As someone who works in an academic library, I find the comments in the Fray dismissing Biden's conduct as insignificant and a distant memory to be really, really sad. It is not just the nonsense that criticizing Biden--or Obama for selecting him--is somehow the equivalent the supporting McCain or Bush, but the belief that being a dishonest person is fine as long as it is in the past or when compared to something completely irrelevant like the Iraq War.

Intellectual honesty is a lynchpin of not just the academic world but also of our society at large. If there is no trust and integrity how can their be social cohesiveness and progress?

It does not matter that he cheated in college back in the 60s or pretended to be someone else in the 80s. The point is he was permitted to graduate and stay in politics when shown to be a fraud. To me, "20 years ago" does not sound like a distant past, but the realization that the American population is willing to support mountebanks as long as they reflect their political beliefs.

Is the "change" Obama is talking about? You know, we wouldn't have lies like the ones surrounding the Iraq War if we as a nation demanded intellectual integrity from ALL politicians.

Oh my, I'm finally convinced!! This is a serious moral failing, and it really doesn't matter that Biden has served with honor and distinction for the last 20 years, and that the jury is, to this day, still out on whether it was plagiarism or just a forgotten attribution. I say brand this mountebank with a large "P" on his forehead, cut out the offending tongue, and cast him out into the eternal Dark. Immediately, or we'll all feel the lash of an unforgiving God on our shoulders!

Heavens, what DO you DO in that academic library - deliver stone copies of the 10 Commandments to the circulation desk? To quote Gertie Stein ( no plagiarism, please!), in my opinion, and your formulation, "their is no their their!"

Now let's discuss Ivan Denisovitch, and scratching a cross in the dirt, and guards at the Hanoi Hilton, and John McCain's religiosity - oh, did you know he was a POW?

To dismiss the Neil Kinnock incident is not dismissing "intellectual dishonesty". In fact, the dishonesty in evidence here is exhibited by those who "dismiss" the reported fact that Biden consistantly attributed his words to Kinnock in all but two out of dozens of speeches.

Or do you actually possess the cognitive dissonence to truly believe that a 15 year Senator was suddenly trying to adopt a new identity in front of hundreds of reporters via a speech he had previously given as belonging to Kinnock just days before? To many of the same reporters?

The article wasn't about the Law school plagiarism--that incident can be ligitimately criticized. But to say that the Kinnock speech was an example of intelectual dishonesty betrays either dishonesty on your own part or the inability to think logically. Neither of which are desirable traits for academic librarians--or does your touted work in the library involve a mop and bucket?.

Academic honesty is the linchpin of society at large? Really? Are you suggesting that academic honesty is the barometer or the source of the trust and integrity on which society is based?

Perhaps even more absurd is your suggestion that what Joe Biden did (failed to attribute where he had done so a great deal before) is to be taken on par with what the current administration did to create an environemnet for war.

I don't want to echo the comments of others about what you might do in this academic library, but the suggestion that because you are somehow involved in academics means that you have some special authority to speak on this enormous and broad ranging issue is a bit absurd. I am an academic, so listen to me? I respect the authority of information and reasoning, not "look at my CV, I must be right." Psh.

As a second thought, more importantly this article does nothing to explain the importance of this plagarism. All it does is say "look, it happened" and "gee, someone should find out why this matters," and only then in the last paragraph.

Excuse me, but Saru definitely did not compare Biden's plagiarism with the Iraq war - s/he said the latter was irrelevant to this issue. You've failed to comprehend the post, or address the point that people are so desparate to elect Obama that they're willing to get in bed with a seriously bizarre dude like Biden. And let's stop the ad hominem attacks - Saru's profession has nothing to do with anything...

Au contraire, mon petit julester, au contraire!

Saru raised the academic library position as a qualification for the "bully pulpit" - other elements in his/her post legitimately lead me, and others, to doubt the validity and depth of that qualification.

As to the "irrelevance" of the Iraq war - he/she dismisses it as irrelevant in the first para, then raises it again in the last, as a means of showing us just how "disastrous" it would be to have that sinner, Joe Biden, in office. YOU have failed to comprehend the post.

"Seriously bizarre dude?" On the basis of what? Shafer's crummy little regurgitation? Give us a break - examine the legislative record before allowing your bias to strangle your intellect.

Pardon me while I get back in bed - not with Biden, but with an aspirin. You make my brain ache.

julester

Saru need not explicitly state "Biden's plagiarism is comparable to Bush's lies," but it is clearly the meaning of her final paragraph to draw a direct link between Biden's plagiarism (really, a failure to cite in one instance) and measure it against the failures of this administration.

"Is the "change" Obama is talking about? You know, we wouldn't have lies like the ones surrounding the Iraq War if we as a nation demanded intellectual integrity from ALL politicians."

The meaning clearly is "If we didn't have politicians like Biden, who lie in this specific fashion, we wouldn't have issues like the Iraq War, where politicans lied in the same fashion."

Sonnet

And since I cannot seem to finish my thoughts in one post, I would add that my suggestions that Sanu's qualifications as stated don't meet the burden of proof for us to give them special credence is not an ad hom. However, claiming I am making a character attack is a easy and empty way of deflecting my just criticism of Sanu's failure to argue from adequate authority.

Biden's so-called plagarism is actually the mark of a character. It is the kind of thing everyone does, and all that's "sad" is all these sour grapes. Intellectual Honesty? Intellectual Honesty? Isn't everything owned now previously stolen? Isn't that literally true? Your intellectual honesty is a front for intellectual property rights. Your tongue is metaphorically forked. And you oh-so subtely degrade the Public welfare by tying your empty, rhetorical, vainglorious intellectualness to integrity. Like the cheese, Integrity stands along. There is no such thing as "intellectual" integrity! Itegrity is, wait for it, an integration of all the human being, of which the intellect is a part. Finally, to you "Sad", I say, the ending of a sentance with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put! And don't worry, be happy. This is all original material/

But, when tensions boil between India & Pakistan how will Mr. Biden be received after the racial dig about 7/11 & Dunkin Doughnuts. Seriously.

Finally, a rational question, and one worth considering.

OK, I've considered.

I guess when I put it up against our current disappointment with Pooty-poot, and JMcC's inability to locate either the former Czechoslovakia or the Iraq-Pakistan border, I just don't give a beach volleyballer's butt. We sure as hell couldn't do any worse.