Raw Story: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) has been caught once again using other people’s written work without attribution, this time in a lawsuit against the NSA that he jointly filed with Virginia’s ex-Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli.
According to the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, the suit alleges that the National Security Agency’s domestic phone surveillance program is unconstitutional, but that neither Cuccinelli nor Paul did the bulk of the legal work on the suit. The majority of the suit’s verbiage was lifted verbatim from the work of former Reagan administration attorney Bruce Fein.
Speaking through Mattie Fein, his ex-wife and spokesperson, Fein said, “I am aghast and shocked by Ken Cuccinelli’s behavior and his absolute knowledge that this entire complaint was the work product, intellectual property and legal genius of Bruce Fein. Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit.”
She continued by pointing out that Paul “already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer’s work product.”
And here’s the problem with copying off the other kids’ papers: what Paul and Cuccinelli had hoped would be a big, headline-grabbing, grandstand on an issue with bipartisan appeal has become all about their unwillingness to do any work at all and not about the NSA. If you want to be a Big, Important Senator with Many Important Stances on Many Important Issues who does Many Important Interviews on Many Important Talking Head Shows, it helps not to wander around the yard like a clown, stepping on rakes.
