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WASHINGTON - The distributor of blond bomb-thrower Ann Coulter's columns announced yesterday it is investigating allegations of plagiarism that were raised in a recent Post report about her writings.
Universal Press Syndicate, through which Coulter's columns appear in more than 100 newspapers, said it wants to review a report that detailed instances in which passages of her columns appeared to be lifted from other authors. A plagiarism-detecting software system called iThenticate produced the findings.
"We take allegations of plagiarism seriously. It's something we'd like to investigate further," Universal spokeswoman Kathie Kerr said.
"We'd like to see a copy of the report. We'd like to start looking into it."
John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate program, also said he discovered instances of "textbook plagiarism" in Coulter's controversial book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."
Steve Ross, senior vice president of Crown Publishing group, which published the book, defended his best-selling polemicist by noting there are 19 pages of endnotes.
"We have reviewed the allegations of plagiarism surrounding 'Godless' and found them to be as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible," Ross said.
"The number of words used by our author in these snippets is so minimal that there is no requirement for attribution."
Coulter, who drew fire last month for her mean-spirited attacks on a group of 9/11 widows in the book, has not responded directly to the plagiarism allegations.
Coulter - who has written many screeds against The New York Times and was outspoken in her criticism during the Jason Blair plagiarism scandal - attacked The Post as "New York's second-crappiest paper" in her latest column.
Barrie stuck to his guns yesterday, telling The Post he believes Coulter ripped off other people's writings in an effort to "maintain her status as a celebrity author in any way she can."
niles.lathem@nypost.com
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