On the surface, John McCain and his campaign seems to be nonchalantly cruising toward November 2. Yet, below the surface, the opposition research goes on.
David Morales, at the Three Sonorans blog, received a tip building on an earlier post he had done about Democratic candidate Rodney Glassman's doctoral thesis at the U of A. Yesterday, he documented the plagiarism of several sentences in the thesis (which were not surrounded by quotation marks nor cited).
Today, the Arizona Daily Star pushes the story forward a bit with a couple additional examples of "unattributed" work, and reactions from Glassman's spokesperson (it was reviewed/guided/approved, and others used Glassman's research) and McCain's spokesperson ("these allegations raise serious questions about Rodney Glassman's integrity and fitness to serve....")
"AZ Blue Meanie", at the group blog "Blog For Arizona", sees the McCain camp's handling of the situation as a "good for the gander" opportunity to revisit John McCain's own, less-than-stellar academic career. (And, he or she gets in a well-deserved jab at the Star's reporter for failing to cite or name the blog that broke this story.)
REPORT CARD: For the apparent plagiarism AND the lame spokesperson quote, Rodney Glassman earns an "F". For their apparent opposition research AND the opening the spokesperson gave Glassman (and bloggers) to re-raise McCain's own academic record, John McCain and his campaign earn an honorary "C" (which may be the highest grade McCain has received since that easy teacher in 2nd grade).
ADDITIONALLY, The Three Sonoran and Blog For Arizona blogs get "A's" for their professional handling of the story, and Rhonda Bodfield gets a "B-" for getting reaction but - ironically - not fully citing the source of the story.
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