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In her column yesterday, Maureen Dowd offered the following observation:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

The thing is, it bears an uncanny similarity to this passage that liberal blogger Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo wrote last Thursday:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

When confronted, Dowd offered the school girl excuse that:

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

So, somehow, she was talking to her friend, and she managed to casually jot down --not just the general thoughts -- but the word for word language, with commas.

NOTE: The column has been update online to credit Marshall, but the print edition did not.