Wash Times Casts Paul Adrift Over Plagiarized Column

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The Washington Times is discontinuing Sen. Rand Paul's (R.-Ky.) weekly column after BuzzFeed reported that his Sept. 20  Times column lifted passages from a Dan Stewart article in The Week without attribution, the Gawker.com Web site reports.

The Times' decision to end the column that Paul began writing last summer is the sour cherry atop a melted sundae of a week for the 50-year-old Republican and Tea Party fave who was elected to the Senate in 2010. Last week, Politico and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC alleged that speeches given by Paul have plagiarized a variety of sources, including Associated Press articles and Wikipedia pages for the films Stand and Deliver and Gattaca, Additionally, BuzzFeed claims Paul's book, Government Bullies, cribbed from a 2003 Heritage Foundation study without attribution.

Confronted with these embarrassing missteps, Sen. Paul stepped up to the plate and blamed his staff. Still, it seems as if Paul, an opthalmologist, doctors his written work as well.

Prognosticator Morris Has More Lives than a Cat, but not at Fox

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Political ouija board enthusiast Dick Morris, no longer red-faced over his unequivocal forecast of a Mitt Romney landslide victory in last November's presidential election, is out as a commentator for Fox News, the Washington Post reported.

True to form, the 63-year-old Morris didn't predict being jettisoned by Fox News, which apparently believes it is sufficiently covered in divorced-from-reality political prognostication by keeping Karl Rove on the payroll.  Fret not about the future of the former mainstay on The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity conservative gabfests, as the Washington Times reports that Morris will appear on Piers Morgan's talk show on CNN tonight and is bringing a steamer trunk and several suitcases with him. "TUOL" sees a Dick Morris hologram in CNN's future.

Washington (Hard) Times: Staff Layoffs Mount

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Roughly 20 Washington Times staffers were pink-slipped today, with the photography department and Web desk especially hard hit, according to reports by rival Washington Post and the Washington City Paper.

Times Executive Editor David Jackson imparted the bad news in a group announcement. Reportedly, terminated employees will receive a half-week's severance pay for each year of service and continued health care coverage through January.

Although the Times hasn't formally identified those who were laid off, staffers who tweeted that they were among the casualties include sportswriter Patrick Stevens and Steve Repsher, who had the dubious honor of being laid off by the Times in 2009, and later reinstated, only to be axed a second time.

The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by a media conglomerate of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, News World Communications ("NWU"). Rev. Moon and a handful of former Times editors acquired the broadsheet daily from NWU in 2010 for $1, and apparently, got a raw deal.

Washington Times: How High the Moon (Sale Price)?

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The Washington Post reports that its beleaguered competitor, The Washington Times, is being pedaled by the Unification Church and its 90-year-old leader, the Rev. Sun-Myung Moon.

One rumored prospective buyer is a group headed up by former Times Executive Editor John Solomon, who quit the 28-year-old Conservative daily in November 2009. The Church turned off the spigot that annually subsidized the Times to the tune of $35 million. As reported previously by "TUOL," the Times newsroom staff has been decimated from its level of 225 in 2002 to fewer than 70 today.

Circulation figures are unavvailable as the Times stopped reporting to the Audit Bureau of Circulations in 2008, when its daily readership topped 86,710.

Wash. Times Cruise Turns Into Ghost Ship

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Vacationers who shelled out $1,298 for a cruise sponsored by the financially strapped Washington Times may be feeling a bit seasick after most of the Times columnists and staffers slated to lead stimulating discussions were no-shows.

Scheduled programs on the Obama Presidency, future GOP leaders, and the threat posed by radical Islam found themselves devoid of "Timesers" to lead them.  At least attendees got to experience a romantic (Rev.) Moon-lite cruise in the Eastern Caribbean.

Washington (Hard) Times

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The Washington Times, founded in 1982 by the Unification Church, shortly expects to layoff at least 40 percent of its 370-member staff, de-emphasize newstand sales, and become largely a free distributed newspaper by early next year.

Last month, the Church, which is led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, ousted the Times' executive leadership (see "TUOL" post 11/9/09). At the same time that the daily, which reportedly has lost $2 billion since its inception, cuts back in response to the economic recession that is strangling the newspaper industry, the Times is shoring up its Web site, TheConservatives.com, and will continue to back its syndicated radio program that reaches 70 markets. According to Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, the Times' circulation is roughly 85,000.

The announcement is expected to incite conservatives in the nation's capital to "howl at the Moon."

Moon Eclipses Washington Times Management

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Jonathan Slevin is the new Acting President and Publisher of The Washington Times, replacing Thomas P. McDevitt, who, along with CFO Keith Copperrider and Chairmain Dong Moon Joo, has been booted by the Times and its parent company, News World Communications, LLC. Slevin is a former Times Veep and one-time managing editor of The New York City Tribune.

Rumors continue to swirl that Editor John Solomon may soon part ways with the Times. The Washington Times is among the holdings of the Unification Church and its 89-year-old Korean founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.  Known for performing mass weddings, the Rev. Moon apparently is adding mass firings to his repertoire.