SC

More Problems For Lawmaker Accused Of Plagiarism

Remember S.C. Rep. Samuel Rivers?  He’s the “Republican” state lawmaker who was recently accused of plagiarizing a piece appearing in The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier . We’ve taken to calling him “Rep. CTRL-C, CTRL-V.” Anyway, Rivers – who looks to us to be guilty as sin on the plagiarizing…

Remember S.C. Rep. Samuel Rivers?  He’s the “Republican” state lawmaker who was recently accused of plagiarizing a piece appearing in The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier .

We’ve taken to calling him “Rep. CTRL-C, CTRL-V.”

Anyway, Rivers – who looks to us to be guilty as sin on the plagiarizing charge – is facing fresh problems this week.

According to a story in The (Charleston, S.C.) City Paper , the first-term lawmaker has a criminal record and has manufactured his academic credentials – namely a doctorate of theology degree he did not earn.

“(Rivers) received an honorary Ph.D. in theology from Smith Christian University, a little-known Florida school with interesting credentials,” the paper reported.

What is Smith Christian University?

“The school is accredited by Transworld Accrediting Commission International, a California-based group that is not recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as an accrediting agency,” the City Paper  report continues.

It’s also not recognized by the state of Florida – and has changed its name three times and its principal address four times since 2006.

Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy …

As for Rivers’ criminal record, he was convicted of assault and battery in 1995 – which he claims was a “self-defense thing.”  He also says the case was “thrown out,” which is obviously at odds with the public record.

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27 comments

John August 6, 2014 at 10:23 am

A lying Republican. Go figure.

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Sandi Morals August 6, 2014 at 10:41 am

lol!!!! In Ohio Gov.John Kasich has a 12 point lead today according to an independent poll released yesterday.Same lead Haley has in SC.
Kasich’s Democrat opponent, Ed Fitzgerald, was caught by the police at 4:30 A.M. in the morning with a woman that was NOT his wife in a parking lot in downtown Cleveland. Also reported today he has been driving without a Drivers License for years.
Yes indeed.Democrats have NO respect for the law or their communities.They only win elections by lying, cheating and stealing. John F.Kennedy set the example for Democrats.

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Smirks August 6, 2014 at 10:58 am

Well, I would be very concerned if I lived in Ohio. Unfortunately, in SC, the one constantly lying is your boss Haley.

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Sandi Morals August 6, 2014 at 11:23 am

Only one lying in SC is your boy Tom Ervin who professes to be a ‘born again’ Christian and Republican while advocating for state sanctioned gay marriage.
Liar, liar pants on fire SOCIALIST! :-)

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Nölff August 6, 2014 at 11:30 am

So so suck your toe all the way to Mexico

John August 6, 2014 at 11:45 am

So why can’t someone be a Christian and support gay marriage, Sandi?

Sandi Morals August 6, 2014 at 12:24 pm

Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve.
The ‘state’ should NOT sanction gay marriage between two people of the same sex anymore than they should sanction marriage between a person and their pet , polygamy or between a parent and their child.
If we pervert the Biblical and traditional concept of marriage between a man and a women where does the deviancy end? Very much a ‘slippery slope’ just like abortion.
Despite lower court rulings supporting gay marriage my hope is when SCOTUS takes up this issue the ‘slippery slope’ argument will prevail.
Just my opinion. I have a nephew that is ‘gay’ and love him unconditionally.Just don’t support the concept of the ‘state’ equating traditional marriage with gay marriage.
Nor do a majority of Biblical Christians.

EJB August 6, 2014 at 12:49 pm

With regard to RELIGIOUS marriage the various churches and whatnot determine what goes, my feeling. We have politicized marriage and sanctioned marriage in law that all but forces us to recognize gay marriage in order to apply the law equally. There are limits to everything, drivers have to be at least 16, voters have to be at least 18, pilots have to pass a physical, age of consent is 16, you want to limit legal marriage to a man and a woman. I enjoy the fruits of that arrangement. If I take ill my wife is allowed to make my end of life decisions. If we get divorced there are a number of laws that protect her, and me to a lesser extent. But these legal protections that she and I have are denied to a gay couple, solely and only because they are of the same sex. That couple may be just as committed as my wife and I, or more so, but their lives are flung at the mercy of family that have possibly/probably ostracized them because of their gay lifestyle. That family may decide to cremate the deceased gay person knowing full that person abhorred cremation while the committed gay partner can only watch. No, they deserve the same protections my wife and I have, period.

Halfvast Conspirator August 6, 2014 at 2:09 pm

If he had been caught with a guy it would have been a slam dunk to win

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Jesus Isn't Lord August 6, 2014 at 10:31 am

A lying Christian? What a shocker. Since Christianity, and indeed all religions, are based upon lies, why should this “Bible Believer” be held accountable for the truth?

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rihana546 August 6, 2014 at 10:36 am

I­­­­­­ ?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­

$­­­­­75 every ?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­r on the l­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?. I have been without W­­­­­­?­­­­­­r­­­­­­? for 10 ?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­? but last ?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­? my ?­­­­­­?­­­? chec? was

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From this web?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?­­­­­­?,…………………………………………………..CASHKINGPOST.com

??? ???? ??? ??? ??? ????

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Nölff August 6, 2014 at 10:37 am

Maybe one of them will lift some text from GT’s blog.

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nitrat August 6, 2014 at 2:44 pm

HA!

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Inciteful August 6, 2014 at 10:42 am

There’s only one way to straighten a crooked river,…Dam it.

