and behold, the teachers decided mine was the best of the 90 stories. I got all kinds of praise, and they arranged to have it printed in a summer edition of the college paper. I was mortified and scared out of my gourd that the person who I had named but who didn't say what I attributed to him would step forward.

I was never unmasked, but the incident stayed with me forever. It was the end of my lyin' days, that's for sure. So when I see Domenech's plagiarism on the one hand I can sort of sympathize with him but on the other hand the frequency and extent of his theft tells me that he is, or at least was for a time, brazen and out of control.

To me, the real issue should be whether this was a passing phase. Did the guy clean up his act after having an internal come-to-Jesus session? The record really ought to show. Also, I want to see how he handles it now. If the guy fails to come completely clean, that'll speak volumes.

Finally, the issue of basic ethics -- plagiarism, fabrication, censorship, disregard for fact and the reckless deployment of ad hominem attacks -- is a big issue throughout the blogosphere. You see it everywhere, including on the left-wing blogs, and no one says anything about it.

Here are some examples that I'm familiar with:

Just in the last couple weeks, Capitol Hill Blue made what is almost certainly a phony claim that it had received a "National Security Letter" from the FBI alleging that the government had demanded information about its staff, contributors and readers. I originally believed it, but then took a closer look and have shown that the claim is almost certainly a hoax.

I reported this to Buzzflash, a liberal site, which did nothing with it. Capitol Hill Blue did what sites always do when challenged: They banned me.

A couple months ago, I was effectively banned from Daily Kos for repeating the verified fact that one-third of the contributions from Abramhoff's corrupt keiretsu went to Democrats. Mention of the same facts got me booted off of Democrats.com.

And when I pointed out critical errors in the coverage of a "gore-for-porn scandal" highlighted by the liberal Americablog, its owner and chief bottlewasher, John Aravosis, declared me "rude" and banned me for a time. And his flogging of that "scandal" wound up putting the blogger in jail, and as of the end of April, off of the Internet.

So, while I offer a lusty cheer for unmasking Domenech, I'd also note that some stones are being thrown by folks who live in glass houses.

Go to Opensecrets.com

It's all there.