Part-Time Pundit

Supreme Court Rules Abortion Not Sacred

2007-04-27T12:05:00.001-05:00

The partial birth abortion ban ruling is a watershed moment in the abortion debate. It isn't because it "restricts a right for a woman to choose" or that "it is the beginning of the end of abortion", it's that it is a vindication for a common-sense understanding of the Constitution.

The foundational rights of this nation at the time of its creation were freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and due process. These ideas were supreme and everything else was built from there. Many laws were struck down simply because they conflicted, even tangently, with those rights. With Roe v Wade, something quietly but dramatic occurred.

The foundational right of the nation changed to be a "right to abortion". Even if one were to argue that abortion was a constitutional right encapsulated in a right to privacy that simply does not translate into a "right of abortion" that overrides all others.

Want to express your free speech in protest? You can't do it if it is too close to an abortion clinic because it might interfere with someone else's "right of abortion". Want to express your free association in forming a crisis pregnancy center to provide alternatives to abortion? You can't do it without significant government oversight, regulation and outright suspicion because it might interfere with someone else's "right of abortion". Want to be a pharmacist and still hold true to your religion? You can't due it because it might interfere with someone else's "right of abortion".

Skipping past the absurdity of applying the Bill of Rights to relations between people (as opposed to people and the government which it is supposed to do), the "right of abortion" became the foundational and formative governing principle of this country. If a right of abortion and free speech conflict, free speech must give way. If a right to religious expression and abortion conflict, religion must give way.

Not only in conflicts of rights, but also in the application of the law abortion has held pride of place. Children have no rights outside their parents consent, except in the sole case of abortion. Statutory rape laws and mandatory reporting laws apply universally, except when abortion is in the picture. Even normal medical regulations for clinic safety often go flouted by abortion clinics.

The partial birth abortion ban is nothing more than the government exercising regulatory oversight of medical practice. It does this every day. Procedures are restricted, drugs are restricted, medical providers are restricted. Yet, opponents argued that the partial birth abortion ban was unconstitutional because it supposedly conflicted with a "right of abortion".

The ban was also called unconstitutional because it was supposedly born in a "religious" idea that life begins at conception versus the idea born in convenience that life starts when… well, whenever it's convenient. The sweeping aside of ideas on church-state grounds simply because they may also be held by the religious is an absurd concoction of the First Amendment that very clearly requires institutional separation not state-mandated atheism.

The partial birth abortion ban ruling is a return to common-sense constitutional jurisprudence. While we continue to argue about the constitutional status of abortion, the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion isn't the formative governing principle it has become. Regulation is possible and the abortion-industrial complex simply cannot ignore the law anymore. The Court has finally moved back towards a more sane conception of rights and that is a tremendous victory.

The Right to Choose: Legalize Homebirth Midwives in Illinois

2007-03-29T14:29:00.000-05:00

Senate Bill 385 is currently before the Illinois General Assembly. This bill directs the state to create a professional license for midwives to attend homebirths. Our current laws allow a woman to give birth at home, but make it illegal for midwives to attend those births. This essentially takes away a woman's right to choose where she will birth her baby. Women should not only be allowed to but be supported in working with their bodies during birth. Illinois is one of the few states in our country that has outlawed qualified, licensed midwives who wish to perform this service.

I am familiar with this topic because my wife had a homebirth with our first son, Michael. My wife was quite adamant about having our child at home, and I wanted her have the birth any way she wanted. The medical literature shows that homebirth is a safe alternative for low-risk pregnancies, so my only concern was that I was not to be the one to catch.

My wife knew several midwives in the area who, despite the law, provide homebirths for women. Going to the meetings to prepare for the birth was an interesting experience. They were held in secret with instructions on confidentiality. The meetings seemed to me more like trying to get an underground abortion before Roe than an empowering and legitimate alternative to hospital childbirth.

The midwife made my wife feel comfortable throughout her pregnancy, and unlike the cold, clinical method of treating "patients", the midwife empathized with my wife and treated her with respect. She worked with us to find the best way to accomplish what my wife wanted to do. We combined the homebirth meetings with classes in the Bradley method of natural childbirth (which I highly recommend even for women who choose a hospital birth). The result was the "wonderful" (my wife's word) birth of our son that was joyous for both of us.

