David Greenberg has a good rundown of Joe Biden's plagiarism problems back in 1987, which, when recounted in full, make Biden look pretty bad. Greenberg ends his piece thusly:
Twenty-one years on, how much should Biden's past behavior matter? In and of itself, the plagiarism episode shouldn't automatically disqualify Biden from regaining favor and credibility, especially if in the intervening two decades he's not done more of the same, as seems to be the case. But no one has looked into it. The press should give his record since 1988 a thorough vetting. It's worth knowing whether the odds-on favorite to be our next vice president has truly reformed himself of behavior that can often be the mark of a deeply troubled soul.
You have to imagine that the press--or, at the very least, Michelle Malkin's flying monkeys--are doing that thorough vetting right now. You also have to imagine (or at least hope) that Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy have beat them to it and that in the Obama campaign's next FEC filings, we'll see that it spent $139 of its millions of dollars on this.
*--I'd originally titled this post, "Could Biden Have Plagiarized Again?" But, as one persistent emailer pointed out, that headline seemed to imply there was another brewing Biden plagiarism scandal. That obviously wasn't my intention.
--Jason Zengerle