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EJB August 6, 2014 at 12:33 pm

Don’t know, in Iowa the US Army Corps of Engineers did it with bulldozers, excavators and dump trucks. Straightened out a number of creeks and rivers. Screwed everything up.

Yours is still a funny line though.

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Bible Thumper August 6, 2014 at 11:04 am

The linked article is worth reading. Only black Republican in the State House; Strip mall church; Petition candidate from the 2012 ballot fiasco. His Democratic opponent is no angel either. Where is the political parties and the press? It’s late in the process to discover these issues.

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Sandi Morals August 6, 2014 at 11:24 am

Thanks for the link.

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Cast not the first stone August 6, 2014 at 1:04 pm

I note that Rep. Rivers is a negro.

http://www.scstatehouse.gov/member.php?code=1564488449

A much more famous negro, Martin Luther King Jr., was guilty of wholesale plagiarism throughout his life, first noted in his Ph.D dissertation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._authorship_issues

I’m sure white people don’t overtly cheat, steal or plagiarize, however. They’re more subtle, like giving themselves high-paid state jobs when they retire. Like, say, McConnell, Ryberg, Passailaigue.

###

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

— John 8:7 (NIV)

###

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s papers were donated by his wife Coretta Scott King to Stanford University’s King Papers Project. During the late 1980s, as the papers were being organized and catalogued, the staff of the project discovered that King’s doctoral dissertation at Boston University, titled A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman, included large sections from a dissertation written by another student (Jack Boozer) three years earlier at Boston University.[1][2]

As Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University, has written, “instances of textual appropriation can be seen in his earliest extant writings as well as his dissertation. The pattern is also noticeable in his speeches and sermons throughout his career.”[3]

Boston University, where King received his Ph.D. in systematic theology, conducted an investigation that found he plagiarized major portions of his doctoral thesis from various other authors who wrote about the topic.[4][5]

According to civil rights historian Ralph E. Luker, who worked on the King Papers Project directing the research on King’s early life, King’s paper The Chief Characteristics and Doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism[6] was taken almost entirely from secondary sources.[7] He writes:

Moreover, the farther King went in his academic career, the more deeply ingrained the patterns of borrowing language without clear attribution became. Thus, the plagiarism in his dissertation seemed to be, by then, the product of his long-established practice.[7]

The incident was first reported in the December 3, 1989, edition of the Sunday Telegraph by Frank Johnson, titled “Martin Luther King — Was He a Plagiarist?” The incident was then reported in U.S. in the November 9, 1990, edition of the Wall Street Journal, under the title of “To Their Dismay, King Scholars Find a Troubling Pattern”. Several other newspapers then followed with stories, including the Boston Globe and The New York Times.

Boston University decided not to revoke his doctorate, saying that although King acted improperly, his dissertation still “makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship.” However, a letter is now attached to King’s dissertation in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.[1][8][9]

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Halfvast Conspirator August 6, 2014 at 2:08 pm

Wow, I knew MLK liked white women but I didn’t know he also practiced textual appropriation.

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Bible Thumper August 6, 2014 at 5:13 pm

“Wow, I knew MLK liked white women.”
That depends on what ‘liked’ means. There are no credible reports of sex with white women.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp

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Clinton got a blow job August 6, 2014 at 9:40 pm

“That all depends upon what the definition of ‘is’ is.”

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Pareto August 6, 2014 at 2:04 pm

I hope the voters throw him out.

Can’t we elect honest people? Isn’t it scary that this is the type of person that is motivated to run for office? This is a good reason for limiting the power of government.

As Hayek wrote in the Road to Serfdom, the worst rise to the top precisely because, due to their lack of principles, they are willing to do anything such as lie and plagiarize.

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EJB August 6, 2014 at 3:52 pm

I’m not being a smart ass but if you want an answer to your question do this, decide you will run for an office, say county commissioner. Then think through the whole process, from raising money, dealing with people, the mud that will be thrown at you, the hell your family will go through, the time you have to take off from work to attend campaign functions, the time you will have to miss from work to do that job if you win, no real pay for doing the job of the office if you do manage to get elected. Act like you really just might go through with it and if you truly go through that exercise and think it through you will have your answer.

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Pareto August 6, 2014 at 4:25 pm

I agree. Which is probably why mainly only low lifes are willing to go through that heck because their goal is to line their own pockets when they get into office, as opposed to doing what is best for everyone.

Which is why we should try to keep government as small as possible, so as to limit the ability of crooked politicians to use government to benefit themselves.

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Bible Thumper August 6, 2014 at 5:19 pm

“…initially thrown off the ballot. Rivers later filed and was accepted as a petition candidate, and he took 98 percent of the vote in District 15.”

WOW! 98%, SC can run better elections than Russia did in Crimea or Kim Jong-un did in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

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TontoBubbaGoldstein August 6, 2014 at 7:44 pm

The school is accredited by Transworld Accrediting Commission International,…

TBG wonders if *Rev* Rivers is the founder of this organization, ala his [TBG’s] boy, Rand Paul….

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Mark August 6, 2014 at 9:45 pm

1. No doubt the editorial was written for him by a trade group and that writer did the plagiarism. Rivers should have admitted that right way, but not doing so is not a hanging offense.
2. The “sketchy” school thing is something many folks with lower incomes and less opportunities face…sometimes the sketchy school is all they can afford.
3. Every man ought to have a scuffle or two in life. If they don’t, they end up like Obama or some other weasel.

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