Maureen Mimics Marshall

In what is the signature line of Maureen Dowd's column today, she actually took a stand and called for action. Many bloggers were taken aback by her rare advocacy of an actual position. But it seems Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo made the same demand almost word for word on Thursday:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Maureen's version (with the differences in bold):

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

And the current online version:

Josh Marshall said in his blog: “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

Note that the handy little explanatory 'the Bush crowd' is now gone.

The Huffington Post has Dowd's denial of outright thievery, but it sure smells fishy:

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.

i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

So her defense is that she stole from a friend rather than from a blog. So in her mind, she's only a second hand plagiarist. Either that or she is from the Doris Kearns Goodwin School of Sloppy Notekeeping. I'd easier believe that she is incompetent than a thief.

The story was broken by thejoshuablogs, a TPM groupie (like I have room to cast stones) that points out the irony of Dowd's role in the Biden plagiarism scandal.

So far Editor and Publisher, Gawker, the nytpicker, and Shakesville have made note of the issue. By morning every blogger in the known universe shall have chimed in. We'll see how the Gray Lady handles the storm. Dowd has weathered kerfuffles before but this one seems particularly clear cut and egregious.