My wife went into labor around noon on January 7^th. Even though she was having contractions she remained remarkably relaxed and followed the signals from her body as to what position she should be in. She labored briefly in a birthing pool, and ate and drank when she felt like it. She was so relaxed that neither the midwife nor I could sometimes tell when she was having contractions as she entered the transitional stage of labor. For someone with a pretty low tolerance for pain, she managed her contractions so well that she didn't ever really appear to be in pain. She insists now that her relaxation and positions were the two reasons she never felt overwhelmed or in great pain during her labor.

The impact of stress on the body is a well-studied problem. Stress during childbirth is even more troublesome. My wife insists that because she was at home she was truly free to labor the way she was most comfortable and believes if people had been trying to interfere with what she wanted to do (she ended up wanting things very quiet during her labor) that she would not have been able to relax and would have been in much greater pain. Laboring in a hospital, for her, would have been very stressful and made the childbirth experience potentially more prone to complications.

This potential of unforeseen complications happened to my wife. After several hours of pushing, she failed to progress. Her body was fatigued and the midwife suggested she be taken to the hospital. So I drove her to the hospital where she received a C-section, and both mother and baby were fine. My wife says now that when we left for the hospital and she became stressed, she was then in "real pain." Having a homebirth isn't a license to be stupid. If problems develop, transporting the mother to a hospital is not a difficult operation.

One of the main objections to childbirth is a question of safety. No one is suggesting that untrained people simply do nothing during labor and blindly hope everything will go fine. Licensed midwives can be well-trained to identify problems early and respond appropriately.

My wife's birth experience was a joyous and life-changing event. Even though we ended up having to go to the hospital, she is very pleased with laboring at home. In an era when a woman's autonomy over her own body is considered a foundational right, it is unfathomable that the government deny her this truly empowering childbirth option.

The Illinois General Assembly should pass SB 385 so that women in Illinois can choose to have homebirth as a safe and available option. Homebirth is not for every mother, but for those who want to have one, they should have the right to make that choice.

A Constitutionally Protected Right to Market Pornography to Children?

2007-03-22T11:31:00.000-05:00

A federal district judge has recently ruled that the Children's Online Protection Act is an unconstitutional suppression of free speech. The law requires porn site operators to verify that patrons are 18 years old before giving them access to pornography. The lawsuit, brought by the ACLU on behalf of several sexual health sites and salon.com, states that this is a burdensome requirement and has a chilling effect on free speech. This position is absurd.

The law has been in effect now for 9 years. There is a clear track record to how the law is applied and to what content it applies to. If the law was signed 9 days ago, one could make a claim about a potential problem. However, after 9 years there have been apparently no cases in which a legitimate sexual health site has been prosecuted or that other speech has been curtailed.

More importantly, this law requires no change to the content of these websites. People remain as free before and after this law to peddle pornography. The law is only a regulatory requirement on how the content is accessed not on what content can be produced. It is a rather silly argument that sexual health sites would be blocked when they contain similar content as most comprehensive sexual education classes in public schools taught to 7th graders.

There is no apparent evidence that any sexual health site has been shut down because of this law. Even more apparent is that salon.com (a news and commentary site) has never been targeted by this law. It says something that salon.com is concerned about an on-line porn law, and I'm not sure it's the message they want to convey. Apparently politically pornography is not limited to Rush Limbaugh anymore.

The ACLU, apparently, agrees that there is a legitimate interest in keeping minors from pornography. They simply argue it would be a better policy to have parents install internet filters on their computer. This would help if parents controlled every computer a child might access.

Considering that a majority of home computers on the internet don't even have anti-virus installed, however, means that likely parents, as a rule, aren't technically proficient to install and maintain these filters, much less keep their technically-savvy children from bypassing those filters. They do make a good point that parents should be responsible for what children see online, but that point should be made to the Legislature not the Judiciary.

The argument that the law is burdensome on websites is simply false. After a one-time installation of the software and arranging a credit-card verification system (that would likely have to be in place anyway considering most porn sites are in the business of making money), there is next to no maintenance on such software. The burden is on the consumer to enter their information. That burden is about 30 seconds. It is hard to see what the entire weight of the US Constitution needs to be brought to bear to save internet chat room perverts 30 seconds in getting to their porno.

