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Washington --- A young, conservative blogger was forced to resign from the Washington Post's Web site Friday, a day after he was accused of plagiarizing other writers, including lifting part of a 2001 movie review from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ben Domenech, 24, a co-founder of the popular conservative Web site RedState.org, ended his career at washingtonpost.com only days after he began writing a blog called "Red America" on the Post's site.
"When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings," Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said in a message posted on the site. He said an investigation is ongoing.
Domenech could not be reached for comment late Friday. But in a posting on RedState under the screen name Augustine, he defended himself against some of the plagiarism charges and portrayed his quick downfall at washingtonpost.com as the work of liberals who he said also threatened his family.
He said they once ran "a six-month campaign against me" while in he was in college, and added, "The past 72 hours seem like a rerun of that experience."
"The truth is, no conservative could write for the Post without being subject to the gauntlet of the liberal attack machine," Domenech wrote.
Domenech said he had permission from author P.J. O'Rourke to copy some of O'Rourke's material in a column for the student newspaper at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. He also suggested that his editors there, not he, routinely inserted material from other newspapers into movie reviews he wrote.
However, the material Domenech is accused of lifting from Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Steve Murray's review of the 2001 movie "Final Fantasy" appeared in a different forum: the Web site National Review Online.
And while some of Domenech's supporters claimed that Domenech's review appeared before Murray's, suggesting that Murray, not Domenech, was the plagiarist, records in the Journal-Constitution's archives show that Murray's review was published on July 11, 2001. Domenech's review was posted July 14.
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
