White house aide Timothy Goeglein resigned on Feb. 29 after admitting to plagiarizing several guest columns he wrote for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind., The New York Times reported on March 1. Large passages of one of his columns came from an article written by Dartmouth English professor Jeffrey Hart and published 10 years ago in The Dartmouth Review. "This is not acceptable, and we are disappointed in Tim's actions," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore told The Times. "He is offering no excuses, and he agrees it was wrong." Fort Wayne blogger Nancy Nall, a former columnist at the News-Sentinel, was the first to discover Goeglelin's plagiarism from the Review. Further investigation by the News-Sentinel revealed that Goeglein had plagiarized in 19 of the 38 columns he had written for the paper. Goeglein had also taken phrases from the Pope and Jonathan Yardley, a book critic for The Washington Post, The News-Sentinel reported. At the White House, Goeglein acted as an intermediary between President Bush and conservative Christian groups.
Five states currently spend more money on correctional institutions than on institutions of higher education, according to a report released by the Pew Charitable Trusts on Feb. 28. Among the five states -- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware -- Vermont has the highest disparity, spending $1.37 on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education. New Hampshire's spending ratio between colleges and prisons is higher than that of most states with $0.73 spent on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education. The report argues that these high ratios represent a problem in higher education funding, and advocates measures to decrease the amount of spending on correctional facilities. "States don't necessarily make explicit choices between higher education and corrections funding, but they do have to balance their budgets," the report states. "A dollar spent in one area is unavailable for another."