The most dangerous thing about this lawsuit and those like it, is that it is an obvious usurpation of the Legislature. By taking this case to court there are only two parties who get to influence the outcome, one solitary lobbying group (the ACLU) and a government lawyer who is accountable to no voter. The ACLU could have lobbied Congress to change the law, they have not. Since the argument isn't over the right of children to access porn, but for regulation on how a website distributes content, it is obviously a political question that has no place in the courts. No one seems to be arguing that children have an absolute right to pornography; it is simply the means by which their viewing can be restricted.

The constant running to a court to change democratically passed laws indicates contempt for the voters of this nation. Yet again, the ACLU has created another issue in which the voters cannot be trusted. The issue of how children should be restricted from access to pornography could easily be solved in the legislature, apparently voters and legislators can't be trusted to act appropriately. So much for freedom.

After 9 years of this law being in place, there is no reason to strike it down for "chilling" free speech that is in no way regulated by this law. There is no legitimate fear that sexual health information will be restricted. There is certainly no fear that political pornographers will be taken offline. This is a brazen attempt by the ACLU to end-run the legislative process and the will of the voters to impose values on America that Americans obviously don't want.

Response to Candidate Questionnaire from Campaign for Comprehensive Sex Education / Planned Parenthood

2007-03-03T20:12:00.000-06:00

The conventional political wisdom is not to respond to candidate questionnaires from "hostile" political organizations. It just doesn't sit well with me not telling voters or political groups where I stand though. So this is what I sent Planned Parenthood in response to whether I would support a standardized comprehensive sex ed program for Unit 4.

The question of sexuality, particularly sex education, is invariably tied into a question of values and value systems. As such, any discussion immediately becomes polarized between right and left. The options are either abstinence-only or comprehensive-only sex education. This is a false dichotomy, but also makes a dangerous assumption about the role of schools and government.

The United States is a values-pluralistic society. With rare exceptions (e.g. crime) all values should be respected and the government should not try to mandate one set of values over another. Many players in this debate are encouraging exactly that: a mandating of a particular set of values.

It is my belief that parents present the value system of their choice to their children, and the schools and government should respect that. I do not support a standardized sexual health curriculum for Unit 4 because that would entail me making a decision on what values are important for someone else's child, a decision I would not want imposed on myself as a parent.

I believe the policy of the Board should be to, as far as practical, handle the issue as the parents decide they want it handled. If they wish to have comprehensive sex education taught to their child, that is there choice and it should be available to them. If they wish only abstinence education be presented, that is likewise their choice. If they wish to handle the matter themselves in private with no interference from the schools, that should also be respected.

It is my firm and unwavering belief that the schools are not a tool to be used by government to proscribe value systems to our children aside of what is necessary to be a good citizen. The diversity of our nation and community requires that governmental leaders allow these value system choices be made by individuals and parents, not by elected officials.

Why Normal People Don't Run for Office

2007-02-23T20:14:00.000-06:00

I decided to run for the Champaign Unit #4 school board because I was tired of complaining in my columns and to others of my dissatisfaction with Unit 4. I ran to try to be part of the solution, not to be another pundit engaging in a blog B&W session. For this, I have been rewarded with being accused of 83 felonies that carry a maximum penalty of 457 years in prison and that's not even counting the misdemeanors.

It's not that I have a problem with Mr. Brayfield challenging my petitions. It's not a problem that he sees problems with the school board and is trying to do what "one man can do" to help fix it. It's that his attacks are personal, destructive, and undemocratic.

Despite claims to the contrary, these challenges are not democratic. Democracy entails the freedom to choose when voting. That freedom is not enhanced by one person showing up in a hearing in which the public can witness but not participate (except for public comment which has no bearing on the objections themselves). That freedom is not enhanced by attempting to take away people's right to choose from a variety of diverse candidates and making sure they are only presented with candidates that fit some preconceived ideological mold. These objections aren't democratic, they are undemocratic and they are an affront to everyone who has fought and died for democracy to suggest otherwise.

I will criticize no one for attempt to contribute constructively to Unit 4. Even if I disagree, I will welcome any participation. If you have ideas, I will make sure you have the resources to bring solid and complete proposals to the Board, even if I disagree with them. However, that does not give license to individuals to contribute destructively by disparaging people in the press and in objections for running massive criminal enterprises just to get 50 or more signatures to run for the unpaid position of school board member.

