Farfallegate

There's a story today in the New York Times about recipes attributed to Mrs. McCain on John McCain's site being lifted from the Food Network and Rachel Ray. There's lots of web effects here - the recipes came from one website and were posted on another, the duplication was found by a person searching the web, and it was reported on initially by a website, The Huffington Post (a lot of interesting stories from them lately). While the "blame the intern" defense is getting some flack, I kind of buy it. Various studies have reported that plagiarism is up on college campuses in the internet age. And in the campaign sphere, where it is good staff work to find things your supporters have created and promote them, it seems easy to believe the line could have been crossed.