I have never been a fan of George W. Bush.

From all accounts, he is a nice man. But I don't want a nice man or woman as president - I want to know that the president of the United States is strong, forceful, and at least as smart as I am. I want to know that the president of the United States will not suffer fools gladly because he himself is not a fool. I want the president of the United States to read and analyze and talk and understand what is needed for the country.

With Bush the Younger, I could never be sure that his bumbling oral delivery was all there was; it seemed to me that he bumbled intellectually, too.

So when several of my friends on Facebook pointed to a story at the Huffington Post about how Bush's memoir, Decision Points, was plagiarized, my attitude about the former president's lack of mental prowess seemed justified.

But then I read the article, which makes broad claims of intellectual theft. And I'm just not seeing that theft proven in the article. There are precisely two examples in this story, and only one is compelling. There is one section about Karzai that appears to have been lifted by the Bush memoir from another source.

The other main example is a John McCain anecdote where a statement was apparently made to the Washington Post, but Bush quoted it as a private statement between the two men. To assume that it was lifted from the Post, absent other evidence, is foolish. Anyone who has been a public person has, on occasion, said something privately and thought, "Wow. That was good. I'll have to use it later." And we do. How does the author of the HuffPo piece, one wonders, know that precisely that statement (it was not complicated) was not also said in private to the president?

The author of the piece at HuffPo claims that memoirs aren't supposed to also be about the world as a whole - they are supposed to be about the person writing them. So you can't include bits from news stories or other factual accounts, because that is somehow wrong. I'd never heard that rule before, and Bush must not have, either. It seems to me that the article was written by someone with great disdain for the former president...and by an author with a lot of axes to grind.

I have axes to grind with Bush the Younger, too. I hate what his eight-year stint in the White House did to my country, to my freedom, and to the rest of the world. But were I claiming plagiarism in his work, I'd do a hell of a lot more research of my own - and provide more than two examples - before making such a public claim.

My business rather requires a better standard of proof about plagiarism before we throw a student to the wolves.

I have never been a fan of George W. Bush.

From all accounts, he is a nice man. But I don't want a nice man or woman as president - I want to know that the president of the United States is strong, forceful, and at least as smart as I am. I want to know that the president of the United States will not suffer fools gladly because he himself is not a fool. I want the president of the United States to read and analyze and talk and understand what is needed for the country.

With Bush the Younger, I could never be sure that his bumbling oral delivery was all there was; it seemed to me that he bumbled intellectually, too.

So when several of my friends on Facebook pointed to a story at the Huffington Post about how Bush's memoir, Decision Points, was plagiarized, my attitude about the former president's lack of mental prowess seemed justified.

But then I read the article, which makes broad claims of intellectual theft. And I'm just not seeing that theft proven in the article. There are precisely two examples in this story, and only one is compelling. There is one section about Karzai that appears to have been lifted by the Bush memoir from another source.

The other main example is a John McCain anecdote where a statement was apparently made to the Washington Post, but Bush quoted it as a private statement between the two men. To assume that it was lifted from the Post, absent other evidence, is foolish. Anyone who has been a public person has, on occasion, said something privately and thought, "Wow. That was good. I'll have to use it later." And we do. How does the author of the HuffPo piece, one wonders, know that precisely that statement (it was not complicated) was not also said in private to the president?

The author of the piece at HuffPo claims that memoirs aren't supposed to also be about the world as a whole - they are supposed to be about the person writing them. So you can't include bits from news stories or other factual accounts, because that is somehow wrong. I'd never heard that rule before, and Bush must not have, either. It seems to me that the article was written by someone with great disdain for the former president...and by an author with a lot of axes to grind.

I have axes to grind with Bush the Younger, too. I hate what his eight-year stint in the White House did to my country, to my freedom, and to the rest of the world. But were I claiming plagiarism in his work, I'd do a hell of a lot more research of my own - and provide more than two examples - before making such a public claim.

My business rather requires a better standard of proof about plagiarism before we throw a student to the wolves.