#lying thief

Senator Tito Sotto is a “lying thief," so thinks Sarah Pope, the 40-year old blogger of The Healthy Home Economist, where the actor-turned-senator allegedly copied most part of a speech he delivered in the Senate Wednesday. “It seems one of your esteemed senators, Tito Sotto, plagiarized a blog post I wrote on February 23, 2011 entitled How The Pill Can Harm Your Future Child’s Future,” Pope addressed Filipino netizens in a post on Thursday. “(He lifted) entire sections of the article basically word for word… What’s worse, Senator Sotto is denying the charge of plagiarism,” she added. Expressing her disgust, Pope told Sotto that “A thief is a thief… Denying it doesn’t get you off the hook; it just makes you a lying thief.” Pope issued her reaction after Sotto denied plagiarizing a blog post, claiming he only quoted a study of doctor, Natasha Campbell-McBride. But Sotto’s chief of staff, lawyer Hector Villacorta, admitted copying parts of the lawmaker’s speech against Reproductive Health (RH) bill. Posting a comment on Pope’s recent blog post on Thursday, Villacorta said he understood Pope’s sentiments of feeling slighted when her name was not attributed in Sotto’s speech. "Let me say that after asking my staff, indeed your blog was used but only in quoting also from the same book of Dr. Campbell-Mcbride," Villacorta said. Villacorta took responsibility for copying the message from Pope's website, justifying it was hard for them to explain technical and medical facts into layman’s terms. He also clarified that Sotto had nothing to do with their shortcoming. Calls made to Sotto's office were unanswered as of this posting. For her part, Pope gave Sotto a credit, saying the unfortunate controversy diverted public attention to birth control pills, which she claimed have devastating consequences to women’s long term health. She reiterated that the use of such pills may also affect women’s children, extending to their grandchildren, telling Sotto: “It was indeed brave of you to take this controversial position. Kudos to you for that.” The blogger also hoped for the people to learn a lesson from highly-charged experience anmd become more informed about how food and pill choices affect the ones they love.