Maureen Dowd, the op-ed Queen of columnists for the New York Times and a self-proclaimed plagiarists has now taken on the personification of a shrink in her analysis of why Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is resigning her post.

Yes, Ms Dowd is the female canine of the animal kingdom using such words, hopefully not borrowed from another journalist as, ” Caribou Barbie . . . one nutty puppy . . . erratic and egoistic . . . incoherent, breathless and prickly . . . implosion . . . hunt wolves from the air and field-dress a moose, but fears being a lame duck . . . girlish burbling . . . cold fish . . .” to describe Palin’s performance.

We understand her qualifications for plagiarism, but serving up psychological analysis from a distance is a bit much for this wordsmith.

Oh, but she didn’t forget to credit Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair to support her thesis of Palin’s instability, “Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy’ – and thought it fit her perfectly.”

One journalist using another, while both play shrink, to support a contention obtained from third parties in Alaska to label Palin with a mental disorder is stepping beyond the semblance of fairness and is a journalistic crime far greater than plagiarism.

Dowd didn’t leave anyone out, including Palin’s family, in her trash bag of aggressive and spitety bitterness as she described the scene: “On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard.  Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News played catch-up”

Now if this were not enough, Dowd went out of her way to mock the state of Alaska, its people, its animals and its culture, “The maverick must run free when greener pastures beckon,” she said.  “The musher must jump out of the dogsled when warmer chimes call.”

Somehow when one lives in a glass house, as Maureen Dowd does, you might think twice about throwing stones.  Jonathan Bailey in an article on “The Maureen Dowd Plagiarism Scandal” said, “What makes this case interesting is that back in 1987 Dowd broke the story of then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s alleged plagiarism and vigorously attacked Biden for it.”

What happened in the Dowd case was that she copied a paragraph from Josh Marshall in the Huffington post using 43 words and all but one of them appeared in Dowd’s column without attribution.

She later admitted to the plagiarism with a rather feeble excuse, “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.”

Hardly a believable response.  Her friend, who passed along this point, remembered 43 out of 44 exact words from Marshall’s piece?

The New York Times has fired writers for plagiarism and less.  However, Dowd got a pass.

Within the past 48 hours the Times has run five articles on Palin’s announcement, all of which contain Palin bashing comments, whether it be a news story or column — an obvious attempt to put the final nail in the Palin political coffin.

Although Dowd does live in a glass house, you can continue to count on her throwing stones, especially at Sarah.  You see it’s what Maureen does best.