The Boston Globe, a New York Times subsidiary, has been caught flat-footed on the story of Senate candidate/Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren's phony claim of Cherokee heritage, with the rival Boston  Herald loudly telling all of Massachusetts about her evasions, pathetic claims of evidence, and haughty air of let's-move-on. For weeks now, the Globe has pretended there is no story, but it just isn't working.

First, the Globe prominently published (false) claims that the New England Genealogical Society verified her Indian heritage based on a marriage license application by an ancestor. Oops! Turns out that it is a phony document that the NEGS repudiated.  After a delay, the Globe posted a correction buried deep inside its pages, unlike the prominent position accorded the false evidence.

But the cofferdam isn't working. Reporters, led by the Herald, continue to pester Warren with awkward evidence that keeps coming to light, indicating that yes, Harvard Law School trumpeted her self-reported claim to Indian heritage, demonstrating the wonderful diversity of its faculty including a Native American, raising the suspicion that she benefitted from affirmative action preferences in being hired there.

It has gotten so downright embarrassing for Warren that she is losing her cool in front of reporters. John Zaremba of the Herald:

Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren, in a sequel to an awkward on-camera encounter this week about her claim to Native American heritage, bolted from a campaign event yesterday, refusing to answer a Herald reporter's questions about the controversy.

Moments after giving the keynote speech at the Young Democrats of Massachusetts convention, Warren and her handlers hustled out a rear exit of the SEIU 1199 offices in Dorchester. She climbed into the passenger side of an SUV and closed the door as a Herald reporter asked her a question and a photographer rolled video.

So what is the Globe to do, in the face of being shown up as a shill? The answer, it turns out, is to pretend they have done original reporting on the subject and start reporting the facts they preferred to sweep under the rug. Unfortunately, they did so in a way that strongly suggests plagiarism.  Even worse, plagiarism of a site that all Good Liberals know they should demonize: Breitbart.com. John Sexton of Breitbart explains:

Today the Boston Globe has a front-page, below-the-fold story titled "Filings raise more questions on Warren's ethnic claims." It's a well-written take on documents and information first brought to light here at Breitbart News two weeks ago. Unfortunately, it's presented as a scoop with no link or reference to the fact that the information has appeared previously in another publication. 

Indeed, today's Globe story, authored by Mary Carmichael (pictured above), explicitly claims this is a brand new scoop: "The documents suggest for the first time that either Warren or a Harvard administrator classified her repeatedly as Native American in papers prepared for the government."

As you'll see, that's simply not true. The key information in the Globe story was reported first by Breitbart News. The easiest way to see this would be to read the two stories back to back

Readers should go to Breitbart to read the evidence details. Keep in mind that a simple google search would reveal Breitbart's work on the subject. Thetre is no credible excuse for the Globe coming to the same evidence independently of the Breitbart site, in my opinion.

It is worth noting that plagiarism is a firing offense in journalism. Academia, too. Or at least it used to be.  Maybe no longer, though. After all, Elizabeth Warren plagiarized recipes for the cookbook Pow Wow Chow (which she cited as evidence of her Indian heritage) from Pierre Franey. None of the guardians of academic integrity at Harvard Law seem to regard this as significant, as if plagiarism is a practice that one adopts for cookbooks, but not for any other work.

Harvard Law School was quite ready to tolerate plagiarism by Laurence Tribe, Barack Obama's mentor at Harvard Law, with then-Dean Elena Kagan dismissing it is a minor instance, not really the fault of the famous left wing professor. Tribe kept his tenured sinecure. Kagan, who let Obama's mentor escape the consequences of his perfidy, coincidentally was appointed to the Supreme Court by Tribe's mentee.

Nothing to see here. Move along. The mainstream media are unconcerned about corruption when it involves leading lights of the left or one of their own.