Duplicate content is a no-no. Make sure there is ZERO duplicate content before applying again. My suggestion is to build a brand new blog from scratch, since it's going to be hard to track down all the dup content.
Yeah. You can't get the Adsense approval until you remove duplicate content from your web site. Just post your own unique blog posts and try again.
To be honest people saying about the whole copy content thing don't know anything. I have had plenty of adsense accounts with sites EXACTLY the same as each other accepted. try use docstoc.com and apply or adsense through there... You will probably get a partial acceptance. then put ads on your site send traffic and you will get accepted. Have done this for over 20 accounts
I'm curious about the 'original content' thing for adsense approval... If that's the case, why do big syndication sites (heck, sites like huffington post, alltop, article directories, etc.) have tons of syndicated content that you can find on hundreds of other sites but they're still huge adsense earners...
Im having a similar problem with adsense but i gave up and now use another provider. I do however think they are the best..