KITTY KELLEY IS BEING CHARGED WITH PLAGIARIZING A BLOG:

Seven paragraphs of material in the book, totaling about 400 words, repeat verbatim or closely track sections of Mr. Wilson’s article, titled “George W. Bush’s Lost Year in 1972 Alabama.” The article, which can be found at www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush, was published on Feb. 2 on Mr. Wilson’s Web site, Southerner Daily News. Ms. Kelley’s book was released on Sept. 14. . . .

Ms. Kelley could not be reached for comment. Through her literary agent, Wayne S. Kabak, she referred questions to lawyers for her publisher. In its legal answer to the lawsuit filed in the court in Alabama, Random House Inc. denied Mr. Wilson’s claims and said that if any material was copied or wrongfully appropriated, it was not protected by copyright, was of minimal scope, did not damage Mr. Wilson and was covered under the legal doctrine of “fair use.”

Hmm. As I’ve written before, you have to know a lot about context to tell whether something is really plagiarism or not, but this isn’t the most unqualified defense I’ve ever heard. It’s hard to believe that anyone could be dumb enough to plagiarize a blog — but it’s happened before.