to put it mildly.  I hope we hear from cvillelaw about this shortly.

did you attempt to contact him?  I haven't and was just waiting to see what reaction I rec'd here.  Eventually I'd like to let him know that I/RK knows.  Perhaps I'll cross-post this to his blog!? :)

several hours ago. Haven't heard back yet.

The further back you go,on their site, the more you find.  Lowell, you might want to get at least one blogger there to cease this.  

PS There were a couple familiar names attached to other stories (not the ones in question).

Thanks.

In reading this diary one would suspect that cvllelaw has impermissibly copied RK's blog structure and has posted two diaries allegedly copied in large part from your work.  Upon closer examination I think you should be very careful about implying unethical behavior on the part of cvllelaw.  

First, full disclosure.  I do not know cvllelaw.  To my knowledge I have never met him, never had correspondence with him except in comment exchanges online, and otherwise have no vested interest in proving he's right and you're wrong.

Second, due to the high quality of cvllelaw's diaries, particularly his legal diaries and accounts of important historical events, I did some online checking and satisfied myself that he is a person of very high repute in his profession ...

Third, upon investigation I believe your suggestion that cvllelaw has somehow purloined the RK format unfairly impugns his reputation.  Both RK and Democratic Central are Soapblox blogs.  If you had simply googled Soapblox and gone to its site (Soapblox) before posting your suggestion you would have found that RK and Democratic Central are both following the Soapblox template, and both happened to choose blue as their contrasting color.  Considering that blue is the color of lefties and Democrats, I cannot find color choice in this regard very significant.  There is some variation in the placement of page elements and font, but that's to be expected when using a modified standard template.

Fourth, the first diary to whom you directed readers' attention, the one that wasn't about the SCC, was simply a posting of the chart of Obama's Record in the Illinois Senate.  Cvllelaw properly attributed this chart to the New York Times, which published it.  He did not add anything to the diary, just left the chart there for visitors to view.  Apparently you or someone else on RK published it also.  Now, unless you're claiming that you are the real author of the chart, perhaps you should withdraw the implication of a pattern of plagiaristic behavior on cvllelaw's part.  We all draw from other sources for our diaries.  We all post pieces of articles and charts and pictures and graphs, and it's grossly unfair to cvllelaw to imply what your diary implies.

Fifth, I have reviewed your diary on the SCC and cvllelaw's.  You are correct that there appear to be substantial similarities on SOME portions of the diaries, but I wonder how much can be attributable to lifting of language and how much can be attributable to using similar language to describe an identical situation.  Each diary is ten paragraphs long, but there is significant divergence from each other in the other 8 paragraphs which were not cited.  

What is THE most significant issue before the SCC?  We'd all agree it's the two transmission lines through Northern Virginia.  That both of you may have decided to lead with that story doesn't really impress me as plagiarism.  There's nothing unique about the idea or the method of expressing it.  There is no set date for a decision, so the only way to properly describe some action which will occur in the future is to say "in the coming months."  Let's analyze the first paragraph you cite.  I'm using plain font for identical words, italic for you, and bold for cvllelaw:

In the coming months the SCC will decide on two 500kv extra high-voltage transmission lines in Northern Virginia, a natural gas generation center in Caroline County, the Wise County Coal and Wood Waste power station,power plants in Wise County and Caroline County,an upcoming Energy Efficiency and Conservation Plan, and future proposals regarding wind and nuclear generation, wind and nuclear generation plants, as well as enforcing the renewable and efficiency & conservation standards passed in Virginia's Energy Plan last year and how to enforce efficiency and conservation standards passed in Virginia's Energy Plan last year.

It's pretty clear that cvllelaw's diary - this one, not the other one - was clearly inspired by yours, and he probably drew a lot of the information for his diary from yours.  The question then becomes whether he did something unethical in doing so.

When I post diaries I try very hard to make proper attribution to anyone from whom I may have drawn inspiration, but more than once I've only just caught myself  before putting something out there which might properly be called someone else's work.  But I must say I'm just not sure where the line is drawn.  If the idea is that we're all advocates for a particular position, and the diary is posted by way of informing the public and raising the consciousness of its viewers and drawing comments, then should we treat diaries as if they are unique works of art or literature, their ideas distinguishable and subject to copyright protection?  Weren't you trying to spread the word about the issues before the GA and the SCC?  Is the goal to achieve credit for putting the issue out there or is it to get the issue out there?  

