Cathy C. Yamsuan of The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that during a breakfast forum on Wednesday, August 22, Atty. Hector Villacorta, the chief of staff of Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto, "said it was a common practice among Senate staff members to scout for bills that a previous Congress had failed to enact into law and repackage them as their bosses’ pet measures." Villacorta was defending the act of plagiarism in light of the fact that he and the rest of Sotto’s staff admitted to using plagiarized passages when they wrote the senator’s anti-RH Bill speech.

The Inquirer report contained fascinationg quotes from Villacorta, who seemed to be doing his best to justify plagiarism. Check out his priceless quipes below:

1. "Copying is a common practice. Why do you need to think of a brand-new measure when a good one that was not enacted already exists?"

2. "They request new senators to refile [the bills] because (these are) already in the archives. Why reinvent the wheel? Re-filing is an accepted practice. It is called copying."

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4. "It's really copying .... Why exert effort when these bills are just lying around?"

5. "We plagiarized the US Constitution. All the amendments became our Bill of Rights. But do they call us a plagiaristic country? No, because the law is based on precedent."

6. "The Bible reached us today because the monks copied from the Greeks. Everything really started from a little copying."

7. "Even our image was copied from God. We are all plagiarists."

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