"I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference," reads a message on Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown's website. Weirdly, former North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole said the exact same thing in her Senate campaign announcement speech in 2002. Which leads us to wonder: Is Scott Brown Bob Dole's Wife? 
 
 A careful investigation of all the facts has revealed that no, Scott Brown is not married to Bob Dole. He is, however, probably pretty embarrassed at the fact that his website lifted, verbatim, an entire paragraph from a speech Liddy Dole gave in 2002: 
 
 "I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference," said the message from Brown, which was removed later yesterday. "From an early age, I was taught that success is measured not in material accumulations, but in service to others. I was encouraged to join causes larger than myself, to pursue positive change through a sense of mission, and to stand up for what I believe." 
 
 You can read the speech on Google Books here; the plagiarism was uncovered by a liberal political action committee called American Bridge 21st Century and reported out by Alex Katz of the Boston Globe. 
 
 And how did something like this happen? According to a Brown spokesman, the whole thing was a "staff level oversight" that resulted in the passage being "inadvertently transferred without being rewritten." Sure is lucky that the opening line "I am Mary and John Hanford's daughter" was—inadvertently, we're sure—omitted! And also the line that follows: "I am Bob Dole's wife." 
 
 [Boston Globe, image via AP] ||||| WASHINGTON – A Democratic group has unearthed a bit of inspirational autobiography on Senator Scott Brown’s official website that was lifted verbatim from Elizabeth Dole’s site, language that originated in a campaign speech. 
 
 In a message to students, the Massachusetts senator uses the exact words as remarks delivered by the former North Carolina senator at her campaign kickoff in 2002. 
 
 Brown’s staff acknowledged yesterday the words originally were Dole’s and said their presence in Brown’s message was the result of a technical error. 
 
 “I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference,” said the message from Brown, which was removed later yesterday. “From an early age, I was taught that success is measured not in material accumulations, but in service to others. I was encouraged to join causes larger than myself, to pursue positive change through a sense of mission, and to stand up for what I believe.” 
 
 Aside from the omission of an opening line -- “I am Mary and John Hanford’s daughter” -- in Dole’s speech, the Bay State Republican’s language is the same throughout. 
 
 The matching language was disclosed by American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal “super PAC” that’s been scouring Republicans’ records ahead of next year’s elections. 
 
 “This kind of plagiarism makes me wonder how many things about Scott Brown are really genuine,” said Rodell Mollineau, president of American Bridge 21st Century. 
 
 He added: “The fact that he can’t come up with a personal values statement of his own, that he has to steal someone else’s, I think is very instructive of what kind of politician he is.” 
 
 Brown spokesman John Donnelly said the language was attributed to Brown in error, while his staff was creating the senator’s website. 
 
 “Senator Dole’s website served as one of the models for Senator Brown’s website when he first took office. During construction of the site, the content on this particular page was inadvertently transferred without being rewritten,” Donnelly said. “It was a staff level oversight which we regret and is being corrected.” 
 
 Dole, a one-term former senator who also served as US secretary of labor and is married to 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, did not immediately return a request for comment. 
 
 Dole’s speech, which is available in its full length in the book “Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart,” was also covered by various news outlets at the time. An Associated Press article from Feb. 23, 2002, quotes part of the language in question, saying Dole tried to demonstrate to the crowd in Salisbury, N.C., that “she never abandoned her small-town roots during the years she worked in Washington.” 
 
 Oddly enough, some of Brown’s material was recently the object of plagiarism in June 2010 by a Tea Party Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina. William Randall was accused of lifting policy positions from Brown’s campaign website for use of his own. 
 
 Randall ultimately acknowledged that the material had “found its way” onto his website, and he dismissed the campaign volunteer responsible for it.
– It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Scott Brown: Last week, there was that unfortunate Elizabeth Warren comment; now, he's being accused of plagiarism. A liberal super PAC discovered that Brown’s website lifted a significant portion of an Elizabeth Dole speech from 2002, the Boston Globe reports. The remarks, which have since been removed, start, “I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference,” and follow the rest of Dole’s comment verbatim. They do leave out a fairly important opening line, however: “I am Mary and John Hanford’s daughter.” A Brown spokesperson says it was simply an oversight, and that the language was “inadvertently transferred” from Dole’s site, which staffers used as a model for Brown’s. Gawker points to the Dole passage, which is available on Google Books, and notes that the line immediately following the cited comments was also conveniently omitted: “I am Bob Dole’s wife." Complains the super PAC president, “The fact that he can’t come up with a personal values statement of his own, that he has to steal someone else’s, I think is very instructive of what kind of politician he is."