According to a report from BuzzFeed, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who has already been caught lifting from Wikipedia and the Heritage Foundation, also copied large sections of his recent Washington Times Op-Ed from an earlier article featured in the Week.
In the original piece from the Week, Dan Stewart writes, "By design, mandatory sentencing laws take discretion away from prosecutors and judges so as to impose harsh sentences, regardless of circumstances."
In Paul's Op-Ed, published just less than a week later, that same sentence appears, verbatim.
Paul appears to have also lifted the following from Stewart's original piece: "Since mandatory sentencing began ... in response to a growing drug-and-crime epidemic, America’s prison population has quadrupled, to 2.4 million. America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year."
In Stewart's original piece, the following sentence appears: "He will be 72 by the time he is released, and his three young children will have grown up without him. 'Matt,' who turned out to have a long history of drug offenses, was more fortunate — he received a reduced sentence of just 18 months after informing on Horner, and is now free."
And in his Washington Times Op-Ed, Paul writes, "John will be 72 years old by the time he is released, and his three young children will have grown up without him. The informant, who had a long history of drug offenses, was more fortunate — he received a reduced sentence of just 18 months, and is now free."
While Paul's office did not respond to BuzzFeed's request for comment, the Kentucky senator did recently say he was being "unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters."
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