Pity Tim Goeglein. Just a little bit.

OK. Screw the pity. This guy is a schmuck.

Goeglein resigned from his $125,000-a-year job at the White House on Friday, after it emerged that “guest columns” he’s been submitting to his hometown newspaper (the Fort Wayne, Indiana News-Sentinel) since around 2000 have contained varying amounts of plagiarized material.

At the White House, Goeglein was President Bush’s liaison to religious groups, specializing in federal-government “faith-based” initiatives.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

“Thou Shalt Not Steal” is either the 7th or 8th Commandment, depending upon whether you’re Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, or Orthodox. Regardless, it’s one of the two or three most basic directives for self-professed Christians.

Goeglein’s plagiarism was uncovered by Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist who appears motivated by (1) a wholesale annoyance with Goeglein’s right-wing politics, and (2) her once-upon-a-time employer’s lack of respect for “The Nancy.” But she did a fine job using “Sergeant Google” to figure this one out. Seriously, the comments on this blog post are worth reading from beginning to end.

And the News-Sentinel is firmly in damage-control mode. The paper has now identified 20 (yes, twenty) Goeglein columns, out of the 38 he’s had published, in which he lifted entire sections from other writers without attribution. Quoth News-Sentinel Editorial Page Editor Leo Morris:

If somebody lifts a line or two once, maybe it was an accident. Two or three times, somebody thinks he can get away with something. But 20 times, and not a line or two each time but whole passages? The only thing I can think is that there is some crossed wiring that causes the person to think that plagiarism isn’t really stealing … The faith-based assistant to the president filching somebody else’s words?