Isn't he a liberal?

I've read two columns by the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts in my life. One is his magnificent screed of 9/12/2001, which begins by calling the Islamofascists "unspeakable bastards" and ends by warning them, "You don't know what you just started. But you're about to learn."

The other is today's, which he addresses directly to the Carterville (Ga.) Daily Tribune News columnist who, Pitts just discovered, has plagiarized him at least eight times since March. It begins:

Dear Chris Cecil:

Here's how you write a newspaper column. First, you find a topic that engages you. Then you spend a few hours banging your head against a computer screen until what you've written there no longer makes you want to hurl.

And includes this paragraph, which is one of the most unbelievable things I've ever read:

The one [plagiarism] that really got me, though, was your theft of a personal anecdote about the moment I realized my mother was dying of cancer. ''The tears surprised me,'' I wrote. ''I pulled over, blinded by them.'' Seven days later, there you were: ``The tears surprised me. I pulled over, blinded by them on central Kentucky's I-75.''

Pitts has steam coming out of his ears.

(via Rathergate)

Update: In an apology like a forthright schoolboy's, The Dismal Seepage Daily Tribune Carbuncle announced today that it had fired Cecil. The note from "management and news staff" was posted at 2:01 CDT, which means that it may have been put up just minutes after Pitt's column.