UPDATE, 1 a.m.: Joe Biden is the vice presidential candidate on the Obama side. Some Republicans are already calling it the plagiarism ticket. And even some PUMAs, too. FOX News: Biden had a stuttering problem.

ORIGINAL: One of Chet Edwards’ staffers has apparently relocated to Chicago to work for the Obama camp. Which means nothing, of course. Or everything. We shall see.

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In a press conference call on Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson noted that Sen. Barack Obama has used Gov. Deval Patrick’s words “without attribution.” Sen. Joe Biden was forced to drop out of the 1988 campaign for president for partaking in a similar practice.

“Sen. Obama is running on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises and, as we have seen in the last couple of days, he’s breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn’t his own,” Wolfson said. “When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person he plagiarized from. The other is to the reader.”

Rep. Jim McGovern has released the following statement: “…When Sen. Obama uses [those words] and doesn’t credit their origin, those same words seem less inspiring…”

Earlier: Obama Caught Plagiarizing 2006 Speech?

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Big Head DC has discovered alarming similarities between a speech made by Sen. Barack Obama on February 16 while campaigning for president in Wisconsin and an October 2006 speech made by Deval Patrick, the current Democratic governor of Massachusetts. The coincidences would seem to indicate that Obama copied several lines and linguistic speech patterns from Patrick’s “Just Words” speech for Obama’s own “Words Matter” speech. Indeed, words do matter. And they matter even more when they are one’s own words.

The two speeches can be compared, in all their eerie detail, via YouTube:

Deval Patrick’s 2006 “Just Words” speech (October 15, 2006):

And Barack Obama’s “Words Matter” speech (February 16, 2008):

Plagiarizing a speech during a presidential campaign was enough to end Sen. Joe Biden’s first bid for the presidency. From Wikipedia:

In 1987, Joe Biden ran as a Democratic presidential candidate. When the campaign began, he was considered a frontrunner because of his moderate image. However, the campaign ended when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party. Though Biden had correctly credited the original author in all speeches but one, the one where he failed to make mention of the originator was caught on video. In the video Biden is filmed repeating a stump speech by Kinnock, with only minor modifications.

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Jill Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden, was involved in an auto accident this morning, and is now resting at home. This story is particularly scary, since Biden’s first wife, Neilia Hunter, was killed in a car crash some years ago.

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Joe Biden said during last night’s Democratic presidential debate that there are usually only three ingredients in most Rudy Giuliani’s sentences: a noun, a verb and 9/11. Upon reviewing all transcripts of Giuliani’s speeches since 9/11, we’ve determined that Biden is, sadly, right.

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The tongue-tied candidate called President Bush “stupid” on Hardball this evening. He quickly backtracked and said he shouldn’t have said that. He’s so not articulate.

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My favorite Washington scandal mongers just had to talk to that pretty dilly, Betsy Rothstein, about Joe Biden’s Barack-i-tude:

“How is what Biden said not a lot worse than what [Sen.] Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said a few years ago?” asks Gannon, former White House reporter. ”The liberal outrage machine is curiously quiet.”

“By ‘clean’ he meant ‘untainted by scandal, unlike Hillary,’” observed, Jess, a free woman in Arkansas. ”And by ‘articulate’ he meant ‘communicates clearly, unlike myself.’”

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Surge unites Snow White with evil queen.

Judy Miller: “I have no memory.”

Rep. Loretta Sanchez: not a whore, still Hispanic.

Henry Kissinger is a shifty German.

Bob Novak outs Republicans as skeletons. Get ready for the subpoenas.

Bush cries out, “Look, I’ve got too much on my mind…”

Rudy Giuliani’s got problems.

Joe Biden: “Senator Stupid!”

Molly Ivins still haunts Bush from the great beyond: “Stand Up Against the Surge.”

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He’s running for Prez, and he’s pissed. Straight talkin’ Joe perhaps got a little too straight with The New York Observer regarding a few members of that merry gang of presidential hopefuls:

On Hillary Clinton: Her Iraq plan is a formula for “disaster.”

On John Edwards: “I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about.”

On Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…”

Zoinks. Wonder what he really thinks.

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Jimmy Carter says the Jews have “hurt” him. Mean Jews.

Parents hate Al Gore.

Call him Gabby Joe. Sen. Biden just can’t shut up now that he’s got some power. Related: Senators get emotional over the troop surge.

President Bush is traveling around the country to promote the use of alternative fuels. Ever wonder how much gas it takes to fuel Air Force One?

John Kerry takes one for the team, then blurts out that all American troops are “stupid.”

Should Barack Obama change his name to Black Obama?

Rich Washingtonians fly private, sip champagne, ski, read The Economist, and attend dinner parties. Why else would we live here?

The Libby trial is full of juice. Slurp it up.

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