Noted Boston Globe plagiarizer Jeff Jacoby is said to be at it again. Jacoby, an op-ed columnist who's been suspended in the past for "serious journalistic misconduct" (read: "he recycled, without attribution in his column, the work of others") after ripping off a WSJ piece, now stands accused of reproducing another writer's work.

His column yesterday, "The fights on the right," sounds remarkably similar to a May piece in the WSJ's Opinion Journal titled "The Conservative Mind." So unfortunate, too, when you consider we normally have to turn on cable news to meet our quota of recycled rhetoric.

• Jack Shafer speaks from the mount, gives maybe-plagiarizing novelist Ian McEwan a pass.

• Louise MacBain continues snapping up art properties, ignoring her art magazines.

• Rodale takes a groundbreaking step to give a shit about the Internet.

• InStyle begins to look like a herd at the feeding trough.

• NBC received 4,000 emails about its single sponsorship stunt. Single sponsor Philips soaks up the PR.

• Nick Denton comes off every bit as smarmy in his Guardian profile as he does at his loft parties.

• Anna Wintour leads the charges in figuring out what to do with skinny bitches banned from runways.

It's one thing for drug addicts and Harvard kids to lie in their books. Whether it's lifting passages from other authors like Kaavya Viswanathan or flat out making up entire stories and passing them off as real life (a'la James Frey) the fact that novelists will take their creative writing to another level is nothing new.

But when a journalists plagiarizes in a book? Well, it's a bigger deal. And though it's gossip from the pages of Rush & Molloy, we can't sit idly by knowing that you might read Nancy Grace's book, Objection! How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System, with no knowledge that she ripped off a paragraph from the New York Times.

Grace was happy to hype the book, which spent five weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. She was less eager to draw attention to the fact that she'd lifted huge, verbatim passages in the book from that newspaper.

Though Grace mentions the column she lifted from in the bibliography (an August 5, 2002 column called "Patents" column by Sabra Chartrand) only when the book hit hardcover that she noted the 359 words that came from the article.

Grace maintains that the 359 insults she slung at Melinda Duckett, however, were completely original.

Nancy falling from Grace over book? [Rush & Molloy, Daily News]

What shade of crazy did United Press Syndicate cake over its eyes? We're guessing it's well beyond rouge with its assertion yesterday that its prize columnist, Ann Coulter, is not guilty of plagiarizing.

In a statement sent to E&P, Universal President and Editor Lee Salem said: "Last week a software program company official ran Ann Coulter's columns through a 'match-text' program, frequently used by teachers to detect original work. The New York Post cited two columns in which some text matched other published materials and also mentioned three snippets in her book, 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism.'

"In addition to looking at the columns mentioned in the New York Post story, we also reviewed a sampling of other columns that have been mentioned in the media. Like her book publisher, Crown, Universal Press Syndicate finds no merits to the allegations of plagiarism brought by the software company executive. There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism.

Sure, there's the obvious bit about "it depends what your definition of 'minimal' is." And then there's the part about "rewriting a fact that's surrounded by the same points of reference, descriptors, and tone."

Universal Says It Doesn't Think Coulter Plagiarized [Dave Astor, E&P]
Earlier: Ann Coulter vs. New York Post: Somehow More Incendiary Than Coulter vs. New York Times
Related: All Ann Coulter Coverage

It's not that Ann Coulter is denying charges that she plagiarized her way through Godless — but she's not going to let the New York Post throw down elbows without untucking the razor blade from beneath her tongue. Lashing out in her column yesterday, Coulter spat:

Once considered a legitimate daily, the Post has been reduced to tabloid status best known for Page Six's breathless accounts of Paris Hilton's latest ruttings, and headlines like 'Vampire Teen — H.S. Girl Is Out for Blood.' How crappy a newspaper is the Post? Let me put it this way: It's New York's second-crappiest paper.

Second crappiest newspaper? No, silly, the first isn't The Villager! She means the Times, but you were cute for asking.

Coulter's syndication outfit, Universal Press Syndicate, meanwhile has asked for a copy of the report produced by John Barrie, who used his company's iThenticate to verify the authenticity of Coulter's book and was the focus of the Post article. You know, so they can independently verify Coulter doesn't author her own hate speech.

UPDATE: Coulter's Syndicate Requests Report From Plagiarism Prober — As She Hits Back at 'NY Post' [Dave Astor, E&P]
Related: Plagiarist Accusers Copy Each Other In Ann Coulter Scandal

John Barrie knows a good press op when he sees one. Given the flurry of charges accusing Ann Coulter of plagiarizing heavily in her latest book, Godless, Barrie ran the manuscript through his company iParadigms' iThenticate authenticity technology and found, low and behold, Coulter is indeed a copycat. Cue the endless press plugs for Barrie's product. Also cue the third (of many more to come, we're sure) substantiated claim that Coulter ripped off the work of others, from Godless, to previous books, to her syndicated column.

It's pretty fair to say, at this point, that Ann Coulter's hate speech is about as authentic as Rosie O'Donnell's admiration for Star Jones. But perhaps Coulter isn't the only one plagiarizing. After all, when do someone's accusations of plagiarism become plagiarism themselves? If the Boston Globe's Alex Beam made the charges in 2001, and this year blogger The Rude Pundit merely updates the charges, and now some fella with a product to push suddenly comes to the same conclusion, it sounds like a blonde horse-haired talking head ain't the only plagiarist.*

* So you don't walk away confused: No, we don't actually believe our own argument. Idiots.

COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO [Philip Recchia, NYP]