I, and the other 4 candidates, have been accused of fraud, perjury, forgery, and conspiracy and on that basis we should be removed from the ballot. These accusations are not presented with any factual basis whatsoever. One candidate, a bank executive, has had to explain to his superiors and co-workers the nature of these allegations of fraud. Fraud, for a bank executive, is a career-ending proposition.

All that Mr. Brayfield has accomplished with this stunt is to discourage honest people running for school board in Champaign. Why would anyone submit there name to have the Brayfields of the world run to the press and start accusing them of being criminals? It has been said that there is something about running for and holding office that will turn honest people into felons (ok, I said it), but this is a little off the mark. The biggest threat to democracy is that only a certain class of people runs for office, and Mr. Brayfield is part of the ongoing actions that discourage all but the most pathological from running.

It is clear from his selection of candidates that he objected to, that he has an ideological agenda and has engaged in a radical smear campaign to destroy the integrity of the people he disagrees with. If he has a problem with a candidate, then those issues can be addressed on April 17^th in the ballot box. Exactly the way democracy is supposed to work.

Acceptable Bigotries: ASU Perpetuates Negative Christian Stereotypes

2007-02-12T10:15:00.000-06:00

Imagine a mandatory training exercise on a college campus for new Resident Advisors. During the course of this training the following image was spoken: black residents all listen to loud rap music, hold licentious parties and are probably dealing drugs out of their dorm rooms. That individual would be dragged in front of disciplinary committee after disciplinary committee. If they were lucky, they'd get off with sensitivity training.

Now, let's change the stereotype. Let's say the image presented is this: Christians are hateful homophobes who run around telling everyone they are going to hell. They are largely a punch of rich white kids who get a free ride from society because they are white. What would the reaction be? Most of the cognoscenti in the academy would nod their heads in agreement. If a conservative student manages to break the code of enforced silence for a moment to complain, at best, he'd be ignored, at worst, he'd be told that the stereotypes are true. After all, these same stereotypes are present in the classroom being taught by these same professors.

The same image above was recently taught as part of a sensitivity exercise at Arizona State University. The training exercise was modeled on one developed for national leadership conferences. In short, this wasn't one campus' bad idea.

Of course, there are Christians who fit the mold above. Every stereotype needs its poster child. Surely one can point to Fred Phelps as an example of such a hateful and judgmental Christian. However, it should also be noticed that the attempts to keep him from funerals come from the right not the left. In fact, it is the ACLU not the ACLJ that is defending his free speech rights. In this case, unfortunately, the ACLU is right. Free speech does allow one to lack all sense of social decorum.

However, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 Christian denominations running the gamut from the United Church of Christ, to the Quakers, to Roman Catholics, to Mormons, to Southern Baptists. Some denominations have no problems with gays such as the Anglicans. Other denominations say that homosexual behavior is wrong but still try to reach out in human understanding, such as Roman Catholics. Others are outright judgmental preaching homosexuals as the harbinger of death and destruction, such as Fred Phelps and his gang. The problem with stereotypes is that it takes one case and then shrinks all others and forces them into a box. As is usual, reality is much more complex.

In a bizarre attack on language and common sense, such bigotry is justified in the name of diversity and tolerance. The idea that social harmony is brought about by relentless attacks on the perceived "majority" are novel and interesting, but unconvincing. Far from building a sense of community, it entrenches a reality of division. There is an "us" and a "them", and they are at war on campus.

To be fair, minorities do face a variety of injustices perpetuated against them. However, by attacking the perceived majority as a suspect class only turns off those who would be most likely to help. Christians, at least the serious ones, do care about the poor and down-trodden. However, when they face constant attack from the public square as being "all that is wrong with the world", all but the most charitable respond with "to hell with you and your problems."

Diversity and tolerance do not require cookie-cutter people thinking prefabricated thoughts. It requires an attitude of "I disagree with what you say but respect you're right to say it." That attitude certainly isn't shown when someone presents a "disfavored" idea and the response is an immediate ad hominem. Capricious charges of racism are not designed to encourage debate, they are tools to shut one down and force ideas.

No sense of community can ever be created until all ideas, ethnicities and people can be respected. Even Christians.

