Posted by David, a resident of the Charleston Meadows neighborhood, on Aug 29, 2006 at 9:22 pm

I've got no great objection to citing material from a Democracy Now transcript to make a point, but that isn't what you did -- you interspersed what might be original writing with cut-and-pasted material, and paraphrased those chunks which you didn't copy outright. That's called plagiarism.

A transcript of the August 15 Democracy Now broadcast can be found here: Web Link

You cut-and-pasted:

argued the pro-Israel lobby, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has unduly influenced the United States to compromise its own security in order to advance the interests of Israel.

The Democracy Now transcript reads:

argued the pro-Israel lobby has unduly influenced the United States to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of Israel.

You copied:

ecently established group, Christians United for Israel (CUFI). CUFI supports Israel’s aggressive land theft polices as "a biblical imperative.” The group has lobbied the Bush administration to adopt a more confrontational policy towards Iran, withhold aid from the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand to attack Lebanon.

The Democracy Now transcript reads:

recently established group called Christians United for Israel - an evangelical organization that believes supporting expansionist policies of the Israeli government is: "a biblical imperative." We speak with investigative journalist Max Blumenthal who reports they lobbied the Bush administration to adopt a confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand in its attack on Lebanon.

You cribbed:

The vast majority of America's 60 million evangelicals are premillenial dispensationalists who make up the Republican base.

The Democracy Now transcript reads:

The majority of America's 60 million evangelicals are premillenial dispensationalists. They believe that the end times could come at any moment, and they're looking for signs of that, so they're sympathetic to supporting Israel for these reasons. And so they provide a strong grassroots base. This is the Republican base.

About the only place where you didn't paraphrase or outright copy was where you decided to lie in order to hide the fact that not everybody agrees with the study's authors:

Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a highly acclaimed paper

But the Democracy Now transcript says:

In March of this year, a study on the role of the Israel lobby in US foreign policy caused an uproar in the academic community and in the media. The paper's authors, Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago ...

Uproar isn't acclaim, and you're not being honest with your readers, either about having material you produced yourself, or about what is actually going on.

Posted by Walter E. Wallis, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Aug 30, 2006 at 8:43 pm

Sometime in our lives most of us have to learn we can't have everything we want.