Our methodology / Infoscapelab.ca

Topping the charts this week is the "Return of the Trusty Tory", a Conservative blog that exclaims "BREAKING: Dion's Plagiarism Uncovered!". Trusty claims that "It would appear as though over a quarter of Stephane Dion's speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2005 was plagiarized directly from a 2004 speech given to the U.S. Senate committee chaired by none other than John McCain." At last count there were 99 responses (comments) to this post.

The second most cited post in the blogosphere, from "Bouquets of Gray", conversely alleges that a Harper speech lifted text from another speech, this time from Craig Docksteader of The Prairie Policy Centre. Craig Docksteader though has responded, noting that he actually wrote the original speech for Harper (note to blogosphere: I am currently plagiarizing my own words too!).

Steve Janke chimes in at number three with the post entitled "Stephane Dion went to climate conference just to read someone else's report". The "Angry" blogger's point: not only did Dion copy someone else's speech, but he then flew half way around the world to read it "word for word". Liberal blogger James Curran pops up again in the comments section (as he does on Trusty Tory's post) to counter the Conservatives points here warning: the ensuing debate gets really technical, which is a rather polite way of saying confusing and dreadfully boring…).

The fourth most cited post offers more details on political vandalism in Toronto. The blog alleges that at least 11 Liberal supports have had their cars vandalized in the west end Parkdale-High Park riding.

On Steve Janke's original post "Stephane Dion went to climate conference just to read someone else's report", he stated: "In **2006**, as Minister of the Environment, Stephane Dion opened a climate conference focused on the Arctic." (emphasis added). The U.N. climate change conference held that year was in Nairobi, leading us to assume that this formed the basis for Janke's concern about "...how much carbon he emitted into the atmosphere to get to the conference..."

Some time after this original post Janke changed his blog to indicate that the date of the conference was 2005, when the conference was held in Montreal. Janke does not make note of the change on his blog but told Ormiston Online that the date change was an effort to correct a "typo". For debate on this matter also see: Kady O'Malley's post at Macleans.

Number five this week is J-blogger and Maclean's national editor Andrew Coyne telling us "The Tories are in trouble" (and he has a fancy charts to prove it!). 118 souls have posted responses in the comments section (Andrew do you read all of these?).