Bloodless Coup

Where's my red pen?

I mean, I know it's summer, but this might be fun!

Ann Coulter has a bad habit. And that habit, as mentioned before by the Rude Pundit (followed up by Raw Story), is that she appears to like to copy whole sentences from other sources without putting them in as quotes or even citing where she might have "paraphrased" from. You judge for yourself:

Here's Coulter from Chapter 1 of Godless: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.

Here's the Portland Press Herald, from the year 2000, in its list of the "Maine Stories of the Century": The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.

Strangely similar, no? By the way, that's a story from 1976. Coulter doesn't tell you that little tidbit, making you think it happened last week. The next one's from 1977:

Here's Coulter writing about an attack on the Alaska pipeline: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.

Here's something from the History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.

Why, in this age of the "terrorist," would Coulter use "saboteur," a quaint term, to be sure? Could it be a cut and paste job with a couple of words changed, like a good college freshman?

And PZ Myers blasts the creationist falsehoods too.