Parrots running amok in Idaho?

A piece by KTVB titled Failed congressional candidate dogged by new allegation of plagiarism provides an unintentionally humorous look at plagiarism in politics, and yes it does contain the line Ward parrots what Democrat John Kerry believes

On a more serious side, the text:

Boise State University English professor Mike Markel reviewed the Ward and Obama speeches, at KTVB's request.
"Although you cannot ever definitively prove plagiarism from internal evidence alone, I would say it is very likely that whoever wrote the second speech was working with a copy of the first speech before him or her," Dr. Markel said.

would seem to be wrong. One can prove plagiarism (which is simply copying without attribution) by means of side-by-side comparison.

Previous iPBiz posts related to parrots include

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/crovitz-on-loose-again-parroting.html [Crovitz is a UChicago grad and ought to know better.]


Lex Luther challenges Howard Berman on patent reform, HR 1908 including a picture of a "real parrot" [Lex Luther] and the line:

Someone reportedly heard Luther mutter under his breath that Berman's slavish devotion to the advancement of patent interests only of the IT industry was giving "parrots a bad name."