Kentucky gentleman and likely Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul suffered some embarrassment last week after Rachel Maddow, Buzzfeed, and Politico pointed out that he had lifted lines from the Associated Press and Wikipedia entries on Gattaca and Stand and Deliver for unattributed use in speeches. Paul responded by first pretending not to understand what he was being accused of and then promising to be “more cautious in presenting and attributing sources” in the future. Rather than let this particularly goofy scandal fade away, an indignant Paul went on TV today to call out the journalists “casting aspersions on [his] character“:
“I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting — I have never intentionally done so and like I say, ‘If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know it’d be a duel challenge,’ ” Paul said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Though Paul is generally a pretty mild-mannered guy, it’s not very difficult for us to imagine the libertarian hero loading up an old-timey pistol, hitting someone in the face with a glove, and demanding satisfaction.
