"I'm not a journalist."
Ben makes the understatement of the year in speaking with Howie Kurtz for this craptacular article. As for the allegation of plagiarism, Ben "said he needed to research the examples but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles." Yes, maybe it was that meddling college editor who inserted a chapter from P.J. O'Rourke's "Modern Manners" into the entirety of one of your columns, custom-fitting it for the kids in Williamsburg. Not your fault, right, Ben?

So then did that meddling college editor follow you to the New York Press? Reader PB at the post.blog [and at DKos] picked up on Ben plagiarizing from his future employer:

'Don't Move! You Just Shot 2 of My Men!'
By Michael Powell and Saundra Torry
Sunday, July 26, 1998; Page A1

Across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart surgeon and trauma specialist, has just finished speaking on the Senate floor and heads to his Dirksen Building office suite. "Something bad has happened at the Capitol," an aide tells him.

He does what everyone on Capitol Hill does; he looks at the television and sees only standard programming. So Frist grabs a folder and heads out. He's late for his flight already.

As an aide drives him out of a Senate garage, he calls the Capitol's attending physician and finds out two people "are down" at the Capitol.

In his shirtsleeves, Frist gets out of the car and sprints onto the Capitol grounds, past police and camera crews, tourists and reporters, and into a ground-floor door.

A security guard puts his hand up to stop Frist, then realizes who he is.

A man is being wheeled out on a stretcher.

"This was Chestnut," Frist recalls. The officer has massive head trauma. His heart has stopped. He can't breathe. The Capitol physicians have put in a breathing tube.

"You've got to get air into the lungs, you have to compress on the chest," Frist remembers. "I had a medic compressing on the chest, as I was ventilating through the breathing tube, squeezing the bag."

By now, Frist is in the ambulance with his patient, stabilizing him, getting his heart beating again. Three medics are there by now, so Frist sends the ambulance off. He already knows it is a losing battle. "This severe a head trauma, I have seen nobody survive," Frist recalls.

Now, let's see what Ben Domenech wrote in the New York Press three years after the Powell and Torry article:

Across Constitution Ave. from the Capitol, Republican Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, a heart surgeon and trauma specialist, had just finished speaking on the Senate floor and was headed to his Dirksen Bldg. office suite to pack up for the trip home when a staffer phoned to tell him what happened.

"Something bad is going on at the Capitol," the staffer said--television stations were reporting that two people were down, seriously injured, and possibly the gunman as well. "You might want to get back here fast."

Frist hung up and told the aide driving the car to turn around and head back to the Capitol. He’d catch another flight back home.

In his shirtsleeves, Frist got out of the car and sprinted onto the Capitol grounds, past police and camera crews, tourists and reporters, and into a ground-floor door. A security guard put his hand up to stop him, then realized who he was.

"Where is it?" asked Frist.

The Senator looked down the hallway into unadulterated carnage. Desperate staffers were tending to an officer with a gaping gunshot wound in his chest, blood pooled on the floor. Frist noticed another man being wheeled out of the Document Entrance on a stretcher. It was Chestnut. Frist, helping the medics carry the stretcher out the door, became a doctor, not a politician, and saw: massive head trauma, a stopped heart, the man unable breathe.

"You’ve got to get air into the lungs, you have to compress on the chest," he yelled over the sirens. The Capitol physicians put in a breathing tube. A medic started compressing Chestnut’s bloodstained chest as Frist ventilated air through the breathing tube, squeezing the bag. He helped them load the stretcher into the ambulance, then stayed until Chestnut was stabilized. Frist sent the ambulance off knowing that Chestnut was fighting a losing battle.

"This severe a head trauma, I have seen nobody survive," Frist would tell The Washington Post afterward.

Reader Dan who brought this to my attention adds, "My stars, a citation!!!" But I wonder how BenDom's colleagues at the Washington Post feel about his plagiarizing their work. Of course, plagiarism is no big deal, right? Right??