Censorship in the Name of Inclusion: The Case of the Wren Cross

2007-02-12T10:14:00.000-06:00

The prevailing mantra in higher education is being sensitive to other cultures and religions. Schools fall over themselves trying to prove that they are inclusive to a diverse background. Instead of "Merry Christmas" it is "Happy Holidays" so as not to leave out those who celebrate other holidays such as Hanukkah.

The battle of the Wren Cross at William and Mary is just another episode in the diversity wars. In the name of welcoming a diverse student body, President Nicol of William and Mary decided the Wren Cross must go from a Christian chapel overtly labeled as such.

The irony is that by promoting inclusion in this way, they are insisting on exclusion of Christianity from a Christian chapel. It's quite paradoxical that in the name of "diversity" and "tolerance" certain ideas and populations are being run out of the public square. In fact, it is usually the same ideas and people that are excluded in the name of promoting diversity.

It is hard to view such behavior as anything other than revisiting the same slights on the group usually thought to have historically carried them out. In response to centuries of alleged Christian persecution, the modern response is to return the favor. The only thing a "tolerant" and "diverse" society cannot tolerate is mainstream Christian belief and practice.

From President Nicol's State of the College address, he states, "The College of William & Mary strives to be a place where people of all backgrounds feel at home, where diversity is actively embraced, and where each individual takes responsibility for upholding the dignity of all members of the community."

Diversity is the inclusion of all persons, not the exclusion of some disfavored group. How the cause of diversity is furthered by institutional censorship is beyond rational cohesion. In no small part it has resulted in much of the racial tension that exists on many campuses today. Instead of bringing people together as a unified community, it artificially creates camps of competing interests at war to protect their own. Far from promoting inclusion, it solidifies segregationist attitudes.

The removal of the Wren Cross sent a clear message to those who take Christianity serious… "You are not welcome at William and Mary. Your heritage is unimportant." Rewriting the history of an institution to whitewash it in the name of inclusion is not diversity, its deception.

The days of censorship in the name of diversity need to come to a close. No real community can be accomplished when members are singled out and told to keep their ideas, beliefs, and heritage to themselves. Either support real tolerance or be honest about what the real goal is. Academic honesty still matters, doesn't it?

The Greatest Day in Football Becomes Underwhelming

2007-02-05T09:22:00.000-06:00

I am not a big sports fan. I will occasionally watch a game or two, but my following of sports entails looking at the standings in the NFL or Major League Baseball maybe once a month. When the White Sox or Chicago Bears are in contention for a title, I pay a little more attention.

However, the Super Bowl I invariable watch. The joke has usually been that I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. This year the commercials ran about $4 million a spot. It appears that from the amount of repeats and plugs for CBS' shows, few took up the offer. Those that did apparently spent all their money on the spot and nothing on making a creative commercial.

The Masterlock Super Bowl ad, for instance, was obviously missing. CBS must have aired about 20 to 30 spots for their own shows, most were repeated ever quarter. The GoDaddy ad was repeated twice. As expected there were car commercials and beer commercials but that was about it.

A few commercials registered a chuckle, such as the CareerBuilder.com commercials (which take on an even more amusing bent for a government employee). Most were rather stupid. In fact, it's hard to say which performed worse, the Super Bowl commercials or Rex Grossman.

There was nothing overtly clever about any of the ads save one. GoDaddy's use of eye candy is lame and played, but as the saying goes, "sex sells." Budweiser's commercials were typical, though the face-slapping ad was amusing. The Sierra Mist Comb-Over ad was kinda stupid really. The GM Robot ad was the only one that was in any way clever.

Once you could count on the Super Bowl being entertaining, at least for the commercials. Alas, those days are over.

Invasion of Privacy: State has no Business Mandating HPV Vaccine

2007-01-25T09:55:00.000-06:00

No one wants the government rifling through his or her bank accounts. The FBI has no business perusing your grocery lists. The right of privacy is clear in this country. With very few exceptions, the government has no reason to mandate that you tell them about your finances, your relationships, or your personal health.

That is why Representative Naomi Jakobsson's bill, HB115, is unconstitutional. The bill requires that sixth grade girls receive the vaccination for HPV before going to public or private school. Many similar laws and proposals have cropped up in other states as well.

The decision to get the HPV vaccine should be between a woman, her parents if applicable, and her doctor. HB115 does not specifically require that girls entering the sixth grade get the vaccine, but it does require the disclosure of whether that vaccine has been administered or not. The school has no need of that information. The right of privacy dictates that the government cannot demand private sexual health information.

