Equivalence?

Forget the factual inaccuracies that Atrios highlighed. How screwed up do you have to be to believe, like Jeff Goldstein apparently does, that plagiarism is somehow less of a sin than pseudonymity?

Especially when, as he acknowledges himself, Goldstein chose to use a pseudonym because

[i]n the early days of blogging, Ben had a blog he published under his own
name. From what I understand, he used an alias on Red State because he’d received threats. This has been corroborated by people close to Ben via email.

Is he so blinkered as to not realize that other people might just choose to do the same thing, for the same basic reason, yet not agree with his politics? IOKIYAR is unseemly at the best of times, but trying to claim that pseudonymity is somehow worse than plagiarism (if you're a liberal) is beyond the pale.

(And, no, Goldstein doesn't get an out by claiming that blog posts don't apply. The internet is a public forum, and Blogger has a "publish" button for a reason.)

The post would be ludicrous in any case, as Jeff is trying to claim that Plagiarist Ben deserves credit for coming forward and admitting fault after having been caught red handed, and that liberals deserve scorn for rejoicing in his fall. He resigned because he was going to get fired, not because of any moral strength. I don't know about the other liberals out there, but I'm happy because what appeared to be a truly terrible columnist has been evicted from the pages of the Washington Post. Schadenfreude be damned.