I'm a regular reader of cvllelaw's diaries on Democratic Central.  As far as I can tell he's almost a one man operation.  He is prolific and his interests are wide-ranging.  His capsule explanations of important historical and social events are superb.  They are enjoyable reading to this student of history, and quite often they make the point far better than I can.  Therefore, I would suggest that maybe you should go to the Democratic Central site and take a look at the home page.  Contemplate for a moment how much work went into that kind of output from one person who also has a very wide range of other obligations.  I'm not saying you do not deserve attribution; you do, but I am suggesting that you withdraw your imputation that he somehow stole the RK template - clearly he did not - and should be held accountable as having taken from you a table which both you AND he took from the New York Times.  Cvllelaw should have paused for a moment to make proper attribution, but it is easy for one who spends hours reading and writing on many subjects to make a mistake about where or how the ideas that person is expressing came about.  The same problem sometimes crops up in music.  Copyright infringement suits are built around similar sounding musical riffs in which the pattern may have been unintentionally taken from another source.  To suggest some sort of major problem or plagiaristic tendencies on the basis of what you posted here is just unfair.  

that a diary, like any other original work, is entitled to copyright protection under U.S. law, as I understand it.

That is distinct, however, from the plagiarism issue, which is an ethical, not a legal, issue.

Just to be clear, I'm not expressing an opinion on the factual issue at hand.  

of what diarists post is original.  We all tend to follow news cycles and post on news stories, usually offering our opinions.  But how original are diaries really?  I'm not saying there's not an expectation that things won't be copied whole from one thing to another, but this isn't the first time I've seen great similarity between what two diarists have posted because they're both covering the same issue and taking the same position.  

Lowell, I just happened across this thread.  I have not received an e-mail from you, as far as I know.

As for the format of my blog, it uses the same commercially available software as does Raising Kaine.  I have not customized it at all; if it looks like Raising Kaine, that's how it got sent to me.  The similarities are the same similarities that we would get if we both drove 2001 Sentras.

To Floodguy -- my apologies.  I was reminded when I saw your post that this was something that I had been meaning to write about since J-J weekend when I talked with some Delegates.  This also ties in indirectly with some other judge-related issues that I have written about in recent days.  Being a lawyer, the process of appointing judges is of great interest to me, and my purpose in writing was mainly to talk about the politics and the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on.  I read your post and it triggered me to want to write about the politics behind it.  I wanted to provide some context in explaining something about the SCC.  What I try to do when I am using another blog for inspiration is to use the inspiration but not the exact quotes, and to note that I was inspired by the other blog entry.  Unfortunately, in this case I was working at home because of the threatened icestorm, the TV was on, and it was time for bed.  I was less careful than I try to be on other occasions.

I virtually never (I was going to say "never," but I may have done it inadvertently or because I get interrupted and discombobulated) simply duplicate another post.  By that I mean not only that I don't copy it, but I don't even write about the topic unless I can add something that I think is meaningful. I should add that I think I am much more conscientious about that than many other Virginia bloggers, many of whom regularly pick up my stuff -- sometimes with acknowledgment, sometimes not.  I note it with amusement, but I don't care.  Hell, I don't have ads on my blog; it doesn't matter to me.

I was particularly amused a couple of weeks ago when the local TV station picked up the news that Mitch Van Yahres had died; the reporter told me that he had been checking Raising Kaine for an update on something or another, saw the Lefty Blog headline, went to Democratic Central, and wound up reading my story verbatim on the air -- complete with an error that I had made.  I called the reporter afterwards and told him the error that I and he had both made so that his archives would be accurate, but I really didn't care that he used my stuff.  

In this case, I wanted to talk about the information on the judicial impasse from various newspapers from two weeks ago, plus my own conversations with Delegates on the J-J weekend.  Your post provided some background and context that was useful, though I still was not planning to just copy it.  Had I not been distracted and in a hurry to put the thing (and myself) to bed, I would have rewritten better and I would have made a reference to your post.  

I have posted an update on my earlier post, with both an acknowledgment of the inspiration and apology.  

I hope you'll come back and see us!

Keep up the good work!

PS  I did write to you, the email didn't bounce, so I'm not sure what's up.

I had just last evening deleted about 2,000 junk mail messages, after having to go through and see if there were any important ones.  I probably missed it.

The darn thing even treats e-mail FROM me as junk mail; I would have thought that it would at least treat ME with some respect.

Oh, well.  My son, who works for RedHat, would surely have an answer...