Quick and dirty. On twitter, Greg Sargent linked to a Jennifer Rubin piece that shockingly appears to be well-researched and detailed, and strongly suggests Rand Paul repeatedly violated physician advertising laws in Kentucky by holding himself out as board certified.
We probably know the story that Rand Paul made up his own ophthalmology board (the National Opthalmology Board, which despite its name, was mainly a Kentucky thing) in 1997. I just thought that it just sounded like bullshit and left it at that, but it turns out the board was defunct in 2000, revived in 2005, and defunct again in 2011. During the time it was out of business, no board was certifying Dr. Paul, and after 2005, it was not recognized as a licensing board by the state of Kentucky.
Now, one does not need board certification to practice medicine or to obtain admitting privileges, but it is a factor in physician advertising rules for consumer protection purposes. If there is no board to enforce compliance or regulate continuing education, then board certification is utterly meaningless, so the board has to, first of all, exist, and second of all, perform some function other than advance the interest of younger ophthalmologists upset that older ones could be grandfathered into certification rules.
This is likely because you can't just have doctors making up their own licensing boards and call themselves board certified! Of course, this is what Dr. Paul would call "big government," because what does freedom mean if quacks can't cut open your eyeballs.
Paul may not be a quack, but by holding himself out as board certified despite not being that in reality, he in effect holds himself out as a quack.
So, it sounds like Paul's ethical problems may not stop with plagiarism. And ask yourself - what would a real medical board do with the plagiarism story, anyway?
Of course, take anything Jennifer Rubin says with an ocean of salt, but I think at the very least, Paul has some questions to account for (and Rubin reports his staff in no way did). And in the meantime, bask in the delicious joy that is R-on-R violence.