Senator Plagiarist

Was Senator Biden (a definite "borrower" although some would dispute whether it was plagiarism) trying to be funny with this paragraph, which opens his LA Times op-ed today:

To borrow a phrase, a mind is a terrible thing to steal. But that is precisely what criminals do when they pirate the products of American innovators and artists. When they reproduce the work of musicians, actors, writers and directors, they not only steal thousands of U.S. jobs and billions of dollars in profits, they steal the product of American imagination and creativity.

[Posted at 19:40 CST on 02/25/02] [Link]