Maddow should have mentioned other cases to put it into perspective...
Plagiarism allegations have touched many politicians, often to little effect.
The offenders include
President Obama, who during the 2008 presidential campaign
appeared to lift language from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D).
Others accused in recent years include former senator
Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The one political plagiarism example that everyone cites, of course, is Obama’s second-in-command,
Vice President Biden. Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign was infamously derailed amid multiple allegations of plagiarism, most notably from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.
Biden lifted Kinnock’s precise turns of phrase and his sequences of ideas—a degree of plagiarism that would qualify any student for failure, if not expulsion from school. But the even greater sin was to borrow biographical facts from Kinnock that, although true about Kinnock, didn’t apply to Biden. Unlike Kinnock, Biden wasn’t the first person in his family history to attend college, as he asserted; nor were his ancestors coal miners, as he claimed when he used Kinnock’s words.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that Biden’s sins were much more extensive than Paul’s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...s-plagiarism-allegations-and-why-they-matter/