But to extend this, suppose author a wrote:"Reuters reports that 'Johnny, a wise-cracking maverick with a penchant for slim, vanilla-flavored cigars and low-rent women, pilfered an antique, floral cookie jar in 1987.'"
And then some time later author B writes: Reuters reports that 'Johnny, a wise-cracking maverick with a penchant for slim, vanilla-flavored cigars and low-rent women, pilfered an antique, floral cookie jar in 1987.'"
Here, it is claimed that author B stole from author A because he copied, to some significant degree, what author A wrote. The problem is that author A claimed that Reuters reported it, not author A, so author A has no claim.
For instance, I write: "a key hypothesis of Einstein's theory of relavivity is the constancy of the speed of light in all frames of reference." Now, it may be that some professor wrote a physics book stating exactly that in those exact words, plus or minus a few [there are dozens of such books, I believe]. He does not have priority to this idea, however. Einstein is the owner of the original idea here.
And if I create an example of what is seen by signalmen on trains passing at some large fraction of the speed of light, again, the professor would have no claim, even if he put it in his book because Einstein published that exact example.
There are illustrative examples where if I copied them from the professor I might be guilty of plagiarism, but many professional physicists would testify that all such examples are trivial extensions of Einstein's original theory and do not constitute original works.
Of course a line is drawn well before xeroxing and distributing for free copies of the professor's textbook, which is a clear infringement because the professor created substantial proprietary value in the compilation of explanation and example.
But if I write a book criticizing the theory of relativity and use language in an explanation that comes from the professor's textbook in order to criticize the unphysicallity (violations of physical law) of the example provided, I am not plagiarizing. I am criticizing.
And criticizing a whole body of received political wisdom is what Crowley is up to here. That the #fakenews liberal CNN does not like it does not change the fact that what she is writing is legitimate political criticism (the most protected form of speech).
You cannot claim she is plagiarizing ideas when not only is she not stealing them and passing them off as here own, but rather she is standing some distance from them and taking aim at them with a high powered rifle [to appropriate the language of violence associated with gun nuts advocating the right to bear assault rifles].