COPYCAT: A number of people have emailed this New York Sun story alleging that Kerry committed plagiarism in his books. Oddly enough, I’m reading Past Perfect right now, a book about the recent plagiarism adn fraud scandals among American historians. As I read the section on Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I thought that their plagiarism was a rather abstruse crime, the kind that gets professionals outraged but leaves laymen cold, the way journalists get about source confidentiality. I suspect they’ll feel the same way about Kerry’s crime, assuming this story pans out.