Tuesday, Mar. 23, 2010
Much Ado About ... A Lot
Aug. 23, 1987
"I started thinking as I was coming over here, Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?"
— Joe Biden, during his first presidential run, lifting passages and even gestures from a speech by Neil Kinnock without giving credit to the leader of the British Labour Party.
Biden's problems continued when C-SPAN footage surfaced two weeks later showing Biden inflating his academic record at law school. (His claims included one that he finished in the top half of his class at Syracuse Law School; he graduated 76th of 85.) Though he later called the accusations of plagiarism "much ado about nothing," he dropped out of the race on Sept. 23.