{"id":61,"date":"2014-07-24T19:29:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T02:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coppercommando.com\/?p=61"},"modified":"2014-07-24T19:29:10","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T02:29:10","slug":"john-walsh-embarrasses-montana-with-plagiarism-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"John Walsh Embarrasses Montana with Plagiarism Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senator John Walsh (D-Mont.) is currently dealing with the largest Montana political scandal since his corrupt appointment to his seat after the New York Times broke the story<\/a> that he blatantly plagiarized his 14-page Army College master\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n

Walsh\u2019s egregious academic violation made it onto the front page of every major Montana newspaper<\/a> on Thursday, and he has been the centerpiece of dozens of national news articles and TV programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

To put it lightly, Walsh\u2019s actions since the story broke have been an embarrassment to Montana. The Atlantic<\/em> wrote an entire story<\/a> about how our junior senator is similar to a plagiarizing 12-year-old. Walsh made it on the front page of Plagiarism Today<\/a><\/em>. He\u2019s getting thrashed<\/a> on Reddit. The Washington Post<\/em> editorial board said \u201cWalsh should stop making excuses for his actions<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It would be one thing if he only\u00a0\u201cborrowed\u201d others\u2019 academic works without giving them credit, but that is not the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, called Walsh\u2019s thesis a \u201cpiece of s**t<\/a>\u00a0in a\u00a0Washington Post <\/em>column.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHaving read Walsh\u2019s thesis, it\u2019s not just that it\u2019s only 14 pages of text; it\u2019s that even if you ignore the plagiarism, it\u2019s a pretty bad 14 pages.\u00a0 The thesis is ostensibly about whether the United States should prioritize democracy promotion in U.S. grand strategy.\u00a0 If I was supervising this thesis \u2014 and I\u2019ve supervised a fair number them for my day job \u2014 then this is what I\u2019d have e-mailed Walsh if he\u2019d handed this in to me: \u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

‘John, this is an intriguing topic, and you\u2019ve got the bare bones of an interesting thesis topic here, but you\u2019re going to need to do a lot more work before handing in the final draft\u2026’<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Even if I didn\u2019t detect the plagiarism, there is no way this passes muster for an M.A. thesis.\u00a0 No. Way.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my question to the Army War College, an institution that I have heretofore admired greatly \u2014 how in the hell did this piece of s**t result in the awarding of an M.A. degree?\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you aren\u2019t already familiar with Walsh\u2019s multiple contradicting versions of if and why he plagiarized, you can read this article<\/a>\u00a0by the Washington Post<\/em>, titled: \u201cSen. John Walsh, and how not to respond to a political scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Walsh\u2019s indefensible plagiarism and poor message management by his campaign communications team, loyal Democrats are still rushing to defend him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) predictably offered up \u201c[Walsh is] not an academic\u201d as a weak defense<\/a>, as if that excuses a 47-year-old graduate student from violating basic writing standards taught in middle school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Montana Cowgirl made the claim<\/a> that Walsh was not attempting to use his alleged PTSD as an excuse. However, Montana veterans disagree with that verdict, and are not happy about it<\/a>, telling the\u00a0Bozeman Daily Chronicle<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI feel like it’s a slap in the face to people who have obviously been through more than he has. I just don’t see how if you have a PTSD issue it’s going to cause you to plagiarize a paper.\u201d \u2014Brian Rudolph, 31, Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran, Great Falls.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cowgirl then suggests that Republicans are the ones making a big deal out of the scandal. I don\u2019t know what internet she uses to do her research, but it\u2019s sure not the internet used by everyone else. The Steve Daines campaign hasn\u2019t said a word about the scandal. Neither really has the Montana Republican Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the list of organizations participating in the \u201coutrage\u201d include such bastions of conservative bias as:\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/a>, The Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>, Daily Kos<\/a><\/em>, Bloomberg<\/a><\/em>, Salon<\/a><\/em>, Gawker<\/a><\/em>, The Daily Beast<\/a><\/em>, The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>, and the BBC<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for an unbiased source of information upon which to judge the scale of Walsh\u2019s scandal, look no farther than the Army War College itself<\/a>, the institution from which Walsh received his degree, or this quote in the New York Times<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear there is indeed strong reason to believe this is plagiarism,\u201d said the War College\u2019s provost, Lance Betros, a retired brigadier general. \u201cWe are initiating academic review procedures.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Don Pogreba over at Intelligent Discontent asserted basically the same things as Cowgirl and wrote off the scandal as not a big deal. FiveThirtyEight<\/em> sees it differently<\/a>, saying \u201cPlagiarism Scandal Moves Democrat\u2019s Odds in Montana From Slim to Almost Zero.\u201d\u00a0Roll Call<\/em> changed their rating<\/a> of the Montana Senate race from “Tossup\/Tilts Republican” to “Leans Republican.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob Saldin, a University of Montana political science professor, said it \u201ctotally undermines his credibility<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u00a0about the opinion of students<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“I think it does affect his credibility and it affects the Democratic Party.\u201d –Dan Deming, MSU student.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One of the authors Walsh plagiarized basically said\u00a0the only reason he\u2019s letting the senator off the hook easy is because he\u2019s \u201ca loyal Democrat<\/a>.\u201d The author did note, however, that his worked was outdated\u00a0in 2007–the year Walsh copied it. Add that to the list of problems with Walsh\u2019s thesis, in addition to it promoting Bush doctrine, interventionist foreign policy and only being 14 pages long (which has earned it considerable scorn from commenters online).<\/span><\/p>\n

Governor Steve Bullock (D-Mont.) understandably tried to put some distance<\/a> between himself and the scandal, considering that it’s his fault Walsh is in the Senate in the first place. Whether Bullock ultimately suffers more harm to his 2016 campaign from his role in handing Walsh a Senate seat, or benefits more by having Walsh off his reelection ticket, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

This story is still developing, and it will be very interesting to see what the Army War College ultimately decides to do about it. My prediction is that they will have to revoke Walsh\u2019s degree in order to save face as an institution after having so much criticism thrown at them by the national media. If that happens, Walsh is toast beyond a shadow of a doubt.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, Walsh has two options:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Stay in the race, keep denying any wrongdoing, and continue to embarrass our state until the November election (then be embarrassed himself by Daines\u2019 margin of victory), or:<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Apologize to the authors he plagiarized (which he still hasn\u2019t, yikes) and drop out of the race, retaining whatever dignity he and the Montana Democratic Party have left, and hope the War College is merciful.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

(P.S. I did try to make sure I thoroughly cited all of my sources, and, yes, this post probably contains more original content than Walsh’s master’s thesis).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senator John Walsh (D-Mont.) is currently dealing with the largest Montana political scandal since his corrupt appointment to his seat after the New York Times broke the story that he blatantly plagiarized his 14-page Army College master\u2019s thesis. Walsh\u2019s egregious academic violation made it onto the front page of every major Montana newspaper on Thursday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coppercommando.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}