On Friday nights, we take two songs with questionable similarity and put them side by side for some musical forensics. Have any plagiarism suspicions in your iTunes playlist? Post suggestions for next week's Friday Night Ripoffs (?) in the comments.

The Airborne Toxic Event's "Sometime Around Midnight" is a fantastic song, and it's great to see this LA band's hard work over the years pay off. As fantastic a song as it is (and the lyrics and impassioned performance from singer Mikel Jollett are what really make it great, not the melody and feel, to me at least,) said melody and feel bear an uncanny resemblance to the verses of Radiohead's "High and Dry". What do you think? Lift or coincidence?

It's Friday, and that means it's time for our weekly dose of plagiarism speculation, Friday Night Ripoffs (?), though I must say that the question mark barely belongs this week.

Tom Petty has a respectable row of great songs well past his career's 15 year mark, and Mary Jane's Last Dance (1993) heads the list. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, on the other hand, have had a barrage of mostly tossed off, derivative and sterile Grammy-winning drivel since 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magick, and "Dani California" heads that list. If you think the similarity of the first verses of these songs is merely coincidental, please inquire about the bridge in Brooklyn I am trying to sell.

Anyway, good artists borrow and great artists steal, and without a healthy dose of both, we would've missed out on a lot of great songs over the years. I can hardly fault the Peppers for wanting to build on Petty's gem. Leave some suggestions for next week's finger-pointing in the comments.

This is the third post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

Commenter Uncle Joe McCarthy and C+L blogger Logan Murphy both piped up about this one. Did Green Day lift the riff for "Brain Stew" from Chicago, or is 5th fret, 3rd fret, 2nd fret, 1st fret, open something that just exists in the air? And what about Papa Roach?

Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's plagiarism investigation in the comments.

This is the second post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

Commenter PLH225 came up with tonight's in the discussion of last week's thread. Did Jack White borrow a little too gratuitously from Joe Jackson for The Raconteurs' "Steady As She Goes," or is it just a coincidence?

Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's plagiarism investigation in the comments.

There have been a number of right wingers who have been accused of plagiarism and lifting other's work in recent years. Most notably, Cindy McCain, Ann Coulter and Ben Domenech and more recently, Sarah Palin was caught lifting passages from Newt Gingrich. Now, an author has accused wingnut Elisabeth Hasselbeck of lifting her content "word for word" in her new book:

BOSTON – The author of a health book has sued Elisabeth Hasselbeck, accusing the co-host of ABC's "The View" of plagiarism.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Massachusetts, alleges that Hasselbeck lifted "word for word" content from a book written by Susan Hassett, a self-published author on Cape Cod.

Hassett said in the lawsuit that she sent Hasselbeck a personal note and copy of her "Living With Celiac Disease" book as a courtesy after the television celebrity disclosed she had the illness last year.

Wasn't that nice of Elisabeth? Hassett was kind enough to send her a copy of her book, only to find out that she lifted parts of it to write her own. Not only does she lift passages, Hassett claims that Hasselbeck's book contains bogus and possibly dangerous information:

Hassett said Hasselbeck's book "slavishly reproduces" lists and passages from her own work and includes inaccuracies about celiac disease that can be "misleading and dangerous" for people with the illness. Read on...