Free Republic

Two weeks ago, a handful of bloggers wrote scathingly about Ken Burns’ use of former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin — two prominent writers who have faced credible plagiarism and fabrication charges that you can read about here, here and here — as prominent interview subjects in Burns’ most recent documentary about baseball, “The Tenth Inning.” Tom Scocca, a blogger for Slate, headlined his September 30 post “Mike Barnicle, Fraud and Plagiarist, Helps Guide America Through Baseball’s Era of Shame.” Scocca, to put it mildly, writes in anger.Speaking of baseball and its scandals, the other...

Short of having gone full Ninja hero and catching the shoes in mid-air, it's hard to see how Pres. Bush could have been any cooler in his handling of the Hush Puppy Hurler. I have to figure the president's feeling pretty good about things this morning. But that didn't stop ABC and NBC from declaring the incident "embarrassing" for President Bush. For good measure, on Today, Doris Kearns Goodwin discounted Bush's blithe reaction, saying he wouldn't have been that cool a couple years ago, strangely intepreting his nonchalance as evidence of how anxious he is to leave office. And not...

Thousands of Americans have bought Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln ," after hearing that it shaped President-elect Barack Obama's thinking. "Rivals," which examines how Lincoln put three of his opponents in the 1860 election in his Cabinet, was No. 14 on Amazon.com's bestseller list the Friday before Thanksgiving , no small feat for three-year-old nonfiction. (Obama's "Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father" were No. 10 and 11 on that list, respectively.) Goodwin spoke by phone with McClatchy recently about her take on Obama and the lessons Lincoln offers him:...

LEWISBURG (PA)-- Neither President Bush nor Republican presidential nominee John McCain has shown leadership during the financial crisis afflicting the nation, a renowned author and presidential historian visiting the Valley said Tuesday. The Wall Street bailout crisis has revealed a "sad leadership vacuum in this country," presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said before giving an address at Bucknell University. "Here you have the president of the United States in the middle of a crisis and the people were not listening to him in his own party," she said. "Then, there was McCain, rushing to Washington, hoping I think, to corral...

The United States needs a new law requiring that the president consult with Congress before going to war, a blue-ribbon panel led by two former secretaries of state said Tuesday. The current War Powers Resolution is "ineffective, and it should be repealed and it should be replaced," James Baker said in a joint appearance with Warren Christopher, announcing the results of the study they led. The recommendation follows failed efforts by Democrats in Congress to put a stop to the war in Iraq or to put conditions on President Bush's conduct of it. Congress passed a joint resolution to authorize...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's largest group of professional historians has scrapped the way it handles plagiarism allegations, doing away with secret proceedings in an effort to spotlight problems when they arise. The American Historical Association decided to end its 15-year practice of adjudication, where complaints were heard, discussed and decided behind closed doors. The focus now will be to educate historians, students and the public. The change comes after high-profile plagiarism cases involving historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and the late Stephen Ambrose, as well as former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. On Saturday, The New York Times reported...

FORT BLISS, Tex. — When Joseph K. Goodwin graduated from Harvard in the spring of 2001, his ideas about where he was going did not include war. But early in February, Lieutenant Goodwin ascended the stage at the Army's Air Defense Artillery School graduation ceremony here, recognized as one of two distinguished honor graduates in his 120-member class, picked by his commanders as among the best to lead his fellow soldiers in battle. Standing next to a fleet of armored vehicles used to fire short-range Stinger missiles, which he could soon be called to operate in a conflict with Iraq,...

CONCORD, Mass. -- In early January, an anonymous letter arrived at the Washington, D.C., office of the Weekly Standard. It was addressed to Executive Editor Fred Barnes, who had written a piece suggesting that historian Stephen E. Ambrose's book about World War II bombers contained some passages "barely distinguishable" from another author's work. The mystery correspondent opened with a salute, saying Barnes had been "quite right" to expose Ambrose, and then moved on to the main business of the missive--ratting out another celebrity historian: "I've long been concerned by several instances of plagiarism I noted long ago in Doris Kearns...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has faced accusations of plagiarism over a 1987 book, has resigned from the Pulitzer Prize board, Columbia University announced Friday.</p> <p>In a letter to board Chairman John Carroll, Goodwin said, ''after the controversy earlier this year surrounding my book, `The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,' and the need now to concentrate on my Lincoln manuscript, I will not be able to give the board the kind of attention it deserves.''</p>

Let the word go forth from this time and this place, to friend and foe alike, that the buck has been passed to a new generation of plagiarizers. Yes, it was the worst of times; it was the best of times. Actually it was precisely four score and seven years ago when my father set forth upon this continent dedicated to the proposition that all copycats are created equal. In fact, I can still remember what daddy told me while cutting a baseball diamond in the middle of his Field of Dreams cornfield: "Ask not what your country can do...

Amid controversy for plagiarizing passages of a book, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has been uninvited as the keynote speaker for James Madison Day Friday. "It sends a very good message," Kevin Hardwick, assistant professor of history, said. "It says that as an academic community we take academic integrity seriously." Goodwin originally was set to speak in Wilson Hall at 9:30 a.m. Friday, but has been replaced by Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as President George H. W. Bush's first secretary of state. According to the March 7 Richmond Times-Dispatch, Goodwin "has admitted passing off scores of passages written by others as...