Rand Paul on plagiarism charges: If dueling were legal in Kentucky...

By TAL KOPAN and ALEXANDER BURNS

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday that accusations of plagiarism in his speeches makes him wish dueling were legal in Kentucky.

“I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting -- I have never intentionally done so and like I say, 'If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know it’d be a duel challenge,' " Paul said on ABC's "This Week."
Media outlets including POLITICO, MSNBC and Buzzfeed have detailed instances in the Kentucky Republican's speeches where entire lines seemed to mimic verbatim other sources, including Wikipedia pages and stories from The Associated Press.

Asked about the charges on Sunday, Paul acknowledged the "footnote police" had been out in full force.

“I didn’t get into the secondary sources and say I quoted Einstein as according to an AP story or as according to Wikipedia," Paul said. "I think the spoken word shouldn’t be held to the same sort of standard that you have if you’re giving a scientific paper. I’ve written scientific papers, I know how to footnote things, but we’ve never footnoted speeches, and if that’s the standard I’m going to be held to, yes, we will change and we will footnote things.”

Paul said "98 percent" of his speeches are extemporaneous and it's difficult to attribute sources the way you would in an academic paper, but he'll adjust if that's what's necessary according to the "hacks and haters."

“Is that nitpicking? Is referring to the person enough, or do I have to refer to the original source where I got the quote from the person?” Paul said. “If it’s required, I’ll do it, but I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters, and I’m just not going to put up with people casting aspersions on my character.”

A top adviser to Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday night that the Kentucky Republican would be “more cautious in presenting and attributing sources” in the future, after POLITICO confronted the senator’s office with fresh examples of Paul speeches that borrowed language from news reports without citing the original source.

The latest examples include a 2013 speech by Paul responding to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. The senator said this, according to remarks distributed by his office: “Under President Obama, the ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work.”
Paul’s team strenuously contested any suggestion that he was deliberately plagiarizing in his remarks. While he did not point to CitizenLink or the AP as the source of his language or information, his advisers stressed that Paul was relaying public information rather than presenting data as if he had discovered it on his own.

And even as Paul’s chief adviser promised greater caution in the future, the senator’s political operation also disputed the idea that he had done anything wrong.

The ongoing attribution flap is shaping up to be an important test for Paul as he faces the heightened scrutiny of a budding presidential campaign. The tea party senator has rocketed to national prominence on the strength of his high-profile issue stands in the Senate: his sensational filibuster against the hypothetical use of drones against U.S. citizens, for example, and his current stand against Janet Yellen’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve.