Talk:Joe Biden/Archive 1

Untitled
I don't know much about Joe Biden, but the quality of this article seems a bit poor. Can we have this worked on?

"much to the surprise and delight of host John Stewart." Information like this isn't nessacary to this article.

"During the campaign he was accused of having ties to Iran, being not sufficiently concerned with local issues and making regular gaffes like threatening pilots that he would "screw" them unless they supported one of his proposals"

What were the results of these accusations? Are they still relavent? Have they been disproven? We need more information.

"being not sufficiently concerned with local issues and making regular gaffes like threatening pilots that he would "screw" them unless they supported one of his proposals."

The sentence structure is fairly poor.

All in all though, thanks for the hard work you put into this. It's alot more then I could have done. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRedAnthem (talk • contribs) 19:56, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

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How do we promote this page for editing? Considering more and more people come to Wikipedia to get general information (I know I do) I think it's incredibly important that this article is highly moderated. If you agree, do you know how to do it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.109.29 (talk) 01:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

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The article about Biden (link 2) is no longer available and possibly in archives. Does anyone have access to the article elsewhere? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.109.29 (talk) 01:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

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Biden is not a moderate. He's very liberal on classic Democrat issues, and pragmatic/rational on foreign policy. Also, and more importantly, article doesn't mention the death of his wife and daughter, which may be the single most important event in his personal life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneralTso (talk • contribs) 04:55, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

comments removed from article
Staffers in the offices of Senator Joe Biden removed a paragraph from this entry about his 1996 plagiarism scandal, as well as changing the section regarding a possible 2008 candidacy to read very positively. A second staffer toned down and removed information about other plagiarism issues as well. The same addresses from Biden's office edited the article on the Hamas, which has recently won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and is listed as a terrorist organization by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, and the United States, to give its first two paragraphs a more biased stance by removing information about its social welfare programs.


 * See Wikinews investigates Wikipedia vandalism by United States Senate staff members for the source of this information. It is also noted under External links (articles) in the main article. stilltim 23:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * stilltim: in case you hadn't noticed, wikipedia is among the top 20 most highly ranked web sites (AFAIK... correct me if i'm wrong). That means that an incident between Joe Biden's staff and wikipedia is an event of importance in his political career. Moreover, surely the honesty of politicians and their willingness to accept criticism is an important part of their record in any democracy? Your displacing of the wikinews link to the external articles section does not remove the need for a paragraph or two of the article itself to discuss the events.  The wikinews link:  which (i presume) was heavily worked on to make it fairly NPOV, is one way to try to argue that a paragraph or two are not needed. But you can't remove both the pargraph and the wikinews inset box.  An external link at the bottom of the article is not enough - people only read external links if they want to know more.
 * stilltim (still) - you wrote on my page At the time the article was truly a mess and it's hard to imagine saying that anyone trying to bring some order and sense to it could be "vandalizing" it. They may have been, but I doubt it, I think they were just trying to rescue it. Either way the Wikinews article is POV. Are you seriously trying to say that e.g. this edit was trying to bring some sense and order? In any case, if the wikinews article is POV, then the place to argue that is wikinews:Talk:Wikinews investigates Wikipedia usage by U.S. Senate staff members, not my personal page. Please go to the wikinews talk page to justify your claim of POV. Thanks. Boud 16:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Framework

 * The framework for this article is COMPLETE and meets the current standard for this series of articles, including:
 * introductory paragraph, section formatting, and categories
 * infobox, succession boxes, nav boxes, public offices table and election results table
 * references, links, and places with information

stilltim 02:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * suggestions for future improvements:
 * 1) additional details about the running for President in the late 20th century/early 21st century
 * 2) additional details about the political environment in Delaware in the late 20th century
 * 3) additional details about the issues and accomplishments of Biden's term as senator
 * The best known sources for additional information are: (please add others known to you)

Biden's staff edits
It should be noted at the top of this talk page that staffers from Biden's senate offices have been known to edit this article in a way to promote the senator - so please be aware of anonymous editors. Removal of the controversy sections may have been from staffers as well, as they are documented as doing such. --66.227.194.89 01:09, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, you're now at the top. "The U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms owns the IP block 156.33.0.0 to 156.33.255.255". The 14 July 2005 edit was made by 156.33.15.201. The 15 July 2005 edit was made by 156.33.15.27. They could just as easily have registered names, tho. Andyvphil 15:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Staffers are people too; they have the right to edit even anonymously. Only if they violate the genrally accepted guidelines... it's just a note that we keep alert for edits that would violate a la Joh Lott type. Chivista 15:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I believe there is a Wiki guideline against editing by the subjects. I remember seeing some discussion of this at Political Research Associates where Chip Berlet is an active editor. I don't have a problem with this myself as long as the edits are NPOV, but the Biden staff edits weren't. The plagiarism brouhaha was in 1987, by the way, not 1996 as the WikiNews report states. And I just got sucked into rewriting that whole section because I was unhappy with the way "alleged" was used and there turned out to be so many things wrong. A lot of the details don't seem to be on the web -- e.g., I'm still not clear on whether Biden was bounced from his law school class for plagiarism or whether he just wrote a very bad one-source paper and flunked. Andyvphil 15:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Re-introduction of removed plagiarism claim
With reference to this article (the link to the WikiNews article on their page is invalid; don't bother trying to navigate to it):

"Wikipedia edits in Congress are not coming from the House of Represenatives alone. An edit from the Senate in July removed references to a plagiarism scandal with Senator Joe Biden, who has informally said he may seek a Democratic nomination for president in 2008. As of February 4, 2006, the edit has not fixed by Wikipedia users. On February 2, 2006, the same IP address introduced a bias into the article on the Hamas, the largest Palestinian Islamic movement, which has recently made headlines for winning a majority in Palestinian Legislative Council elections."

Further research by myself has yielded that the address in question is, in fact, 156.33.15.27, which can be clearly seen by the user's edits of both the Hamas article and this one, and by how this user is the only user that has edited both of these articles in the specified times (the user edited the Hamas article on February 2, 2006, and this one in July of 2005). The article's allegations that "references to a plagiarism scandal with Senator Joe Biden [were also removed]" proved to be true as well. Though a reference to the claim vaguely exists in the current revision ("His recent campaign opponent, Raymond J. Clatworthy, criticized him for making "blunt and controversial" statements, such as threatening pilots that he would "screw" them unless they supported one of his proposals, and for falsely claiming credit for the writing of Megan's Law."), the meat of the accusation was largely removed. Here is the exact text that was removed:

Another plagerism controversy occured during Biden's 1996 U.S. Senate reelection campaign. A television advertisement that was put out by his campaign listed various laws that he had written, the list included the Megan's Law. The Megan's Law was actually authored and sponsored by Congressman Dick Zimmer of New Jersey (U.S. Public Law 104-145). It is not known whether or not Biden was personally aware of the content of this particular advertisement before it was aired.

I believe that, seeing as how this offers a much more detailed analysis of the claim, it should be somehow reintroduced into the article. This, however, is only my opinion; I leave it up to you to decide exactly how (or if) it shall be added to the article.--HoCkEy PUCK 00:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

NB: Not currently in mainspace, and probably shouldn't be. But there's a new tool, wikiscanner, to detect this sort of thing. Would be nice to have edits from COI ranges automatically tagged... Andyvphil 08:42, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the Plagiarism Kerfuffle
Under the 1988 Presidential Campaign heaqding, we find a paragraph that starts "It was also discovered that Biden had plagiarized while in law school ..." and ends "Both Syracuse University Law School and the Delaware State Bar Association cleared Biden of plagiarism charges."

If the Senator was cleared of those charges, does it make sense to leave a glaring, incorrect, accusation at the start of that paragraph? I think a small wording change would be appropriate. I'll take care of it. Mmahaffie 15:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Back to Mmahaffie's original point. I don't see why that paragraph about his law school days is relevant at all.  If he was cleared, he was cleared.  Lets cut it. -MrFizyx 14:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I would like to agree, but the issue is part of the public discussion and keeps coming back up. I think it is better to have it out there factually and let the readers conclude what they will from those facts, rather than from hyped up suppositions. Mmahaffie made the changes he suggested. stilltim 00:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I couldn't find any cite saying Syracuse cleared Biden of anything, and what the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Delaware Supreme Court was probably actually asked to confirm was that he had not done anything to disqualify his practicing law (as Clinton was disqualified). Known and punished cheating in school wouldn't be enough, certainly not in a Democrat state where he's Senator! There are a couple NP:V articles, not available on the web or not for free, where the titles claim Biden admitted "plagiarism" in law school...but I can't find the quote. See my note above on the uncertainty of the details of the underlying event. Anyway, after Dukakis stuck in the knife on his channelling Kinnock the Ford Pinto effect was in full gear. BTW, the version of the "Kinnock" quote in the previous version apparently had unindicated elisions. Is there a transcript on CSPAN somewhere? The more complete version indicates his wife was also the first in her family to go to college, and I've run across statements that that too was untrue, but I can't confirm. Nor can I confirm the statement (tho I left it) that he now says his father was a car saleman. It's not on his Senate website bio pages. Andyvphil 15:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Worked on this some more after seeing some problems with Stilltim's rewrite. Some details still need better cites and clarification, but just suppressing mention of 76/85 hides what really happened to Biden in '87, which still dogs him today: he acquired a one-line media tag, became a late-night talk show monologue joke. I think the cites are available to show to what extent it was deserved or undeserved, and his article should provide the facts in NPOV form. Gerald Ford may have been the least clumsy President and the Ford Pinto didn't burn any more often than the Chevy Vega, and maybe Biden made the honor roll after he decided to work at it, just like he said. Wikipedia readers want to know! Andyvphil 03:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality
I believe that the neutrality of this article must now be questioned after reading this (http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060210/NEWS/602100350) article in The News Journal. Link47 20:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC) Link is dead. Andyvphil 14:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The edits to this article referenced in the aforementioned report were made in June/July 2005. Subsequent to that date numerous editors, myself included, have completely rewritten the then existing article. In writing the present article we have, to the best of our knowledge and ability, tried to produce a fair, balanced, and unbiased accounting, and have not intentionally included any of our own opinions or any information that cannot be verified by the references noted on the article. I have, therefore, removed the POV template recently placed. stilltim 23:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Clarence Thomas hearings
Please give more information on Biden's role in the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas hearings. I've been told he was not very unbiased and would like to know more.

Page name
He's almost always called "Joe Biden"...

Acegikmo1 02:44, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Good comment, I added the nickname. I'm planning a thorough rewrite of this article, but have done the other incumbents in Delaware first as they are a bit easier.

stilltim 03:59, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I moved it to Joe Biden, because our policy is to use common names (and because of the standard set by the title of the Joe Lieberman article). Neutralitytalk 04:41, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Chicken?
What's the deal with the picture of the blue hen? /blahedo (t) 04:10, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I wonder what the point of the chicken is...


 * I was just wondering too... I'm going to remove it.  --Quasipalm 19:36, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

The Blue Hen Chicken is a proud symbol of Delaware, recalling the tenacity and ferocity of our Revolutionary ancestors. Anyone from Delaware would be pleased to have this symbol associated with them, and anyone wanting to understand a person from Delaware would find it worth their time to understand this.

stilltim 21:12, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Bidens religion
I thought Biden was Jewish, and seems as if I have seen profiles saying so. Is he Catholic convert?

Biden is Roman Catholic and always has been to the best of my knowledge.

stilltim 00:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
 * In his book: "Promises to Keep", he has stated that he was born and raised Roman Catholic with a long family history of being Catholic.Dflav1138 (talk) 21:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Please add the word "dissident" in front of the description "Roman Catholic." His pro-abortion voting record puts him outside of the teachings of the Church, and in fact excommunicates him. He is not a faithful Catholic, and should not be given the privilege of being referred to as "Roman Catholic". Jesus itrustinthee (talk) 15:15, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

The fact that he claims to be a Catholic, doesn´t automatically means a real Catholic, but that´s for personal interpretation. Obviously for me, and many people, he´s not a real Catholic, and he might be a closet atheist and agnostic like many others are supposed to be in American politics. But we can´t forget that an openly atheist or agnostic politician would face widspread prejudice, so it´s often better for them to appear as "religious" person. If he had to be excommunicated, you have no idea how many others the Catholic Church would have to do so. In the past the Catholic Church excommunicated Catholics who joined communist parties, so I wouldn´t find that shocking at all. Maybe this time they would excommunicate him for settle an example.85.242.236.150 (talk) 15:34, 23 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We use what people self-identify as for religion. In America, many Catholics disagree with some of the teachings of the church. If he is excommunicated from the church (very unlikely), we can include that fact.  Wasted Time R (talk) 15:49, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

One thing is to disagree with some teachings of the Catholic Church, other thing is to disagree with fundamental dogmas, like the inviolability of human life, since conception. But I agree that since political correctness nowdays rules the Church it makes more sense to excommunicate women that abort then alleged Catholics that support abortion. At least, unlike John Kerry, he opposes partial-birth abortion and gay marriage. But I highly doubt that he would ever could be recieved at the Vatican if he was elected. 15:57, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Biden: a terrorist?
He supported albanian terrorists on all occasions during the kosovo war


 * Proof, refrences, articles. Show them to me please -- × × × jijin+machina  |  Chat Me!  × × × -- 13:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I have seen a documentary that stated that also. If i have time, I will look around for it. Interesting point tho. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Learna United Kingdom (talk • contribs) 01:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Photo
The new photo (16 January Image:BidenJosephR.jpg) is too small, maybe someone will find a nice high quality one? feydey 20:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Hair Transplant
I added a sentence the other day pointing out that Biden was one of the first and most prominent persons ever to receive hair transplant surgery and it was removed the following day. I added it again. Let's see how long it stays this time.
 * Please add a source for Your claim or it will be deleted again, thanks. feydey 02:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Note
Removed per Libel policy. "The goal of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedic information source adhering to a neutral point-of-view style of prose, with all information being referenced through the citation of reliable published sources, so as to maintain a standard of verifiability. For this reason, all contributors should recognize that it is their responsibility to ensure that material posted on Wikipedia is not defamatory. It is Wikipedia policy to delete libellous revisions from the page history." stilltim 21:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

2008 bid
Where is there a link that says Biden is running for President? I added one. --myselfalso 12:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Biden has not officially said he is running for president. He has only said that he is planning to run at this point. This is wrong all over wikipedia. The Secretary of Funk 22:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

"Indian" comments
I readded all of the information regarding this controversy because it was in the news for at least a week. I don't think this qualifies as adding "indiscriminate information" either, as it was mentioned near the top of the national news for a few days. And this would not be inconsistent with other articles on U.S. Senators. Plus, it appears there wasn't any discussion on this topic at all.

Is this section too long? Probably. Anyone, please edit out some of the material too make it shorter if you would like (but please keep in mind that removing the entire section isn't really "indiscriminate information editing"). Thanks. Ufwuct 23:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding your question about the paragraph on the "Indian-American controversy" in the Biden article. It is my opinion, and I think widely held, that an encyclodedia article should contain information of substance and lasting importance, something people would consider newsworthy years after the event. This issue is one of probably dozens/hundreds of such issues effecting public figures, and to describe each one in such detail would make an entirely unreadable article. These incidents are mostly useful for illustrating aspects of a public person's career and personality. This topic is already covered in the article, however, and the examples given have certainly stood the time test. If this incident comes to rank there with them it should be added, but I doubt that it will. Perhaps you should consider wrting something about it for Wikinews?


 * May I refer you to Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information


 * There are places for this information in WP. See the policy on news reports: "Wikipedia should not offer first-hand news reports on breaking stories (however, our sister project Wikinews does exactly that)." Wikipedia does have many encyclopedia articles on topics of historical significance that are currently in the news, and can be significantly more up-to-date than most reference sources since we can incorporate new developments and facts as they are made known." They are in Portal:Current events which you can see for examples.


 * I know you mean well, but this is official WP policy. It is not my intent to see the story omitted, but rather delivered in the appropriate way. As pointed out in the policy there are at least two appropriate places for this contribution, but the encyclopedia is not one of them. All news stories belong in Wikinews or current events, but as encyclopedia editors, we must indeed discriminate among them. That's what editors do. We need to wait at least a few weeks or months to see if the incident is "weighty" or "notable." Hence the prohibition on breaking stories. Please move this contribution to one or both of these locations, until it becomes clear that these remarks have had some meaningful and substantial long-term effect on the overall campaign or his career. stilltim 22:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Stilltim, I agree with most of your points in theory, though I'm not sure exactly how this information could be construed as original research (or "original thought" as you put it). Please direct me to the sentence or sentences that you feel violate this policy.


 * I agree that Wikipedia-proper is not the place for news. And, as I said previously, I think the content is too long and the length has the potential to distort the overall picture of Joe Biden.  I do think it deserves some mention in the article, however.  I may shorten this topic to 2 sentences and place under the 2008 Presidential Campaign section (perhaps with a link to a Wikinews article).  We still don't know what effect it will have on his presidential aspirations, but that doesn't mean that all mentions of the incident should be purged from the article.  Maybe we haven't heard much about it because of the August recess?  Maybe it will be used against him at the end of the recess or as the 2006 elections come closer?  We don't know the answer to either of these questions.


 * What we do know is that: 1. there is much more to his career than this incident (hence my promise to shorten the article), 2. he received substantial criticism (and so it deserves some mention in the main article, with more information on Wikinews).


 * Articles about current events are frequently written on Wikipedia-proper. For the most part, they are edited as the significance of that event becomes clearer.  Originally it was thought that Pluto would remain a planet and that we would have several more.  Editors made a guess at the time that this would be a very significant story.  That was a reasonable assumption to make, and it was reasonable to write about on Wikipedia-proper.  It later became clear that we would (officially) only have 8 planets.  At that point, the significance of the previous reclassification scheme was reduced.  However, I think it would be unwise to remove all mentions of this first reclassification scheme based on its downgraded significance (or to relegate the information only to Wikinews).  Somebody will want to read about that later.  Who?  Astronomers, astronauts, history buffs, housewives?  Similarly, someone will probably want to read about Joe Biden's mishaps, or at least be directed to a Wikinews story via his article on Wikipedia-proper.  Who?  Right-wing conspiracy "theorists"?  Left-wing people looking to defend Biden's remarks by reading Biden's response to the incident?  History buffs?  Indians?  People reading about 7-11?  Let's at least provide these or other potential future readers with a mention in his article.  If they care enough about it, they'll go to Wikinews or search outside of Wiki projects.  Also, I think once the controversy dies down and people realize that George Allen doesn't have horns, the controversy sections for his article should be shortened.  Your experience on this would be appreciated.  Because I have exhausted myself in writing this ridiculously long response to you, I won't make any substantial changes right now, but will keep it on My Watchlist to work on later.  Thanks. Ufwuct 02:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Update:I've added the material to Wikinews, if only in rudimentary form. I'll come back tomorrow to edit this page.  Thanks in advance for your patience. Ufwuct 03:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have now made some more changes. I hope this version will be satisfactory and I truly hope that no one feel the need to take out this topic again any time soon.  (Let's wait awhile and see if it becomes NN before deleting it.)  Thanks. Ufwuct 03:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Introduction
User:Stilltim, you have now twice removed information from the introduction, most recently without replying to my message at your Talk page regarding my changes. In the last summary "remove POV and repetitive information," your removed information that IMO wasn't duplicated (not repetitive) and not really "POV". Tim, please reply here to explain what POV you are removing. Maybe I'm missing something? Kaisershatner 15:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC) Addendum:  I have cited the "likely candidate" thing in case that's the source of your POV concern. Kaisershatner 15:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Another Wikicrock
"Indian" comments and now racist comments regarding Obama, yet there is no controvery section in this article. At the same time, every pipsqueak conservative talk show host has a big fat controvery section about hearsay comments/positions from 30 years ago. It's final: Wikipedia is nothing more than a partisan prop via repeated and overwhelmingly obvious systemic bias. --Haizum   μολὼν λαβέ 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Why don't you add a criticism section? This is Wikipedia after all. -- Lincoln F. Stern  19:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

2008 Presidential Campaign
Biden has officially announced he's running for president, though I'm not sure when/where he made it official... Anybody know? -- MyrddinEmrys 06:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

this page needs expansion!!!
im not sure how to place such a tag...yet Joe Biden could be the next US president or vice president...he has a realistic chance...he looks the part and seems somewhat reasonable...a touch hawkish it seems...yet not foolhardy...anyways...this page needs some serious expansion...all presidential candidates for 2008 need serious expansions...looking at hillaries page...and comparing to this...i see Biden has been a senator since 1973 and we see nothing of his general senate record...hillary has been senator a fraction of that time and has a detailed page...there is no excuse for this...and in fact most US senators could use a moderate expansion...these are some of the most powerful people on the planet...yes there are other centers of gravity in the states...billionaire tycoons...some corporate execs...media moguls...the president...a few people in various agencies & think tanks or law firms...etc...yet the US senators should have a little more as to their general records...

as to this thing about plaigerism and senate staffers editing this page...i dont know people..its not exactly watergate...if the best dirt u can find on Biden is he didnt footnote enough and a couple staffers added or removed something from his wikipedia page...yall are going to have a hard time negative campaigning against him...i would support an expansion of the senate staffer issue...yet in a broader expansion of the page...GWs & cheneys pages are mainly good stuff after all...and as to a staffer tinkering with the page...well anyone is supposed to be able to edit wikipedia...thats the basic premise...if a staffer saw to add something more to the page or remove something they felt not factual...then that is somewhat reasonable...i mean come on...you think someone isnt on top of GWs page and Cheneys page?...just with an IP u cant track...even jimmy wales himself has tinkered with his own page several times...anyways it tells us something...as to Mr Wales's creation...i think from what i know of mr wales that he really just had an interesting experimental idea for a novel encylopedia format...i think it has taken off far beyond his wildest imaginings...and it is far more than an encylopedia now...it has become like another TV network almost and a serious big player international media information outlet...yet with a totally different control mechanism than most normal TV networks or something...its quite interesting...Benjiwolf 12:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I am shocked at how bad this article is and it needs serious improvement and expansion and to start with there should be a Joe Biden presidential campaign, 2008 sub-article. Also, if previous presidential elections are going to be mentioned then they should also receive an sub-article. More detail is needed in the Senate section. I would do so myself but I have chosen not to edit for content any of the presidential candidate articles because I am a supporter of Barack Obama (whose article I will not edit either) but I would really like to see this article improved. The focus on the Senate staffer editing this article concerns me as this article is already biased against Biden so I see no problem with his staff at least trying to correct the inappropriate edits of other editors. Edward Lalone | (Talk) 22:57, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As of 12:45, major news sources are saying that he is officially the vice-president choice for Senator Obama. This has been confirmed by multiple sources throughout CNN from senior Obama officialsW jossey but not Obama himself - and the text message project DID not happen yet (per Obama's website) - so Biden is not an official VP choice as of yet. (talk) 04:54, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Senator Biden a member of the Catholic church?
i have removed this claim. i would like to see a citation before anyone re-includes it. 202.0.106.130 04:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Just said on CNN.Blaylockjam10 (talk) 06:33, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

content removed
i have removed the content below. i would like to see a citation if this is to be included. reference to The chicken processing industry should also include something more specific about Biden's contribution. 202.0.106.130 04:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The 1972 U.S. Senate election presented Biden with an unusual opportunity that only he seemed to recognize. Popular Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell, Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon was invited to a meeting to convince Boggs to run again with full Republican support. Boggs ran, but without much enthusiasm, which combined with the new 18-year old voters, and a serious underestimation of Biden's campaign abilities, resulted in the very surprising Biden victory.

In this capacity, he has become one of the most respected Senate voices on drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties.

His efforts to combat hostilities in the Balkans in the 1990s brought national attention and influenced presidential policy: traveling repeatedly to the region, he made one meeting famous by calling Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic a "war criminal." He consistently argued for lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims, investigating war crimes and administering NATO air strikes. Biden's subsequent "lift and strike" resolution was instrumental in convincing President Bill Clinton to use military force in the face of systematic human rights violations.

He also authored the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), which contains a broad array of ground breaking measures to combat domestic violence and provides billions of dollars in federal funds to address gender-based crimes. Although part of this legislation later was struck down as unconstitutional, it was reauthorized in 2000 and 2005. In March 2004 Biden enlisted major American technology companies in diagnosing the problems of the National Domestic Violence Hotline (based in Austin, Texas) and to donate equipment and expertise to it.


 * i would appreciate some discussion on talk rather than reverting my edits without explanation. 202.0.106.130 05:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I would actually argue the opposite. I think there should be some discussion on the talk page before portions of the article, especially large portions, are deleted.  My suggesiton would be that you use the "citation need" tag ( simply type "" instead of deleting.  The "citation needed" tag would have been a far more appropriate way to handle your doubts that Biden was a Catholic (which he is), as opposed to deleting the statement and asking for a reference before it was added again.  Jim Campbell 18:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, the BLP guidelines call for eschewing fact tags, although I think they should be used for very believable material that is not even potentially libelous. On something like Biden's Catholicism the cite is so readily available that 202.0.106.130 had no business deleting rather than simply providing it. Add an inline cite and leave Wikifying it to a ref to someone else, if you're in a hurry... Lacking a bot, I usually do. Andyvphil 00:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not to argue with someone who seems, in principle, to agree with me, but I thought the fact tag was inappropriate for BLPs only if the information “appears doubtful or false.” The fact tag info page states that only material that is considered “very doubtful and very harmful” should be removed without discussion first.  Neither the segment stated above nor Biden being Roman Catholic seems neither doubtful nor harmful to me.  In either case, I think ripping out chunks of the article should be preceded by discussions.Jim Campbell 21:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The actual text of the policy is "Editors should remove any controversial material about living persons that is either unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source." The test is "controversial", not "very doubtful and very harmful", and I'm having all sorts of problems elsewhere with editors who are applying "Editors should remove any controversial material about living persons that .... relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Reliable sources..." to cull cites unfriendly to their POV. If they actually applied this evenly and widely they would gut this whole subject area of its useful detail, but even if it's not applied it's difficult to argue that that's not what the policy reads. Andyvphil 00:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

chicken processing industry
In the small state of Delaware, Biden is highly regarded, mostly because of his frequent presence and attention to local needs. Because of his daily commute, he is a strong and knowledgeable advocate for Amtrak. He also watches closely the interests of the Dover U.S. Air Force Base and the downstate chicken processing industry.

Time magazine reports the U.S. chicken processing industry is entirely reliant on illegal imigrants - "Joe Biden is just the latest public figure to grovel for forgiveness." [http://www.google.com.au/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%22chicken+processing%22+%22joe+biden%22&meta= Who Left the Door Open? -- Thursday, Mar. 30, 2006] 202.0.106.130 05:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Reversion Edit
In reference to 202.0.106.130 asking why I reverted their edits - I spend a lot of time recently doing reversion edits on vandalism, filtering the Recent changes pages to see edits made by unregistered users. When I see huge chunks of referenced information being removed by an unregistered member without giving any explanation in the Edit Summary as to why they are blanking reference information, I am left to assume it is vandalism, hence why I reverted your edits. I would encourage you to register for the site so you can continue to make helpful edits. My apologies for reversing your edits. --Ozgod 05:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * thats quite alright, no need to apoligise, i will take greater care to communicate that my well intentioned edits are just that and not intended to be vandalism .... my understanding of Wiki-policy is that you don't have to register for the site unless you specifically want to - is that not correct? 202.0.106.130 02:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

February 10th edits
The domestic violence information seems to me to belong best in the section under Biden's Judiciary committee work, rather than in a section of its own. The edits by Andyvphil seem to get it right and much improve my intial attempt.
 * Domestic Violence Initiatives is meant to be a sub-heading under Judiciary committee however this is not clear in the article - it would be clearer if all the headings were moved up a level. 202.0.106.130 03:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The information about Biden's first election comes from a source listed in the references. I will footnote it when I reinsert it. Would that I had the time and talent to accomplish what Benjiwolf above requests, but regretably do not and can only add some things and try to edit the rest. The time it takes to keep this article under control is significant and growing, naturally... and the good work of Andyvphil and 202.0.106.130 is appreciated. stilltim 17:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for saying my good work is appreciated - you saying so is very much appreciated. I would like to fully document Biden's contribution to Violence Against Woman without understating its significance in any way and also document Microsoft's public endorsement of Biden's policies on their corporate www site. I do not see the need to document Biden's contribution to Delaware's chicken processing industry, at this time, unless you or other wiki-editors specifically request i do so. Thank you again for your efforts. 202.0.106.130 02:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

gender-based crimes
i have added (what may be a partial) definition of gender-based crimes. if this definition is incomplete than please expand with appropriate citations. 137.154.16.31 06:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Links

 * 1) Biden Criticizes Princeton
 * 2) Biden In; Gore Out
 * 3) Biden says filibuster on Alito unlikely
 * 4) Biden to Seek Presidential nomination.
 * 5) Biden Claimed He Was In Top Half Of Law Class
 * 6) Biden's Gift Of Gab A Distraction, Critics Say
 * 7) Biden's Leadership Is Lost In All His Talk
 * 8) Biden proves he's a man of his word
 * 9) Credit Bush's rhetoric not his actions
 * 10) Debate over Sen. Biden's remarks on desi stereotypes continues
 * 11) Indian Americans enriching American life: Biden
 * 12) Joe Biden can't shut up
 * 13) Joseph Biden's Plagiarism; Michael Dukakis's 'Attack Video' – 1988
 * 14) Leading the Mideast.
 * 15) Senator Biden's Biggest Lie.
 * 16) USC Center on Public Diplomacy
 * 17) Wikinews investigates Wikipedia usage by United States Senate staff members
 * 18) Wise investment in war on terror

These articles seem to be arbitraily chosen. Either they are includes as footnotes to the article, or they aren't included at all. Wikipedia is not a news link directory. -- Zanimum 20:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I recognized #5 as an inline cite that directly supports the preceeding sentence. There's a guideline (not a policy) preferring refs...which I don't necessarily agree with (as currently implemented it makes getting to the referenced material a two-step prtocess, and it's less transparent in the section-editing process) ...so I won't argue if you if you convert them to refs. But don't go around massively deleting cites! Andyvphil 22:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Section Removed
I removed a section on the 1988 campaign that had been added to the 2008 campaign section. I don't think it belonged there - it was about previous allegations, and belonged properly in the 1988 section, with which it was largely redundant. fyi, I am a Biden supporter. Willniebling 21:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)willniebling
 * Removing the section was the right thing to do as it is already covered in the article and Wikipedia biographies are intended to be chronological and not topical. It seems the anoynomous editor who added the information was pushing a POV and was seeking to give greater weight to an allegation made in the 1988 election by promoting it to the 2008 election section. Edward Lalone | (Talk) 21:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The only new material was the allegation about Biden misrepresenting the nature of his scholarship, but even that couldn't be xferred to '88 without a cite. Andyvphil 22:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Questions? Ask them through Wikinews
Hello,

I'm Nick Moreau, an accredited reporter for Wikinews. I'm co-ordinating our 2008 US Presidential election interviews. We will be interviewing as many candidates as possible, from the Democrats, Republicans, and other parties/independents.

I'll be sending out requests for interviews to the major candidates very soon, but I want your input, as people interested in American politics: what should I ask them?

Please go to any of these three pages, and add a question.


 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Democratic Party
 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Republican Party
 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Third Party or Independent

Questions? Don't ask them here, I'll never see them. Either ask them on the talk page of any of these three pages, or [mailto:nicholasmoreau@gmail.com e-mail me].

Thanks, Nick --  Zanimum 19:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Minor Editing
I wasn't signed in for the first edit i did but i did add that the 2 million dollars he obtained was from his senate re-election fund, the second thing i edited was under the controversial statements that talked about him attacking Gov. Bill Richardson. I felt it wasn't really a controversial statement and wasn't very relevent to the Joe Biden Wikipedia article.Dflav1138 (talk) 21:06, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Controversial Edits
I have made two edits in the page, one signed in and the other not signed in. The first adding the fact that the 2 million dollars being raised for his presidency was added from his Senate re-election fund. The second is under the Controversial comments about him Attacking Gov. Bill Richardson. I felt that what he said was not very controversial nor significant to be in his wikipedia article.Dflav1138 (talk) 21:14, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Family
His maternal grandmother Robinette descended from French Huguenots who emigrated to England and Pennsylvania later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.203.113.163 (talk) 06:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Source?


 * And by the way, the wargs.com genealogical site seems to have disappeared. It was used in this article and in many others, although the FAC folks considered it unreliable.  When will the New England Historic Genealogical Society do a write-up on Biden?  The FAC people do consider them reliable, so that's what we need here.  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

A minor point on family but his son, Beau, was activated on 3 Oct 2008, and sent with his National Guard unit to Fort Bliss, TX for pre-deployment training. The unit arrived in Iraq on 22 Nov but CPT Biden returned to CONUS 52 days later on 13 Jan 09 for a temporary assignment at the Pentagon which is why he was able to attend his father's Inauguration. This should again be updated if and when he ever returns to Iraq. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The-Expose-inator (talk • contribs) 17:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Your modifications to Beau Biden to this effect didn't give any sources. Wasted Time R (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the Army, I just looked up the unclassified movement records of his unit, the 261st Signal Brigade, DE ARNG. As for his returning TDY to the Pentagon, it was widely reported during the inaguration and anyone watching the event saw him with his father during the swearing in ceremony. Because he was TDY to the Pentagon, he DID NOT Take Leave to attend as it was a Training Holiday for the NCR & MDW. "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin eyes?" The timeline is absolutely accurate and CPT Biden's entry is now incorrect. It should also be mentioned that by returning after only 52 days on a boondoggle TDY, he would have been on "duty status" so probably bumped from the plane a combat soldier returning on R&R after at least 6 months in country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The-Expose-inator (talk • contribs) 07:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Your looking up the movements constitutes WP:OR, as it has not appeared in a reliable, third-party published source. You are stumbling at the very beginning of WP:V: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."  In blunter words, as far as WP is concerned, what you know to be true doesn't mean squat.  What you need to do is call up CNN or Fox News or the Washington Post, and get them interested in this story about how Joe Biden got Beau an unwarranted trip home and kept some deserving solider in his Iraq misery long than necessary.  When they run the story, then we can use it here.   Wasted Time R (talk) 13:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, let me see if I've got the rules down correctly, just because it's in print somewhere it becomes "verifiable" so it's OK to publish even though it's still incorrect. Is that it?  Is that why when a Biden spokesman gave his version of how Biden dodged the draft and it got into print, then it becomes fact to be included in Wikipedia even though he has not released his draft records?  Got it!  THANKS  —Preceding unsigned comment added by The-Expose-inator (talk • contribs) 20:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yup, you got it, verifiability not truth. But you're still mistaken about the draft records, as he did release them in August 2008, per this Associated Press story.  Wasted Time R (talk) 20:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't see any draft records at that link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.171.238.89 (talk) 21:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign released Biden's Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia." So go to Philadelphia, or call up someone who works for the AP.  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I quote your source: "As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman. Just because a Biden spokesman says it doesn't make it so!
 * I quote the source's lede: "Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the same number of deferments received by Vice President Dick Cheney, and later was disqualified from service because of asthma that he suffered as a teenager." Stated as a fact, not as a Biden claim.  If the AP reporter saw the records, and the records gave something other than asthma as the explanation for the 1-Y, the writer surely would have said so.  The quote was just to tart up the article.  But if you're not convinced, send an e-mail to the reporter and find out.  I've done this in the past, they will usually respond.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I stand corrected, Beau Biden's unit did not arrive in Iraq on 22 Nov 08, they arrive on 22 Dec 08, according to the Delaware National Guard official website (http://www.delawarenationalguard.com/home/new/content/dngnews/2008/Dec/261st/2008decDJvolume2.pdf ). He did come back TDY on 13 Jan 09, 22 days later according to Lt. Col. Len Gratteri, a Delaware Army National Guard spokesman.  He said "CPT Beau Biden began a temporary assignment at the Pentagon on Thursday,15 Jan. Details about the assignment or how long it will last weren't immediately available(http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iSHFhLebRKfuSV_xdz1v...cY2sQD9 ).  Without Dad's help, he (and any other soldier) would not have been eligible for leave until midpoint of his tour.  In Vietnam when someone had only been in Country 22 days we used to say he was "still pissing Stateside water!"  [05:10, February 24, 2009 The-Expose-inator ]


 * This Army Times story says he was going to return to Iraq after the inauguration. Even looking at this cynically, it's to Beau's advantage to go back to Iraq.  He wants to run for his father's old Senate seat in 2010, and having spent a tour in Iraq (even though it's not that dangerous there right now) looks real good on 30-second TV ads.  If his opponent can hammer him for having bugged out after 22 days, advantage gone.  Wasted Time R (talk) 05:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Will there be anything added about Biden's mythologizing of his "blue collar" background or will someone be updating the article to take into account the recent revelations that the Biden family (i.e., his brothers) has been involved in some of the recent Ponzi schemes wrecking our economy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.176.83.94 (talk) 11:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That would depend on whether it's sourced, important, focused, and appropriate to mention at all. I don't know about the first, but I have serious doubts about the latter three. Cosmic Latte (talk) 11:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You're referring to this WSJ story, behind their paywall but summarized here or here. First, whatever brother James Biden and son Hunter Biden have been doing in the 2000s has nothing to do with how Joe Biden and his siblings grew up in the 1940s and 1950s.  Second, nothing in this story has anything to do with Joe Biden.  Third, James and Hunter Biden say they had no personal relationship with Stanford, and the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors fund is not a Ponzi scheme or in default and in fact has offered to turn the Stanford investment amount over to a court-appointed receiver.  So maybe there is something here for the Allen Stanford or Hunter Biden or James Biden articles, but there is nothing here for this article.  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Almanac?
That is a rather strange section title. According to Almanac, an almanac is "an annual publication containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar." The list in this section is not "an annual publication" but instead a list of years.

However, my main concern with this section is the long list "United States Senate service". It seems that we could just replace this list by a single line, 1973-2009: Judiciary, Foreign Relations. Who was president in each session, and who was in the majority in the Senate, seems quite irrelevant here. --KarlFrei (talk) 09:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This section predates my involvement with the article, so I've never been sure of what it's for either. It seems to be have added by a Delaware enthusiast, as a bunch of other Delaware politician articles have it too: Ruth Ann Minner, Thomas R. Carper, William V. Roth, Jr., C. Douglass Buck, George Read (signer), James A. Bayard (elder), Joshua Clayton, Michael N. Castle, Henry Latimer (senator), Daniel Rodney, and so forth (the search results go on and on).  Looking at article histories ... these were all put in by User:Stilltim, who did a ton of work on Delaware political articles and was making them all look consistent with each other.  I don't know if the 'Almanac' section format was ever adopted by editors covering other states.  Like you, I think the section consumes more space than it's worth in the Biden article, but I don't want to rip up work done this carefully and exhaustively by another editor.  Perhaps something to bring up with Stilltim, or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress ...   Wasted Time R (talk) 13:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The first entry in the almanac about his council service is contradicting the Biographical Directory of Congress. Is there a source I don't see? Hekerui (talk) 00:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Good point. No, there's no source given for the almanac dates; I don't know where they come from.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Separate article(s)
I would suggest doing an Early life and career of Joe Biden and Senate career of Joe Biden, similar to what McCain, Bush, and Obama have. This would substantially lower the size of the main article, while focusing more on his actions during his presidential campaigns and as vice president.--Levineps (talk) 00:53, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree. The article isn't too long now: 42 kB (7005 words) "readable prose size", well within WP:SIZE guidelines.  His actions during his own presidential campaigns are already covered in separate articles, and since both went nowhere they are less important than his Senate career, which will be the thing he is most remembered for.  We'll have to see what happens in his vice-presidency, but by all accounts he's planning on being a behind-the-scenes advisor, which means that there won't be that much for us to write about here.  At least not for several years to come, after which people start writing memoirs and we can more accurately judge his influence within the administration.  The reason Bush and Obama have early life etc. articles is that they became president, and eventually much of their BLP will be devoted to their presidency.  The reason McCain has an early life/military career article is that so much happened during it.  For Biden, the bulk of his BLP should be about his Senate career, where he spent 36 years, and it is.  I don't think there's anything that needs changing about the current Biden article structure.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Swearing in of Joe Biden
The media attention to the changes that President Obama made to his oath when initially sworn in as president have seemingly allowed several changes that Joe Biden made to the oath that he took when sworn in as Vice President a few minutes earlier to be overlooked or unreported. Biden omitted the word "that" near the end of the oath, changed "on" to "upon" and shortened "I am" to "I'm". How, then, should I add a mention of this on wikipedia, given that there is quite possibly no verbatim official transcript to cite? The inauguration is available in several videos (on youtube, for example), but on wikipedia such raw video tends to be regarded as being (in principle at least) unreliable. I saw the inauguration on TV (CNN international) as it originally happened, and noted the changes at the time. 77.103.171.131 (talk) 06:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You can't mention it at all, unless some mainstream news source reported these changes and considered them important. That's how WP:OR and WP:V work.  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Why a news source specifically? I agree about verifiability, and what happened is verifiable by watching any video of the event made by a news organization such as CNN, but few aspects of such a recent event will be separately commented on specifically as being important news rather than just being left as a video-recorded fact of recent history. The entire swearing-in ceremony was effectively reported as important news by virtue of being broadcast live by various TV news organizations. There are numerous facts (about television shows, for example) mentioned here without being required to have been reported as news, many being relatively minor. 77.103.171.131 (talk) 21:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That the video is widely available for viewing isn't the point. The point is that the matter of the slight word alterations are apparently so trivial that no reliable source has bothered to even make a mention or report of it anywhere.  You yourself watching the video, saying "hey, I saw that", and coming here to edit in to an article what you saw is precisely what the policy on no original research was created to prevent.  The Wikipedia is not an originator of news reporting, it is an encyclopedia that reflects what others have to say.  Cliffsnotes; If they ain't sayin it, we ain't sayin it. Tarc (talk) 00:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Like Tarc said. And no, you can't add it to the John Paul Stevens article either.  Wasted Time R (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

There was no need for Tarc to misquote me. There is no citation here of an accurate transcript (or any transcript) to show that Biden correctly worded his oath. If Wikipedia reflects what others say on TV news, that includes the original speakers (Stevens and Biden) who knew they were making news as well as news reporters. A lack of reports that specifically discuss the changes doesn't imply the changes are trivial; a knowingly broadcast sworn oath, especially one whose wording is specified in legislation, should be more reliable than news commentary. Nor does it imply that I was conducting original research; I was neither scouring the archives for obscure, long-neglected facts, nor putting current facts into a new context or changing their emphasis. In contrast, a statement here that Biden took the oath, without citation of a verbatim transcript, suggests he took it without any fault. Viewed simply as wording changes, Biden's changes were greater than (or less trivial than) the repositioning of one word that occurred in Obama's original oath. That Stevens administered the oath to Biden was originally posted on Wikipedia without proof or reference based on reports of what had been broadcast, so why don't you insist on an appropriate citation? Isn't it the case that you would object to those original posts being removed, even though they mislead and are not properly sourced? 77.103.171.131 (talk) 20:44, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I did not misquote a thing. And in regards to "A lack of reports that specifically discuss the changes doesn't imply the changes are trivial" I will say that, yea, it kinda does.  Until/unless this issue becomes reliably sourced, it cannot appear in the Wikipedia.  I do not see any wiggle room for you here. Tarc (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have added the requested cite, that Stevens gave the oath to Biden. I have watched the video, and the deviations are trivial.  No one other than 77.103.171.131 has noticed them or reported them or is bothered by them.  Note that unlike the Presidential oath, the Vice Presidential oath is not specified in the Constitution, and is twice as long as the Presidential one.  In fact, it's the same oath that's given to hundreds of members of Congress every two years.  I'm sure in all those many thousands of oath-givings over the years, some members have left out a 'that' or contracted two words together.  No one's ever cared then, and no one cares now.  Wasted Time R (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Tarc misquoted me as saying "Hey". The retaking of the presidential oath was done out of an "abundance of caution" (according to reports), rather than because its wording is in the constitution. You have no way of knowing that nobody else noticed Biden's changes, but it would account for the lack of reports elsewhere. The (non-trivial) principle remains that the oath should be repeated accurately, whatever its length, else it's not correctly taken, and not quite the same oath that previous vice presidents took. 77.103.171.131 (talk) 02:44, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, fine, you've discovered that Biden is only 99% of a vice president. Here's what you should do.  Call up the news desks of the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Send e-mails to CNN and Fox News.  As soon as they all realize you've given them the story of the century and they start publishing it and broadcasting it, we'll be sure to include their reports here.  Wasted Time R (talk) 03:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The "hey..." line was a simple characterization of what you had said. Don't be obtuse, please.  This issue is dead as far as I'm concerned. Tarc (talk) 04:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The subject matter is completely unbalanced.
I have noticed that articles in Wikipedia regarding Republicans or conservatives seem to go into the past history of the subjects family to point out that the family once owned slaves or that the family was once polygamous Mormons. However, I do not see this with articles for Democratic or liberal subjects. For instance, this article on Joe Biden mentions his parents names, but there is no link developed for them so we can learn more about the dark past of the Biden family. The past of the Biden family is completely blank and the article only extolls the wonderful life and contribution of Joe Biden.

Is this mining of the past family something that is just reserved for Republicans and conservatives? Do you so-called chroniclers of fact consider yourselves to be intellectually honest, or do you feel it is you duty to only present information favorable to your political leanings. You are misinforming by omission.71.164.208.110 (talk) 04:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Its media bias that continues on wikipedia. I've tried before to balance it out, but have been discouraged by other editors who never want to compromise.--Jojhutton (talk) 05:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of the "dark past of the Biden family". What is the WP:RS that describes this past?  Will be happy to look at it.  As for type of subject, if you go to Talk:Public_image_of_Mitt_Romney and Talk:Mitt Romney/Archive 5 from a year ago, you'll see me arguing against the inclusion of all the old polygamist family history material in the Mitt Romney articles.  Wasted Time R (talk) 05:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of unbalanced, I reverted the addition of this material, but think there might be some salvageable information on further inspection:
 * Biden was chosen for his extensive experience in the Senate and is expected to play an important role in the new administration while taking a markedly different approach from that of Dick Cheney. His propensity for gaffes caused Jon Stewart to extend his long-running gag of Cheney being Darth Vader to include Biden as Rick Moranis's character 'Dark Helmet' in the Mel Brooks film Spaceballs.

The Dark Helmet content is absurd for an encyclopedia entry unless it becomes a long-running, established metaphor. Certainly a citation from somewhere other than thedailyshow.com and blogspot.com at the least... Come on now. Natural Cut (talk) 21:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The 'salvageable' part of this is already covered in the existing article: "Biden intended to eliminate some of the explicit roles assumed by the vice presidency of Cheney.[173] But otherwise, Biden said he would not model his vice presidency on any of the ones before him, but instead would seek to provide advice and counsel on every critical decision Obama would make.[174]" Wasted Time R (talk) 00:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I figured as much. You run a pretty tight ship - and I mean that in a completely positive way. In any case, it was a nice try by TDS fans. Made me chuckle since I hadn't seen that segment. Natural Cut (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

how about other facts like his Height? weight? eye color? hair color? left or right handed? Does he have any favorite sports teams? does he play card games? Who was his childhood best friend? what was his best subject in school? What was his worst subject in school? Who is his current best friend? Does he have a nickname for his wife? Does he have nicknames for his kids? Favorite dish? Favorite drink? Did his dad teach him how to drive? What was his first car? What is his current car? at what age did he learn how to drive? What was his first job? At what age did he begin to work? Is he a night owl or a morning person? Does he have a favorite shirt to wear? A favorite vacation spot? Favorite pair of shoes? lots of facts here that are being left out. Storm norm (talk) 07:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A few of these things are in the article, such as worst subject in school (pretty much everything), first real job (lawyer in Wilmington), and style of dress (sports coats, not tie-dyed). Weight, eye color, and hair color are what the photos in the article are for.  Some of these items are beyond the scope of typical WP BLPs; you'll need to go to the library and read a full biography.  And many of these are difficult to source – I would add his height to the article, for instance, but I can't find any WP:RS that gives it.  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:46, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Zionist
Biden is the first self-professed Zionist to become VP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAZmO80dLfE If Wikipedia has any balls left to become a true a free media, this fact must be put on Biden's wiki page. It would be a great disfavor to the world if it never was added to Wikipedia and I'd lose all faith in Wikipedia. [05:59, February 21, 2009 96.20.20.213]


 * Political positions of Joe Biden already says "Biden is a self-described Zionist.[48]" What WP:RS states he is the first Vice President to say this?  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hairplug addition?
I have heard several rumors about Vice President Biden's "hairplugs". I do not want to insult Mr. Biden (since I met him at an Obama rally), but should the Wikipedia readers become informed of this rumor? Is there any confirmation of it? Nonamer98 (talk) 22:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Consensus is no. See Talk:Joe Biden/Archive 3.  Wasted Time R (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Wasted Time R for pointing that out. I now know why.Nonamer98 (talk) 14:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

New Category : People Denied Communion by the Roman Catholic Church
I think he should be added to this new category. This is not the place to debate if what happened to him was right or wrong, but since he´s banned from communion and all sacraments from the Catholic Church, even not formarly excommunicated, he and others like him, should be added to this new category that I propose. There´s already one for People Excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, but it´s not the same. If anyone doesn´t have objections, this new category should be created.82.154.85.173 (talk) 17:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This kind of category usually gets deleted, as it's difficult to define and is not centrally officiated. In this case, as the article states, "Biden was soon barred from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because of his support for abortion rights;[152] however, Biden did continue to receive Communion at his local Delaware parish.[151]"  So he wouldn't belong in the category anyway, since it's his home parish that's the relevant one.  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

What you transcribed simply states nowdays reigning hypocrisy, from whatever point of view, from the Catholic Church. I still think it might be true since, for those who don´t know a parish is a part of a diocesis and if his bishop banned him from taking communion, he couldn´t recieve it in any place of it. Of course, this would be the most logical. "The New York Times reported that Biden "departed from party doctrine on abortion rights, declaring that as a Catholic, he believes life begins at conception", but Biden said that he would not impose his personal religious views on others.[154]" Sorry, but this simply hilarious and shows how political correctness is taking care of some of the American press ! The belief that life starts at conception would be at first a scientific not a religious belief, anyway, it would be irrelevant, because he still supports abortion even if he pretends to wash his hands from it.81.193.221.65 (talk) 03:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The article menciones this source who claims that he received communion back in August 2008. It´s not known if today he´s totally denied communion. Anyway, the bishop seems to imply that this should happen.81.193.221.65 (talk) 04:02, 13 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks to me like the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington does not include Scranton, Pennsylvania. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that. Anyway, I don´t understand some things about the Catholic Church anymore.82.154.85.42 (talk) 18:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it still makes sense to add bishop Michael Saltarelli response to Biden personal claims : "In the same 2004 document, Bishop Saltarelli singled out Catholic politicians like Biden who claim a personal opposition to abortion but that they could not impose their faith’s beliefs on others. Wrote the Bishop: “No one today would accept this statement from any public servant: ‘I am personally opposed to human slavery and racism but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena.’ Likewise, none of us should accept this statement from any public servant: ‘I am personally opposed to abortion but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena.’"82.154.85.42 (talk) 18:59, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

What the Catholic Church says, like other Churches and religions, is that human life starts at conception and should be protected by law since it´s exact beginning. This is not a religious statement, but more exactly a statement on a secular issue from a religious group. I also find amazing or perhaps not that most of these fake Catholics seem to repeat always the same things. Look at John Kerry statements and see the ressemblances.213.13.243.118 (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * We've been through all this before, see Talk:Joe_Biden/Archive_2. And the talk pages of other prominent American Catholic politicians.  The bottom line is that as long as he self-identifies as a Roman Catholic, and attends Catholic masses and so forth, then our article identifies him as a Catholic.  If readers want to believe this is a fake Catholicism they can, but our article cannot and should not draw that conclusion.  Wasted Time R (talk) 20:53, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we should try to follow a NPOV as much as possible in very controversial articles. That´s why I´m deleting the reference of the New York Times because it´s not true that "Biden "departed from party doctrine on abortion rights, declaring that as a Catholic, he believes life begins at conception", but Biden said that he would not impose his personal religious views on others.[154]" He totally agrees with the stance of his political party on abortion. As a Catholic, he doesn´t believe life should be protected by law since conception. I´m also adding the response of bishop Michael Saltarelli to his stance on this issue. I think it makes sense to see the response of a prelate of the Catholic Church to his political position, so that we can see both sides of the controversy.Mistico (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've reworded the description of the Saltarelli quote to make clear that it wasn't in response to Biden's 2008 actions, but a prior statement covering politicians like Biden in general. I've restored the "departed from party doctrine" material because Democratic party doctrine does not state that life begins at conception, while Biden does.  Biden doesn't completely depart from the party, of course, but if the NYT finds this specific departure notable then so can we.  I've also cleared up the citation formatting, which you did improperly.  Wasted Time R (talk) 03:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but what the New York Times article says is that he "departed from party doctrine on abortion rights, declaring that as a Catholic, he believes life begins at conception". Did he really departed from the party doctrine on the issue ?? That´s what´s really at stake. That´s untrue, except if he was pro-life, which he is not at all. He does believe that life begins at conception, and in fact, many pro-choice would agree on that, but he also believes that life is only enough valuable to be protected by law since 12 weeks. I still think the New York Times reference should go because it´s misleading and in my opinion a example of "political correctness", but I would like to debate that before deleting the article reference.82.154.84.82 (talk) 16:57, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the reference to the New York Times article is so tendencious and controversial, and from my viewpoint, untrue, that it´s not according the NPOV policy of Wikipedia, so it has to be deleted. If this person had even slightly departed from his party "doctrine on abortion rights", saying for example that for now it should be legal but he hoped that one day it wouldn´t anymore, I would have to agree that it should be kept. Since it´s not the case, the way it appears is far to controversial to be kept in the article.Mistico (talk) 15:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree, but it's not worth getting into an edit battle over. I have restored the non-objected-to portion of this, because without it the Saltarelli quote has no purpose.  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Allegations about daughter
link This source is probably not good enough for a biography of a living person, but other sources may become available. The reason this is relevant is because Biden has always been one of the biggest supporters of the war on drugs, and he would be a total hypocrite if he allowed his daughter to avoid going to jail over this, if it's true. Grundle2600 (talk) 02:53, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is at least three steps removed from being a WP:RS or BLP worthy (the New York Post often isn't reliable, the lawyers involved are clearly scuzzballs, the 'friend' trying to cash in big isn't much of a friend, etc). If something legal did come of this, you'd have to see if the penalties handed out were any more lenient than for any other first-time affluent white offender (who as a class always get off easy compared to poor non-whites when it comes to drug charges).  And as for politicians being hypocrites in the War on Drugs, the line is so long you wouldn't even be able to see Biden if he joined the end of it.  Wasted Time R (talk) 03:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * A trashy conservative tabloid publication (NY Post) is gleefully reporting what scumball lawyers are alleging. Notice how they didn't report on what they saw on the tape, that is the M.O. of the tabloid press and of the Murdoch empire, it goes back to the classic Faux trick "some people say".  The scummy lawyer is saying this to get paid, and the Murdoch post is picking up the story to slander the Democratic Administration.  This is far far removed from RS.  But be on the lookout for POV pushers to be adding this to the article. TharsHammar (talk) 04:46, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This editor, Grundle2600, has a history of taking partisan POV and further twisting it by selecting only those points which support his view and then creative hyperbolic paraphrasing in the style of blog comments to the point of slander. I'm perfectly willing to let other editors make their own judgements on articles I'm not already involved in (meaning I'm not out scouring his edits to find fault with him), but when he returns to a few articles I have on my watchlist or new subjects on my radar, I can usually count on its being to add completely irresponsible trash, with an obvious grudge.


 * Here we see the irresponsible trash is a tabloid story and the grudge is "he would be a total hypocrite if...". Yet in this editor's own post above, he acknowledges A) the source is not good enough, and B) that the hypocrisy his mind is inclined to imagine has not happened.


 * Grundle, if "other sources may become available" which were notable and citable, why wouldn't you wait for those to appear? Is it because you are not as interested in the truth coming out as you are in personally exacting destruction by being the first one to burst bubbles and break bad news?  (Or good news, to you and yours.)  The subject of an article is the notable individual, in this case the former Senator and current Vice President.  Personal history and some family and colleague issues are included insofar as they tell the story of what makes one who one is.  But an individual's Wiki bio is not the place to address every illicit behavior of anybody tangentially connected to them unless there is some larger fundamental point about the subject which has been made by someone else notable and credible enough and that fact becomes significant to a brief biography of that person, without taking on undue weight.  Betty Ford candidly opened up a discussion contemplating her children's drug use, and of course recounted her own personal struggles with alcoholism and substance abuse, making it a legitimate subject for her article.  Yet those words and issues do not appear in her husband Gerald Ford's article, as they are not fundamentally relevant to an overview of his life as it can be described in a few thousand words.  In other words, even if it can be proven that something has happened, and even if it is acknowledged by the article's subject or someone in their immediate circle, it is not necessarily relevant to their Wiki bio.  Even if it were to be proven that Biden's daughter has been a drug user, that would not in and of itself rise to the level of inclusion in Biden's article, regardless of Biden's personal teetotalism or stand on related issues.


 * As to the matter of whether his daughter goes to jail, I can't see how anyone would expect her to. There is frequently an allegation, even an admission, of drug use by prominent people and average Americans alike that is never prosecuted.  Bill Maher is among several comedians who have spoken openly and frequently on television about their drug use for decades, yet nobody raids their homes or uses their words against them to press some sort of charge, much less send them to jail.  Look at the long line of celebrities who admit to drug use or are caught with drugs and are not fined or jailed or prosecuted in any way.  Some who are caught actually under the influence are arrested and/or fined and/or required to appear in court, often because they were putting others at risk (operating a vehicle) or creating a disturbance, but it doesn't actually result in them going to jail.


 * In the interest of full disclosure, I personally do not condone the use of drugs and have never used cocaine—it always disappoints me to learn a person is alleged to be using the drug, be it an acquaintance or a celebrity—and I applaud Hillary Clinton for acknowledging that it is the drug use of Americans that enables the Mexican drug cartels in their terroristic and murderous behavior across our borders. But who do we blame for the fact that Whitney Houston was, in your words, "allowed" to not go to jail?  Cissy Houston?  Come on, grow up.  If you're interested in the drug issue, get involved at a community treatment center, support a grassroots measure to enact legislation, discuss it in your community, make sure your friends and family know where you stand and be a positive influence.  If you're really just interested in imagining hypocrisy and poking holes in influential individuals, I've said it before: go blog somewhere.  Become a journalist.  You are not welcome to use Wikipedia as a tool to promote the inflation of minor and tangential stories into major issues suitable for bio inclusion.  We see through you.  Abrazame (talk) 08:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Orioles Opening Day 2009
Not sure if this has any place in the article, but he did throw out the ceremonial opening pitch for Opening Day between the Yankees and the Orioles on April 6. Recalcitrancy (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Might warrant a mention in 2009 Baltimore Orioles season, but not here, even though he said on a radio interview that this was a first for him. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Missing info
I would suggest adding, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect." This is certainly more notable than, say, whether or not Biden dealt with drug policy as judiciary committee chair.

The article says, he "tried to avoid off-hand remarks, such as one about Obama being tested by a foreign power soon after taking office that had attracted negative attention." This spin puts a certain unintended comedy into the issue, at least if you are familiar with what happened. Surely the focus sure be on what it is he said, rather than on his alleged efforts to avoid saying it. Kauffner (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The 'IQ' remark is included in Joe Biden presidential campaign, 1988, the detail article about Biden's ill-fated 1988 campaign. The Joe Biden section is a summary section that just relates the most important parts of that campaign.  And what was more important than the IQ remark was that Biden had falsely stated several aspects of his academic record, which is what the section describes.


 * You are incorrect in thinking that the 'IQ' remark is more important than Biden's work on drug policy. As the article states: "As chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus, Biden wrote the laws that created the U.S. "Drug Czar", who oversees and coordinates national drug control policy. In April 2003 he introduced the controversial Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act, also known as the RAVE Act. He continued to work to stop the spread of "date rape drugs" such as flunitrazepam, and drugs such as Ecstasy and Ketamine. In 2004 he worked to pass a bill outlawing steroids like androstenedione, the drug used by many baseball players.[9]"  These are real actions that affect real people; the IQ remark is just the usual kind of dumb mistake that everyone makes on the campaign trail every now and then (although, as the article states, Biden makes more dumb remarks than most).


 * As for the 2008 vice presidential campaign, I'm not sure what 'spin' you're seeing. Biden has a rep for dumb/careless/unwise remarks, he made at least one, he tried to change his style to avoid any more.  The point is that he was successful in doing so: the Obama-will-be-challenged remark didn't do any significant damage to the campaign, Biden stayed on message the rest of the way, and Obama won pretty much all the states where Biden campaigned the most (and where Obama had been weak in the primaries against Hillary).  You can't really make a case that Biden was a drag on the ticket.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * This article is its own thing. Because some piece of info is in some other article is not reason to exclude it here.
 * "It's not gonna be apparent that we're right," is significant as candid assessment of Obama's foreign policy skills. Historically, a running mate rarely if ever affects ticket (although Palin might be an exception). So the fact that Biden didn't have an impact on the voting is unremarkable. Kauffner (talk) 05:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Previous editors have trimmed down the "1988" section on WP:Undue weight grounds. As it stands it is six paragraphs with two block quotes, probably the longest treatment in any BLP main article of a campaign that lasted only a few months and never made it to the primaries.  As for "It's not gonna be apparent that we're right," that's a generic statement that's largely true of anybody's foreign policy as it's happening.  Was the GWB approach to dealing with North Korea correct?  We don't know yet.  Is the Obama approach to dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan optimal?  We don't know yet.  And so on.  Wasted Time R (talk) 10:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * He referred to JFK. The implication was that somebody would try to take advantage of Obama the way Khrushchev did JFK -- and it would not be "apparent" that Obama's response was the correct one. Because Khrushchev thought JFK weak and inexperience, he put missiles in Cuba. Even if your interpretation that Biden was just talking about routine presidential policymaking is correct, many commentators came to a different conclusion. Kauffner (talk) 08:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, Biden mentioned JFK (see this story for more of his remarks). But whatever challenge to JFK he was referring to, it wasn't the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Soviets moving their missiles in was discovered in September 1962 and the crisis took place in October 1962, some 20 months or so after JFK's inauguration.  Maybe you and he were thinking of the Berlin Crisis and building of the Berlin Wall?  In any case, if say, you view the current North Korean nuke and missile tests as a challenge, then it's the same challenge that has been given to Clinton and GWB all along.  I'm still not convinced that the campaign section needs to have a fuller treatment of this remark, or what that treatment should say. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Award
We should the award he is being awarded from Kosovo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.122.21.204 (talk) 22:35, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"Gaffe Machine"
I don't want seem as a person whose intentions are bring negativity to the articles, but how can we not mention the fact that Biden is (or is believed to be) a "Gaff Machine" - he makes a mistake in speech every two sentences. think, in fact, it deserves its own article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.88.26 (talk) 22:47, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The article says as much:
 * During his years as a senator, Biden amassed a reputation for loquaciousness,[88][89][90] with his questions and remarks during Senate hearings being especially known for being long-winded.[91][92] ... In public appearances, he is known to deviate from prepared remarks at will.[93] According to political analyst Mark Halperin, he has shown "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things";[92] The New York Times writes that Biden's "weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything".[90]

and
 * Under instructions from the Obama campaign, Biden kept his speeches succinct and tried to avoid off-hand remarks, such as one about Obama being tested by a foreign power soon after taking office that had attracted negative attention.[162][163] Obama strategist David Axelrod said that any unexpected comments had been outweighed by Biden's high popularity ratings.[165]

I haven't included any of the vice-presidential mini-gaffes yet (primarily the swine flu remark) because I'm waiting to see if they stand the test of time. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, the swine flu remark has already led to a spate of late-night TV comics joking about Biden on this account, and that's the tipping point at which public perceptions of politicians often get formed. So I've included the swine flu remark and aftereffect in the article. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

To put in the kind of relentless criticism of Republicans and only mention briefly the Volumes of Gaffes that Biden makes is absurd. '289,000 Entries and still rising' http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=joe+biden+gaffes&aq=4&oq=joe+bide&aqi=g10131.247.83.135 (talk) 17:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * | Sarah Palin gaffes brings 5,280,000 Google hits—"and rising", as you say. That's twenty times as many Google hits for Sarah Palin gaffes even though she's only been in the national public eye for a year or so.  Yet despite this astonishing density of gaffes from Palin, the word "gaffe" doesn't appear in Sarah Palin's bio once.  Biden, with two runs for president and almost 40 years in the United States Senate, has only 289,000 entries.  Yet the word "gaffe" appears in Joe Biden twice.  That is the imbalance here.  I pared down the swine flu mention because, respectfully, I think Wasted Time R's judgement was influenced by recentism and by this complaint; fearful rhetoric from some notable and official quarters was quite striking at the time, and there has been school closings.  All Biden said was in response to a question about what precautions he'd recommend to his own family.  This does not fit the definition of a gaffe.  It fits the definition of admitting to a personal abundance of caution in regard to his family.  How many Americans refrained from flying in September and October 2001?  The government introduced color-coded fear factor levels.  We were told to get tape and plastic for our windows, not to handle suspicious mail.  The national guard was posted at every bridge and tunnel and airport.  (Not to mention the Iraq war.)  That all may have been an overreaction in hindsight, but some of those things did make many people feel safer until they had a better sense of the actual continuing likely threat.  There have been people walking the streets of certain cities outside of our country wearing masks because of this flu.  There are Airports that have begun checking passengers' body temperature and providing antibacterial soaps as a result of this flu.


 * Oh, and | John McCain gaffes? Twice as many John McCain gaffes as Biden gaffes, even though McCain has been in government only half as long as Biden, and Biden has had a higher profile these past many months as Vice President.  As if Google hits were even an encyclopedic gauge.  I think this should be the end of pushing or being pushed by this Joe Biden gaffe machine story.  Abrazame (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Sarah Palin and John McCain have their own articles created by different groups of editors. Whether those articles talk about gaffes or not has nothing to do with this article. Biden is vice president now, so his peer group is other vice presidents like Gore and Cheney. Here's an RS for "gaffe machine":Kauffner (talk) 10:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Abrazame, I respect your intentions here, but Biden's remark on the swine flu was a blunder – the one thing high public officials are always supposed to do is decrease the chance of public panic, not increase it. Moreover, Biden does have a well-founded reputation for loose talk; he always had it as a senator, and despite some efforts at control, he still has it as a vice president.  That doesn't mean he's a bad person or a bad politician, and Obama and his team have clearly decided that Biden's advantages outweigh this aspect of him; in addition to the Axelrod quote that was already in the article, I've added one from Jarrett to the same effect.  But we can't ignore this part of Biden's public image.  In particular, vice presidents don't do much in public of substance (even if they are influential in private), and so they inevitably get some fixed image in the public eye.  GHWB was a guy who went to funerals, Quayle was a dummy, Gore was a wooden bore, Cheney was Darth Vader, Biden is a loose talker.  These images may or may not be fair, but they are there, and we need to relate them in our articles.


 * Regarding what other articles say, I can't control them, especially the Palin one which is usually in a state of perpetual edit war. Your google methodology above isn't that solid; I think you are largely measuring the amount of press and blog coverage the different candidates got, and as this article points out, Biden got by far the littlest of the four national candidates.  Also, your method is prone to false positives; one of your first-page hits for Palin is actually a parody using Biden missteps.  And even if I could control Palin's article, I would differentiate between her and Biden.  Her mistakes are from fundamental lack of knowledge of and experience with issues, whereas Biden has plenty of knowledge and experience but seems to lack the mental edit cycle that most people go through before words start coming out ("weak filter" as our article says).


 * And as for "I think Wasted Time R's judgement was influenced by recentism and by this complaint", no, I was simply waiting to see how Biden's vice presidency went. The swine flu remark was sort of a tipping point into making Biden's reputation for loose talk part of his image as veep.  I'm very aware of the dangers of recentism, and I (and other editors) throw out many recent events if I don't think they are meaningful in the long run (check out Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton for a recent example).  Nor am I swayed by complaints-with-agendas, as I've seen hundreds of these on many talk pages.  So anyway, I've restored the commentary on the swine flu remarks, added the Russia remark, added a much-cited recent LA Times article saying that despite these missteps Biden's influence within the administration is increasing and Obama still has confidence in him, and have added Jarrett's comment about how they accept Biden for who he is.  Wasted Time R (talk) 15:55, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Joseph Biden and Anti-Crypto
I have a copy of the book, Crypto, by Stephen Levy, which discusses the history of computer cryptography in the United States, and the government's efforts to contain it. It discusses some efforts by then-Senator Joseph Biden, as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to insert the following text into the draft of Senate Bill 266 introduced 24 January:

It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plaintext contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law. (Levy, 195)

This seems to imply that Senator Biden was willing to compromise individual privacy for law-enforcement concerns. Similarly, Senator John McCain was at first anti-encrypto; I have to see if his article is protected so that I may add this.Samcan (talk) 23:47, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Since this didn't become law, it doesn't seem to be important enough to include in this main article, which just touches upon the central points of Biden's Senate career. However, the article Political positions of Joe Biden does have a section "Internet privacy and file sharing", which already discusses the Senate Bill 266 matter.  You may want to add on to that (that article isn't protected).  Note also that this Slashdot thread from last year has an update from Philip Zimmermann, that seems to back off some of his criticism of Biden; it might be worth including a reference to that as well.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

History/Education Section Unbalanced
In both education parts it only discusses negative things. I've never seen this before in any other article. Is there really only bad things that happened. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.115.166.174 (talk) 02:32, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * By his own description, Biden had an undistinguished academic career. He also committed an academic transgression.  And then later he misrepresented his academic record while campaigning for president.  Articles describe the academic phases of their subjects as they happened, good bad or indifferent.  Wasted Time R (talk) 03:11, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

CreativEngine.com references
CreativEngine.com does not authorize the use of our Biden.CreativEngine.com website. Biden.creativengine.com is the development server for Biden's former senate website and is not intended for public use. Please remove all references to biden.creativengine.com.

Thank you, Creativengine (talk) 23:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)CreativEngine


 * The one citation that referenced Biden.CreativEngine.com has now been yanked. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)


 * As above, Yes check.svg Done &mdash; Deon555talkI'm BACK!  11:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Teetotaler
With VP Biden photographed drinking beer with President Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley, is it safe to assume the passage where Biden is described as a teetotaler is false?

--Consorti (talk) 22:52, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not really, he had a Bucklers, which is a non-alcoholic beer. TharsHammar Bits andPieces 23:14, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Infobox image
The cropped version of Biden's official portrait has twice been replaced with the full version. I think the cropped version should be used for three aesthetic reasons. First, the cropped version better emphasizes Biden as the subject of the photo, which seem appropriate for an infobox. Second, the full image is clearly right facing. Normally, images on the right side should face left. Finally, the image has a lot of white, and the whiteness is more distracting in the full version.

For the other side of the argument, we have edit summaries. The first editor said a cropped version is disrespectful. The second said the official version is preferable to "a falsified version". The first point is silly. If the cropped version cut off part of Biden's head, it could be said to be disrespectful. The actual crop is nothing of the kind. There are two problems with the second edit summary. There is nothing false about the cropped version. It does not at all misrepresent the subject of the photo. The second point is about the preference for "official versions". There is no authority for that, and if it were true, cropped versions would be banned. Logic tells us the opposite rule is true: where a fairly edited version fits the particular needs better without violating the terms of the license, the edited version should be used. Here, the cropped version fits the needs better and is public domain, so the license terms are not violated. As such, the cropped version should be used. -Rrius (talk) 23:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that you are honoring WP:BRD and not warring over this. Good to see. Regarding the edit summary, I can't speak for Chasesboys, but I do agree that respect is due to Joe Biden's choice of the pose and image used officially, as it is here. Taken literally, "to falsify" means "to make false". The photo you are placing is not merely cropped. Biden's body has been made to partially cover the vice presidential flag originally positioned behind his right shoulder. There is no need to do this, the official photo, and it is official, is suitable. Any alteration of it to suit personal preference takes advantage of the Wikimedia Commons lax control over original research to suit the whims of individual editors. The other versions of the original photo are not properly labeled and described as altered (other than in their titles). If we use the "cropped" version, we are no longer displaying the original image but the individual aesthetic point of view of an individual editor on Commons. Incidentally, "right facing" in terms of photos and page layout refers to the direction of the eyes and body of the subject of the photograph. In the original, Biden is front facing, not right facing. Sswonk (talk) 00:21, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Point taken about the flags being moved. A proper cropped version would still be preferable. -Rrius (talk) 01:10, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've uploaded and am about to add a version that only crops. To say that alterations of an image are OR is just odd. WP:OR is inapplicable. If I take a picture of the Capitol, upload it, and add it to United States Capitol, it is not OR. If I crop someone else's photo of the same thing to emphasize the statue at the top of the dome, that is not OR. Where OR intersects with images is where the photo presents information in a graph or chart or the like that is OR. Using a more aesthetically pleasing crop is not OR, and while clearly it is not exactly the same as the original image, that is no reason not to use it. Finally, I was referring not to MOS:IMAGES, but to general aesthetics in discussing which way he faces. His body more clearly faces away from the text in the original than in the cropped version. -Rrius (talk) 01:31, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Really, "distorting the facts" is no exaggeration when the manipulated version becomes the de facto original. As it creates a "tighter" image it gets propagated throughout the encyclopedia and as a result of being a free image, spreads way beyond that – this one (untagged as retouched until I tagged it today!) is already currently used in way more places on en than the true original. Cropping I'm less concerned about, however, in a similar vein, I'd always want to know exactly what's been removed. The tag is good, but a viewer needs to see "other versions" linked in the description template for a more immediate reference. Ok, rant over... --mikaultalk 05:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Alterations of an image contravene WP:OI (a subset of OR, if you like) if an editor uses photo manipulation to try to distort the facts or position being illustrated by a contributed photo, especially if it's undeclared. In an image as prominent as this it's important that a certain amount of credibility and integrity is observed; this sort of thing is all too regular an occurrence at Commons and in circumstances like these it can get out of hand. It might be easy and convenient to manipulate photos but it's not a simple question of how or why, or even how much should constitute acceptable editing. Moving elements of a photo around is completely unacceptable in photojournalism and it shouldn't be acceptable here either.
 * I hadn't noted the repositioning of the flags until it was pointed out above; when I did realize it, I said, "point taken". I then uploaded File:Joe Biden official portrait cropped.jpg, which does merely crop the image, and added it to the infobox. Hopefully my version is acceptable to everyone. -Rrius (talk) 06:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah ok, I wasn't having a go at your choice of lead image, I was picking up on your comment to the effect that OR is not an applicable policy, when it's fully behind the OI policy of rejecting photo manipulation. That said, the "crop" version (the manipulated one) isn't the same as the "cropped" one (thinking of filenames here) and I think there's some confusion over peoples' satisfaction with using alternatives to the original (official) image. I personally dislike the framing of the original shot and ambivalent about your cropped version... others may prefer simply the intent of the photographer, regardless of aesthetics. In some respects there's no escaping personal preferences in these situations. Given the alteration to the original isn't any more than a removal of extraneous space, of course we're left with no problem other than personal preference. Like I say, I'm equally unhappy with either ;) --mikaultalk 07:53, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm generally in favor of not changing existing official photographs at all, but a simple crop that doesn't eliminate any significant context seems okay to me. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Wasted Time R and Mikaul, and am not "happy" with cropping this image. However, I enjoy editing enough not to want to get bogged down into a dispute over somewhat minor cropping here. These issues become too subjective for any right answer to satisfy. I am reminded of the art of Richard Serra, and the placement of Tilted Arc at Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The result there was the destruction of art at the hands of federal workers and no one really "won" in my estimation.
 * Regarding the guideline MOS:IMAGES, here is what it suggests: "It is often preferable to place images of faces so that the face or eyes look toward the text. Multiple images in the same article can be staggered right-and-left (for example: Timpani). However, images should not be reversed simply to resolve a conflict between these guidelines; doing so misinforms the reader for the sake of our layout preferences. An image should be reversed or substantially altered only if this clearly assists the reader (for example, cropping a work of art to focus on a detail discussed in the text). Any such alteration must be noted in the caption." I am not sure even the cropping currently used "clearly assists the reader". MOS is more flexible than a rule. I recently helped illustrate Circuit rider (religious) with a page from a hundred year old book. Yes, layout guidelines throughout publishing teach that image subjects should face into or draw the eye to the text. But, I see nothing wrong with not doing that in many cases. We are primarily concerned with helping people learn about subjects they are interested in, and the MOS and personal preferences rightfully should take a back seat to that. So I left the illustration at Circuit Rider riding off the page, with the rider looking directly into the eye of the beholder. I really don't see anything wrong with that. Sswonk (talk) 02:12, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Nah, whatever, consensus seems to be for the full image. I'll restore it. Just for the record I already said that the left/right thing was not about MOS:IMAGES. -Rrius (talk) 02:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Judiciary Committee Section
editsemiprotected Could someone please modify the URL for footnote 59 ("Making connections to end Domestic Violence" - in the Judiciary Committee Section) from http://www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2004/05-05violence.mspx to  http://web.archive.org/web/20080430104855/http://www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2004/05-05violence.mspx

Same goes for footnote 58: change http://biden.senate.gov/issues/issue/?id=975b0cf4-ce25-42cc-b63d-072fb81e8618 to http://web.archive.org/web/20080822144642/http://biden.senate.gov/issues/issue/?id=975b0cf4-ce25-42cc-b63d-072fb81e8618

The current URLs re-directing to error pages. Thank you so much. Kammel Toe (talk) 08:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thank you for bringing this up. —SpaceFlight89 10:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

What images to use in Vice Presidency section
Previously, there were three images in the "Vice Presidency" section:
 * File:Joe Biden and Dick Cheney at VP residence.jpg – illustrated the transition period
 * File:Joe Biden sworn in 1-20-09 hires 090120-N-0696M-204a.jpg – illustrated the inauguration
 * File:Barack Obama Walking With Joe Biden.jpg – illustrated being vice president

Now User:Tocino is adamant about replacing all three with one larger-sized image:
 * File:Leaders group photo, Policy Network, April 6 2009.jpg

saying in one misleading edit summary, "added image", and then saying in another edit summary, "this image shows biden standing with fellow world leaders, something he wouldn't be doing if he wasnt vice pres and therefore this image represents section better"

I don't think this is wise. First, the transition and inauguration are standard major events that articles like this often have images of, and they shouldn't be ignored. Second, I'm not convinced that this "Progressive Governance Conference" (you can read about it here) was so important that its image should be extra-large and replace all the others. Furthermore the caption doesn't even identify who the other "world leaders" are, or give a link to any article on the conference, making its importance rather vague for readers. (The conference is a redlink, but Policy Network talks about it.)

I would be okay with adding the Progressive Governance Conference image – at regular size – to the three that were there before, or to replacing the Obama-walking-with-Biden image with the Progressive Governance Conference one at regular size, but I'm strongly opposed to replacing all three images with the large Progressive Governance Conference one. What do others think? Wasted Time R (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it adds more value to the section because it shows something Biden wouldn't be doing if he wasn't Vice President. First of all three images in that small section make it seem overcrowded. And the three images that have been chosen are rather boring. He could shake hands with Cheney when he was a Senator; all government officials have to do a swearing in; and there are already enough images with him and Obama on this article.


 * I would agree to a compromise to replace one of the three images with the Progressive Conference image (replacing the one with Obama would be fine), but then we would have to downsize the picture and the reason why I enlarged it was to allow the reader to able to see Biden better. --Tocino 17:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Who cares what you agree to. The entire basis of your point is wrong. This is an article about Mr. Joe Biden. It is not an article about the vice president of the United States. Joe Biden was a human long before he was VP, and is reasonably likely to continue long after. Joe Biden was notable BEFORE he was VP. He already had an article. And some photos. Changing the article to emphasise the role that he currently occupies seems rather silly indeed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.81.177.148 (talk) 09:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

TARP correction
The "final year" section says
 * Biden cast his last Senate vote on January 15, supporting the release of the second $350 million for the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

That should say $350 billion, not million. 66.127.53.204 (talk) 01:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Right you are. Now fixed, and thanks for the spot.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Subdividing the Vice Presidency section
User:Sm8900 has attempted to subdivide the Vice Presidency into "Background", "Duties as vice-president", and "Actions as vice-president" sections. However, I don't think this is a workable scheme. The nature of the position is that the duties are ill-defined and whatever a particular president and vice president make of them. And what they make of them often depends upon the actions they take. So for example, if Biden is successful in monitoring stimulus infrastructure spending, he'll probably get more roles like that. If he says dumb things at wrong times, he'll probably get fewer responsibilities. In other words, his duties and his actions are closely intertwined, and can't be separated out like this. To illustrate this, the first two sentences of the "Actions ..." section are: "In the early months of the Obama administration, Biden assumed the role of an important behind-the-scenes counselor. The president compared Biden's efforts to a basketball player “who does a bunch of things that don’t show up in the stat sheet.” But this sounds like a duty description to me, not an action.  Similarly, a sentence in the "Duties ..." section reads, "By September 2009, Biden was satisfied that no major instances of waste or corruption had occurred."  That's a description of an action, saying how well Biden had done a particular role.  And if you moved that sentence into the "Actions" section, you'd lose the connectivity with the previous sentence, "Biden was in charge of the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package intended to help counteract the ongoing recession, and stressed that only worthy projects should get funding." The only way the account of Biden's vice presidency can make any sense is if we tell it chronologically.

We can discuss this whole matter here, but per WP:BRD I'm doing the 'R'. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:16, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand; however a clear distinction does exist. The section for "Duties" is an attempt to summarize official assignments and delegated functions. "Actions" will refer to the whole range of appearances, speeches, travels, statements to the media, etc etc. which Biden may make. Readers of this entry might benefit from the distinction, and from having an encyclopedic list and summation of delegated duties in one defined section (even if there are still some gray areas, which is normal at Wikipedia). It will encourage a greater and more systematic overall approach to this topic. especially since no subheadings exist in that section at all right now. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 13:52, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand your goal, but I think in practice the vagueness of vice presidential assignments and responsibilities makes it too difficult. For example, Biden is now the leading Democratic and White House voice against further escalation in Afghanistan.  What entry would you put in "Duties" for that?  There isn't one; it has just sort of happened.


 * As for a more systematic approach to the topic, looking at the Gore and Cheney articles, they are done roughly chronologically and within that by particular subject areas (REGO, Iraq, etc). That's what I think will probably make the most sense here.  We don't know yet what the most important subject areas will be for Biden, but as they become apparent, we can do sectioning accordingly.  Or if that doesn't seem appealing, we can section by "2009", "2010", etc.


 * In any case, let us see what others think. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Can someone explain why the section, which is relatively short still, needs to be divided? Once there is more material, the proper sectioning will probably become self-evident. -Rrius (talk) 01:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * because even if it is a brief section, there are still a number of separate topics being covered at once, in my opinion. information given in a small number of sentences may still be important and need dividing, if the topic is important enough. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:58, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * If you read this recent Newsweek cover story on Biden, you'll see that it doesn't lend itself to noting specific duties or actions. Rather, it says that "Across the board, Biden's real value to the president is not really his specific advice. It's his ability to stir things up."  That's not an official assignment or a delegated function, nor is it an action.  It's just the nature of Biden's interaction with Obama.   Wasted Time R (talk) 11:59, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks for your replies. I can agree to let this topic be shelved for now. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Joe Bidens Wiki-Affair
Why is in the article of Biden no reference to this ? He let his staff edit wikipedia (like the one on himself) articles, which became only public because of easy preventible mistakes... It's by far no conspiracy theory to assume he did it again - especially because in this article in no reference to it. A section about his attempts to manipulate the public opinion on him might be nice. What he exactly changed or ordered to be changed is probably interesting.

134.96.7.93 (talk) 09:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles on a person generally don't discuss the past state of the Wikipedia article. Even the most famous bad biography of all time, John Seigenthaler, merely contains a 'See also' entry to a different article on the Seigenthaler incident. But when a subject is responsible for editing their own article via their staff, that's arguably a different case. Looking at other congressional figures where this happened, the article treatment is inconsistent (no surprise). Some have a small section on the editing and a link to USA Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia, the article that discusses this in more detail. Some just have a 'See also' entry to it, and some have nothing at all. I've taken the middle course for the Biden article, and have now added a 'See also' entry in it. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:06, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The USA Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia article only mentioned Biden staff edits in the lead, and didn't have a separate section further describing the edits and the official Biden office reaction to the news. I've now added such a section there. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Now to give a fresh look at the staffer edits from 2005:
 * 1) The first one
 * 2) removes a description of a supposed 1996 plagiarism controversy involving claiming responsibility for Megan's Law
 * 3) adds a description of Biden's actions in the Balkans in the 1990s
 * 4) changes the spin on a possible Biden 2008 presidential candidacy
 * 5) Another edit of the first one
 * 6) removes some qualifiers about Biden's stature in the Senate
 * 7) The second one
 * 8) rewrites and changes the spin on the Kinnock and law school plagiarism descriptions
 * 9) Another edit of the second one
 * 10) fixes and clarifies a description of Biden's son
 * 11) The final edit of the second one
 * 12) fixes and expands on the description of Biden's first wife's fatal auto accident.

Changes 5-1 and 4-1 were for the better, and those areas of the article have since been rewritten with solid sourcing in any case. Change 3-1 was for the worse, but the Kinnock and law school controversy descriptions have all been completely rewritten, re-sourced, etc. by multiple editors during and following the 2008 vice presidential selection. They are as fair now as anything gets around here. Change 2-1 took some weaselly text and spun it a different way; it's irrelevant now as that part of the article has since been reshaped as well. Change 1-3 introduced some blather but it's since been overtaken by events and is irrelevant now.

That leaves changes 1-1 and 1-2. The 1996 Megan's Law matter has never come back into the article, and the 1990s Balkans text is still in the article, pretty much as the staffer wrote it, with either no or weak sourcing to support it. Both of these items need further investigation. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the 1-1 claim, which was also discussed way back when in Talk:Joe Biden/Archive 1, I've looked and looked but I can't find a single reliable source to support the text that the Biden staffer removed (which used "plagiarism" when it really meant "took false credit"). If someone knows of source, they need to bring it forward. The only thing I can find are newspaper stories from 1996, such as this Los Angeles Times one, which state that Biden was co-sponsoring with Phil Gramm a Senate measure that was a Megan's Law follow-on (a national registry to track sex criminals). Maybe the follow-on got confused with the original? Biden's senate re-election races rarely got national media coverage, since they were never close, so the answer to this probably lies in some Delaware newspaper whose online archives don't go back that far. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing things up. It was a inconsistency i stumbled upon and learned that editing was restricted... Finally it's good to know that people like you are so dedicated to make Wikipedia a better place :-) 134.96.7.93 (talk) 17:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now completed the last part of this, rewriting the mid-1990s Balkans wars material. It's now a bit longer and more detailed, a little less laudatory of Biden, and cited with mainstream New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times sources, and Almanac of American Politics sources. At the same time I've made a number of other improvements to the Senate foreign policy section, in terms of both material addition and clarification and stronger citing. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

As for your original question of 'could Biden's staff be doing, or do in the future, this again?' You never know, but I would doubt it. Congressional staffs probably got instructions to stay away from WP after the original series of revelations. The same semi-protection that keeps you from editing the article would also keep unregistered staffers from doing so. And the article has more watchers now than it did then, although all these watchers (most of all me) managed to let the foreign relations committee section stay in the state it was in a long time. But the bottom line always is that it doesn't matter who is doing editing or what their motivation is; the edits themselves either are worthy of inclusion or they aren't. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

ˈdʒoʊzɨf
Not to be petty, but it seems to me that whoever wrote this article is unaware that Joseph Biden would not pronounce his name /ˈdʒoʊzɨf/. That may be the British pronunciation, but we, Mr. Biden included, would say /ˈdʒoʊsɨf/. Danwaggoner (talk) 03:24, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Net worth?
How is it possible that Biden was one of the poorest members of the senate during his time as a senator, when a senator makes around $175,000 a year? It just doesn't add up on how his net worth could be so small usless he's fiscally irresponsible. - BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 08:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * First there's the comparative context – the Senate is full of very wealthy people who made it big in business and spent lots of their own money to get elected. Biden was in the Senate most of his adult life and never had much outside income.  And most of his Senate income went into living expenses and a big house.  Even Obama commented on how little money Biden had accumulated during the veep interviewing process.  Wasted Time R (talk) 11:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Most Senators are wealthy to begin with, and their salary is a pittance relative to their net worth and earning potential were they not restricted by the rules of the government. Your user name notes Corzine, who was one of this group.  A few senators are of relatively modest means other than what they earn in salary.  Biden is from this group.


 * Biden graduated law school in 1968, at 25, first became an attorney in 1969, at 26, was elected to city council in 1970, at 27, and successfully ran for the Senate in 1972, at 29, not a lot of time to earn and invest money. (There was a recession in 1969, and Biden and his wife had three children during this period.)  As the section in the article implies, Senators who are elected at an older age have had time to amass a financial nest egg if not a small fortune through business deals, investments and other sources of income, like book sales.  Sitting Senators have strict limitations on the sorts of investments they can make and are largely prohibited from allocating or reallocating investments during office, as they of course make laws that affect industries, trade deals, the adoption of new technologies, and regulatory and tax issues.  Additionally, some Senators come from wealthy families and/or marry into money.  Finally, some people are particularly focused on building great personal wealth and lining their own pockets, while others simply aren't.  Considering that you're a communist, you must understand that.  Hope that helps.  Abrazame (talk) 12:19, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks to both of you, and yes Corzine is extremely rich. BlagoCorzine2016 (talk) 02:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

1st sentence
I suggest the first sentence be rewritten. The cabinet is under the Administration of Obama but Biden is elected. He is simply the Vice President. Not very hard to rewrite this. A UT professor (talk) 01:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I looked at the leads for a number of other vice president articles, and none of them (except for Cheney) say 'in the administration of'. They usually just say 'under [whoever the president was]'.  So I've removed the 'administration' from here (and from the Cheney article).  It's still quite appropriate to say which president a vice president was under, since the two are (almost always) elected together and you can't have a 'vice' without the head person.  It's not like some states where governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately and may be from different parties.  Wasted Time R (talk) 11:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Regarding his plagiarism at university, the text reads that the plagiarism was inadvertent due to his not understanding the rules of citation. Ignorance is not a valid defense in most circumstances, in this case plagiarism being the very act of using someones elses material without credit given - regardless of ones claimed intent. It might do to add his actual responses:


 * My intent was not to deceive anyone, Mr. Biden wrote. For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.


 * At another point, the young Mr. Biden said that if I had intended to cheat, would I have been so stupid?

Furthermore, a law school student not understanding the rules of footnotes and/or citation doesn't seem to hold water when he selectively footnotes other material. (See Fordham Law Review)


 * The proper treatment of the plagiarism incidents in the article has been much discussed in the past, as you'll see if you look back through the Talk archives. The key with how the law school incident is described here is to follow how serious the law school and the legal community has viewed it.  If the law school thought it was at the most egregious level, they would have expelled him.  At the next level, they would have failed him for that course and kept the F on his record.  But he got the next level down from that, which is failing him but allowing him to retake the course and remove the F from his record.  That supports the notion that there were some mitigating circumstances.  Finally, the Delaware board of professional conduct declined to take any action against him in 1987 when it all came to light.  As for Biden's comments, I think they are a bit self-serving; plenty of people do things with bad intent stupidly and get caught, the stupidity doesn't prove they didn't have bad intent.  It's better just to relate what the law school and the conduct board ruled and leave it at that.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I suggest re-writing the section regarding the plagiarism accusations in the 1988 campaign to reflect impartiality. The section containing "the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech" which is followed by a comparison highlighting the differences due to the syntax of the time, it goes on to say that Biden cited Kinnock several times previously. Citing someone for the "formulation" is one thing. Mr. Biden literally took on Kinnocks biography and used the plagiarized speech as if he were Kinnock. When his claims of being the first in his family to go to university, being in the top half of his class, having been granted a full scholarship, as well as finishing with three degrees turns out, in every single case, to be false I do not believe using the term "had inaccurately recollected" is valid. Had it been one mistake, without the blatant speech and personae plagiarism, that would be a different matter. But instead, each one of these "innacurate recollections" taken together is by definition a lie, and should be recorded as such. He stole material, pretended to be someone else, and lied about every detail from his time at university in an effort to lend more power to his speech and therefore garner more support under false pretenses.

Following up this most gracious handling of his egregious acts, we are then treated to even more excuses for Mr. Biden (the incident was magnified due to a lack of news at the time, etc) - with citations coming from some third party opinion.

I am not at all advocating the demonization of the man, rather the introduction of more clearly impartial parlance - this specific incident has rather damning evidence, and should be treated at face value, not with kid gloves. To do otherwise is dishonest revisionism. Archon888 (talk) 18:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You're mixing in two different things — the swiping of the Kinnock speech and of Kinnock's background, and the false statements about his academic performance. As for the Kinnock speech, as the article points out, it wasn't the swiping of words that got him in real trouble, but the partial distortion of his own family background to match Kinnock's.  So I'm not sure what you're unhappy about there.  As for the academic history, I agree the phrase "inaccurately recollected" is too mushy.  Saying "lied" is too loaded and just invites edit wars.  I would suggest "falsely stated", which gets the point across.  As for what you called the "excuses", the article is simply trying to explain why Biden's campaign got sunk by these revelations, while other presidential campaigns have survived equal or worse and kept on going, sometimes winning (think Bill Clinton with Gennifer Flowers and the ROTC etc, GWB with the DUI, and so on).  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:37, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

American-Sponsored Torture
editsemiprotected Article is missing section on US-sponsored torture during the Bush/Obama administrations. With trillions of dollars in special machinery at its disposal, often referred to as the world's largest dirty tricks infrastructure, the United States is well positioned to cover-up and manufacture false pretexts for sadistic acts of American-sponsored torture. Joe Biden has claimed that he opposes torture, yet reports from innocent civilians indicate that he has not stopped American-sponsored torture. According to Biden, there is no excuse for torture, yet the administration is not only aggressively manufacturing excuses, it is also conducting torture, blind to the consequences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.121.30.139 (talk) 11:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * sources are needed. C T J F 8 3  pride 20:53, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree. This proposal is no good. This is missing (talk) 23:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 81.132.194.200, 28 June 2010
could you please change the reference to county 'Londonderry' as this is quite offensive to irish people like myself. It is county DERRY!!!!!!!!

81.132.194.200 (talk) 18:05, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The source uses "Londonderry".The Magnificent Clean-keeper (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * To clarify, per the notice near the top of the Talk:Derry page, this article follows the compromise wherein the city is called Derry and the county is called Londonderry. The reference in the text is to the county, so Londonderry it is.  Wasted Time R (talk) 02:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Verbal gaffes section
Biden is at least as well known for his verbal gaffes as Dan Quayle, another VP. I think that a section on that topic, similar to the one in the Quayle article should be added to the Biden article, with proper RS sources. Naturally, there is a caution about biography of living persons, but that applies to both men. I thought I would put this idea out here on the talk page before working on the new section. Comments? Scoopczar (talk) 14:39, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

He has so many gaffes that it deserves an article or a section. Most politicians do not have so many gaffes. This is missing (talk) 23:41, 17 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it's better when gaffes are integrated into the context they occur in rather than separated out into a separate section. In the Biden article, we have already have:
 * the "During his years as a senator, ..." paragraph in the "Characteristics as senator" subsection, which describes his overall tendencies in this area;
 * the "Presidential campaigns | 1988" subsection which describes in substantial detail the blunders that sunk that candidacy;
 * the "Biden made remarks during the campaign that attracted controversy ..." paragraph of the "Presidential campaigns | 2008" subsection which describes his verbal problems in that campaign;
 * the "Under instructions from the Obama campaign ..." parts of the "2008 vice-presidential candidacy" section which describe Obama getting upset with his gaffes; and
 * the long "In late April 2009, Biden's off-message response ..." paragraph in the Vice Presidency section, which talks about his verbal issues in this role.
 * So it's clear the article is not ignoring all this. But to pull all of these out of those sections into a separate "Verbal gaffes" section would disrupt the intelligibility and historical coherence of those sections.  To duplicate all of them in a separate section would constitute undue weight.  I think it's best left as it is.  Wasted Time R (talk) 17:22, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * As for the Dan Quayle article, the change to split out "Verbal gaffes" as a separate section was made very recently (a couple of weeks ago) and was a mistake. I've folded that material back into that article's "Vice Presidency section".  Wasted Time R (talk) 18:59, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 19:59, 2 May 2016 (UTC)