"I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this - nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.

"I hope that nothing I've done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.

"I'm deeply grateful for the love and encouragment of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I'm a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me.

"Regards,

"[Stain]"

"The principles I believe in."

I love that gag.

You didn't use the work of your previous editors without permission. You slandered them. You know, by falsely claiming that they inserted the work of others into your copy.

It's nice to see that you didn't apologize to the Post. It got what it deserved.

Now shut the fuck up until you apologize to the children of Dr. and Mrs. King, and their friends and supporters.

Phony Consolation Post

Don't feel bad, Benjy. You still have your job at Regnery. You're extremely well qualified for that job.

And just remember, you'll have to work very hard, for many years, to achieve anything half as sleazy as your fellow fabricator, Michelle Malkin:

On page 123 of my book, In Defense of Internment, I wrote that Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, a research associate for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, "surreptitiously shared confidential documents with" attorney and now-retired law professor Peter Irons. In subsequent comments on my blog, I stated that Irons had been explicitly denied permission to copy the documents and had engaged in similar activities before. It has come to my attention that these statements are in error.

The disputed sentence in my book and my subsequent comments on my blog were based on the following passage in an article by Cal State Fullerton professor Thomas Fujita-Rony in the April 30, 2003, issue of Frontiers: A Journal Of Women Studies:

Irons was not allowed to copy any of the memos and letters he had found detailing this set of actions. The official responsible for screening records for public use was unavailable due to illness, and in the absence of clearance, permission to duplicate these vital documents was denied. Irons called Herzig-Yoshinaga, who, as a researcher for the commission, had the right to access any nonsecret document related to the CWRIC's work. She immediately copied all the documents, which provided proof for the first time of Justice Department misconduct in the cases that upheld the exercise of presidential war powers under the Constitution.

Although Fujita-Rony did not explicitly say that Herzig-Yoshinaga behaved "surreptitiously" or that the documents in question were "confidential," I believe these were reasonable inferences on my part given what he wrote. I clearly cited Fujita-Rony's article as my source in my book and on my blog. I did not contact Herzig-Yoshinaga or Irons directly. The passage, as Bruce Ramsey notes, was not central to the thesis of my book.

In response to inquiries from Irons and me, Fujita-Rony now says the passage he wrote in 2003, which he acknowledges he failed to footnote, is erroneous. He has written a letter of retraction to the editors at Frontiers. Here is his e-mail to me:

Dear Ms. Malkin:

I was in error. I am retracting the assertion that Professor Irons was at any time denied access to the archival materials in question. I am "attaching" and inserting below the text of the letter I am sending to the editors of Frontiers. I hope this will clarify matters.

Sincerely,

Thomas Y. Fujita-Rony

Accordingly, I am retracting my claim that Herzig-Yoshinaga "surreptitiously shared confidential documents with" Irons. I have made a note of this on the errata page of my book. Moreover, I am directing Regnery to excise the words "surreptitiously" and "confidential" from future editions of the book.

In addition, I retract the following statements which appeared on my blog:

August 24, 2004:

Contrary to [University of North Carolina law professor Eric] Muller's assertion that the papers shared were "publicly available documents sitting in publicly available files at archives open to the public," the article makes clear that Irons did not obtain permission to receive the papers he acquired from Herzig-Yoshinaga.

August 25, 2004:

As I noted, these records, however, had not been cleared for public use, and Iron's request to copy them had been explicitly denied. By the way, this was not the only time Irons engaged in these sort of shenanigans.

I apologize to Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga for the errors [sic].

You only made a complete ass of yourself. Malkin smeared others while making a complete ass of herself.

The Confections of Stain Augustine

By the way, Howie allows Red Sonja to signal his base that he was pissing in his readers' faces with his untruthful "Mea Culpa":

"I regret using the term because I think it's been way overblown," Domenech said. But he said King worked with organizations affiliated with communists in the 1950s and 1960s. Brady called it "a silly comment" but said he is satisfied with Domenech's admission of error.

I'm not sorry I made the statement; I'm sorry I got caught. And let me repeat my Klanish smear again, to show you I wasn't mistaken.

Howie To The Rescue!

Kurtz is on the kase, providing kover!

Late yesterday, the liberal Web sites Daily Kos and Atrios posted examples of what appeared to be instances of plagiarism from Domenech's writing at the William & Mary student paper. Three sentences of a 1999 Domenech review of a Martin Scorsese film were identical to a review in Salon magazine, and several sentences in Domenech's piece on a James Bond movie closely resembled one in the Internet Movie Database. Domenech said he needed to research the examples but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles.

