(first posted at my myspace blog)

My final word on Ben Domenech, RedState.com co-founder and plagiarist
Category: News and Politics

I've been holding off posting any blogs, because they keep threatening to give us blogs at work, and I wanted to save all my thoughts for that. But it's still in the works, and I'd be a fool to not get my thoughts down on the trials and tribulations of Ben Domenech, the newly disgraced conservative blogger for Washingtonpost.com, whose tenure lasted approximately 72 hours before he was exposed as the fraud that he is.

Call it raging jealousy if you like, but the thing I really didn't like about Domenech from the beginning -- other than the obvious fact that WaPo.com hired him to "provide balance" to a nonexistent liberal blogger -- was that the man was a couple years younger than me, and I'm not exactly an old man. How does a punk like that get a job with the WaPo?

Anyway, my final point is this. Domenech issued an apology on redstate.com in which he stated:
"I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this - nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.
I hope that nothing I've done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in."

I just want to say that, Ben, I don't think what you've done reflects badly on the conservative movement or its principles. You stole, you lied about it, you covered it up and then you blamed everybody but yourself in a last, desperate attempt before finally being forced to come clean by people better than you. It sounds to me like you stood up for conservative principles just fine.