More Morton woes
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Feda Kidd Morton is a Fluvanna biology teacherPUBLICITY PHOTO
The traditional family values candidate who once lost custody of her children is in the news again for alleged plagiarism. The Daily Progress reports that an editorial purportedly written by Fluvannan Feda Kidd Morton, who is running for the 5th District Republican nomination, contains at least eight passages that duplicate or closely resemble an article by syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran.
The similarities were discovered by former Western Albemarle teacher Mark Crockett, who noticed that a February 24 piece in the Media General-owned Rural Virginian sounded different from Morton’s previous writing. He started Googling phrases from the column and turned up Sobran’s widely cited article, “How Tyranny Came to America.”
“Restating the principles of the Constitution is no different than restating the Ten Commandments,” Kidd responds in a statement.
Na na na na
na na na na
hey hey-ey
goodbye
Oh well, at least she has Shaun Kenney’s endorsement.
This should not only take her out of this race, but this should take her out of her job. What kind of example does a plagiarizing teacher set for high school students? Fluvanna County School Board: you can do better than to employ this calibre of person to teach young adults. Fire her.
Man. This woman is a disaster.
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Why is Feda still in the race she should show a little dignity for the good of the Republican party and drop out.Her campaign manager is gone and her campaign is flat broke.
Yeah, darn Republicans…plagiarism is wrong. They ought to be more like our current Democratic vice president:
From Slate:
“Biden lifted Kinnock’s precise turns of phrase and his sequences of ideas—a degree of plagiarism that would qualify any student for failure, if not expulsion from school. But the even greater sin was to borrow biographical facts from Kinnock that, although true about Kinnock, didn’t apply to Biden.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2198543
Lying is a bipartisan skill, my friend.
Didn’t Joe Biden get in trouble for plagiarizing Neil Kinnock in a lot of his campaign speeches in 1987?
I do not remember the details, but I seem to recll that was an issue back then. “If you steal ideas from one person, it is plagiarism…if you steal ideas from many people, it is ‘research.’”
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We can only hope that an exit is coming soon, but I doubt you’ll see it. There’s too many bloody issues swirling around in the waters. The sharks will eat her for lunch in June. If she has any dignity for the issues that she claims, a graceful exit is the only logical move…
I hope she wins the primary and becomes the Republican candidate. Then the current office holder, who has worked his butt off for the people of the fifth district, will have an easy, and well-deserved, re-election.
She won’t win my guess is she will drop out soon. Perriello is suppose to be a rep. for the people of the 5th not for Pelosi and Obama.
Mark: Yes, Biden was caught up in a plagiarism scandal in 1987. Yes, he dropped out of the presidential race then. Yes, it was brought up again when Obama made him his veep choice. And yes, the American people decided that it was not a major enough deal to prevent them from voting for the Obama ticket 21 years later in 2008.
Teddy Kennedy was kicked out of Harvard for paying someone else to take his exams.
He also drove drunk off a dock and left a 19 year old woman to sit there in an air pocket (that soon ran out of air) while he contacted his lawyers. When he finally contacted authorities more than 24 hours after the event, she was long dead. The people of Mass kept on voting him back in. And on one seemed to care about the girl he left to die when they were praising his life achievements.
The current office holder has worked his butt of for john podesta and his special interests groups such as LaRaza and the usual suspects. Congressman Perriello will be well rewarded with money for his campaign. Just like the the Murtha replacement Perriello will run center and vote as told by Podesta. anyone that works on Capitol Hill will tell you that Perriello is barely able to grasp an executive summary. Just tell them what they want to here….I think it was PT Barnum that came up with that.
@Brian - You haven’t the slightest clue what you are talking about. Tom Perriello is one of the smartest people you will ever meet (well, YOU probably won’t meet him). He mopped the floor with your boy, Virgil at every debate that Virgil didn’t duck.
He is a consummate professional and has performed as a legislator exactly as promised on the campaign trail.
You probably don’t know anyone on Capitol Hill, and my guess is that you are afraid to talk to girls.
durtburglar for the win!
It’s bad enough that Morton plagiarized, thus setting a very poor example for students (she’s a teacher at Fluvanna High School. But she also fails to accept personal responsibility for her bad behavior (and personal responsibility is a rhetorical trademark of conservatives, is it not?). And while other politicians have behaved in similar fashion, that’s no excuse for Morton.
What’s also important here is WHAT Morton chose to copy. She was not merely “restating” constitutional principles. She copied many of the core ideas from Joseph Sobran’s convoluted and inaccurate description of American history. Sobran calls his screed a “a thumbnail history of the Constitution.” But it is bad history, indeed, not entirely unlike what conservatives did to the Texas social studies curriculum (see, for example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2010-05-21-1192728880_x.htm). Even former Sec. of Education Rod Paige repudiated the Texas changes.
To Sobran’s way of thinking, the civil war in the United States “resulted from the suspicion that the North meant to use the power of the Union to destroy the sovereignty of the Southern states.” No mention of slavery. None. (Perhaps the governor of Virginia has also been reading Sobran.) No discussion of economic differences.
The Sobran take on American history is similar to what Glenn Beck spews. The Sobran view shares ideas with that of W. Cleon Skousen. Skousen – touted by Beck and beloved by Morton – was perceived by the arch-conservatives of his time as a “nutjob.” (see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/16/beck_skousen )
Like Sobran and the conservatives on the Texas board of education, Skousen promoted a revisionist history of America, one that conceives of the United States as a “Christian” nation; one that should be guided by “godly” principles and led by “godly” people.
I wonder why all this “godliness” that conservatives push seems to lead to corporate excess in banking and on Wall Street, the avoidance of regulations that protect people and the environment, the loss of millions of jobs, increased levels of poverty and the squeezing of the middle class,and the most stratified income levels in the developed world.
There is no story here. Most, if not all, politicians plagiarize, as do most commentators. That’s why we here the same phrases all day long everyday. Jon Stewart just demonstrated that on one of his shows this past week.
“I wonder why all this “godliness” that conservatives push…” And what sentence does President Obama use at the close of all of his speeches? I’ll give you a hint. — Bless America.
Sadly, she has bee this way for quite a long time and is just getting caught. She should never have been a candidate, and she should now just go back and be quiet before the rest of her lies are exposed.
I would not be surprised if you could dig dirt up on every Republican candidate, and I am no fan of Feda Morton. I actually have a low opinion of her based on a couple e-mail interactions.
However, it is very telling that of all the 5th District GOP candidates, the Hook chose to go after Feda Morton. Nothing inspires more hatred in people–non-conservative women, newspapers, woman newspaper reproters– than a conservative woman. Witness Sarah Palin.
As I said, I don’t like Feda Morton. But attacking her because she’s a woman espousing conservative values is not journalism, it’s political advocacy and sexist.
Mark the only candidates without scruples are Morton, Verga and McKelvey. Boyd, McPadden, Hurt and Ferrin have all had the other campaigns dig and dig for months and there have been no “real revelations”. Yes there are snipe shots at the honest four, but nothing real. The dishonest three, Morton, Verga and McKelvey are all suffering for their indiscretions, or the indiscretions of members of their staff.