Now, I'm not a journalist, much less a beloved media critic who rubs shoulders first-nicknames with the media elite on a daily basis. Far be it from me to suggest that Howie's appetite for fecal matter is endless.

But here's a suggestion for you, Howie: Get the name of that college editor, and ask her (or him) to respond to the suggestion that she repeatedly slid paragraphs into Bendover's reviews over 'Dover's protestations. Then, get on the blower to National Review and do the same thing.

Update: I give Howie my best advice, and he just ignores it. Pity.

Ben, Caught Stealing

Original lyrics by Ben Domenech:

I've been caught stealing
Once, when I was twenty-four
I enjoy stealing
It's just as simple as that
Well, it's just a simple fact
When I write something
I don't want to work for it
So I take your work, for free
Take your work for free
Hey, all right
If I get by, it's mine
Mine all mine

(Yes, I recycled this gag from my earlier Claude Allen post. Fitting, ain't it?)

Update (3/24): Roger Caught Stealing! I just noticed the title to this post is identical to the Sadly, No! post I linked to below. Caught red handed! I'm firing my ass from my lucrative blogger gig. Someone else will have to take over.

The Banality of Banality

From RedState.com:

We Must Attack.

It was Hannah Arendt who introduced us to the banality of evil. There was more to this thing called "evil" than grainy newsreel footage of delirious chanting of "Sieg Heil" or the "Internationale." Rage and hatred were not the first steps toward convincing seemingly normal people to go along with totalitarianism. First, repression had to seem normal. Domestic enemies were not hated -- they were dehumanized. In the eyes of their countrymen, their souls were emptied of any qualities extraneous to Political Man. They were the imperialist/capitalist running dog/Jew/Trotskyite -- and that was all.

In 2006 in America, we see perfect replicas of Stalin's drones at work in response to about the only decent thing said about the Domenech affair on Daily Kos. It is an exquisite performance right out of the two minutes hate.

I'm back. I forgot to read the whole thing. Gavin M. has this quote from the full post:

Michelle. Hugh. Rush. Glenn. This is the moment. Where will you stand?

Wolverines!

Kurtz Kountdown Klock

Howie the Putz bragged about how he interrupted his honeymoon to report on the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal.

So how long will it be until he reports on his own paper's resident plagiarist, Red Sonja Domenech?

The clock is ticking, Howie.

It ticks for you, too, National Review Online. Radish Pornmumu is objectively pro-plagiarist!

Bitch Set Himself Up

Red Sonja's already making excuses for calling Coretta Scott King a Communist.

You know, just like those bloodthirsty Commies in Bendover's favorite action fantasy, Red Dawn.

Taking a page from Debbie Howell, the little prick claims his slander was simply a "mistake."

Wrong.

What you said, you little prick, was wrong.

Despicable. Contempible. Inexcusable.

But it definitely was not a mistake.

It was a slander, although you conveniently waited until Mrs. King was dead to avoid the consequences publishing such a slander.

A mistake is when you do something inadvertently, without thinking. Your slander of Mrs. King was premediated, cold and calculated. You were showing off to your pale pals in the Right to White Life movement.

You'd do it again, you snivelling shit, if you didn't have a paycheck to protect.

You can run, but you can't lie convincingly.

The only question remaining is whether the Washington Post will continue to endorse your Klanish slanders.

For more on the white-hooded Red American, read Jane Hamsher and Steve Gilliard. And, per Gilliard's link to Howie the Putz, isn't it about time for Kurtz to convene a roundtable of Instacracker, Hindraker, Hugh Hewjass and Jeff Jarvis (for balance!) to condemn the treachery of the left blogosphere on this matter?

Excuses, Excuses

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow. My computer time has been limited.

There's an inevitable tension between posting to keep readers and posting things that are worth reading. There's always time to post things like this:

"I know it's not the war on terror, but face it, nothing is compelling American attention these days more than American Idol. So I will herewith make the following prediction two months before the final: The competition will come down to Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee and Mandisa. Chris will win and become a major star. Katharine will get a lead role on Broadway, and Mandisa will do just fine as well."

For me, however, less is more.

More or less.

I'll be back to bash Red Sonja, Warblogger Queen, tomorrow night.