On Friday, I highlighted the Charleston Gazette-Mail's front-page story on WV senator Patricia Rucker's most recent op-ed piece that had appeared in another state newspaper. As reporter Ryan Quinn demonstrated, two of her paragraphs were almost exactly the same as articles found elsewhere. When confronted with the 130 words of plagiarism, Rucker called it an "incredible coincidence."

Today, the Wheeling News-Register published Rucker's op-ed including the portions that are word-for-word from other sources. As I noted in March, our local papers apparently don't check for plagiarism. Still, it's hard to believe that no one at the paper saw the Friday front page of the state's most important newspaper. But, they probably reasoned: (1) hey, it's Friday and we've already put this section together - it will mean finding a substitute, or (2) most of our readers don't read the Gazette-Mail and so they won't know any better. That Rucker argues for charter schools probably didn't hurt, either.