Schools have a compelling interest to know which students are vaccinated or not for diseases such as polio, mumps and the like. These diseases can be transmitted in the classroom where students are required to congregate. Even if parents choose not to vaccinate, the schools could use the information to contain an outbreak should one occur.

With HPV, no plausible or allowable situation would allow for the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease in school. Quite simply students aren't allowed to have sex at school for obvious reasons.

Further, there is nothing keeping the government from making the HPV vaccine a recommended one for girls. Doctors can discuss the issue with parents and the girls and they can decide what is best for them. They don't need Naomi Jakobsson, Rod Blagojevich, or anyone else deciding the matter for them. Neither do they need to have school officials looking over their shoulder.

Additionally, there are some serious concerns about the trials of the HPV vaccine that could pose risks for young girls. 17 people died during the trials and sixty percent of participants had side effects ranging from headaches to asthma to gastroenteritis. The vaccine contains aluminum which has been considered to cause problem in people. In clinical trials, the rate of problems between the placebo and the vaccine were similar. The placebo also contained aluminum.

In short there are significant concerns that the testing was flawed. In the recent past, drugs such as Vioxx proved to have problems after passing FDA testing. Rushing the drug to market and then sticking our daughters with it before all the facts are in and adequate testing is done is a dangerous gamble. The company that made Vioxx was shown to have used less-than-sound testing practices in getting the drug to market. Both Vioxx and the HPV vaccine are made by Merck.

Adopting new technologies, whether a vaccine, new medical treatment, or the latest version of Microsoft Windows, is best done in a cautious manner. The vaccine has only been approved since June, 2006. Rushing to make the drug mandatory smacks more of a government handout to Merck than a public health concern.

At $360 for the entire series, many poor women and girls will not be able to afford the vaccine on their own. If the state makes disclosure mandatory, that amount will likely be foisted on the tax payer. All in all, for the state of Illinois alone, Merck will profit $32.4 million per year out of such legislation.

If the drug is such a winner, doctors will have no problem selling it to patients. They don't need politicians smashing through the wall of doctor-patient privilege to try to force the drug down the American public. Not just the right of privacy is at stake, but the legally protected doctor-patient privilege. Either Jakobsson doesn't trust doctors to give the information or she doesn't trust parents to make the right choices. Either way, it isn't her business, or the business of the state of Illinois.

Assuming the drug is safe, vaccination should be the parents' option to choose for their daughters or for women to choose for themselves. However, like all other health decisions, the right of privacy requires that the state butt out. Medical decisions should be between patient and provider and any intrusion without a significant government interest is unconstitutional. Schools exist to provide sound education for students, not to be a platform to force medical decisions down parents' throats.

Leak of Israel's Plans to Nuke Iran Smells like BS

2007-01-06T17:57:00.000-06:00

Drudge Report is splashing the news that the Sunday Times of London plans on reporting that Israel is planning a nuclear strike against Iran to head off Iran's nuclear ambitions. According to Drudge:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, the SUNDAY TIMES of London is planning to report, British media sources tell DRUDGE...

At first glance, the entire story smells of a fabrication. The obvious reason being that if Israel had secret plans to nuke Iran, they likely wouldn't have been leaked. If they did get leaked, the police better start dredging the Sea of Galilee for the bodies of those involved. More importantly this leak gives huge benefits to Iran.

Israel is not stupid. A tactical nuclear weapon would likely do very little for a protected underground bunker. It is possible that either Drudge or the London Times doesn't know precisely what a tactical nuclear weapon is. However, the fact remains in order to really do damage to the facility an ICBM (a strategic nuclear weapons) would need to be used. The momentum of a missile coming down from low earth orbit would be necessary to burrow deep enough to do the damage desired. There is indication that even then, the strike might not be successful.

One simulation indicated it would require 400 or so missiles to do the job. At best, entrances and exits from the underground facility could be collapses and that would certainly delay the program. The radiation from the strikes would need to dissipate and the tunnels would have to be rebuilt. It is possible such a strike could be times when Iran's nuclear weapons were being brought above ground, but that would be extremely difficult to pull off.

Iran's move to build its nuclear program underground was brilliant. They learned the lessons of Iraq in 1981. However, the key defense of the move is also its biggest weakness. Namely, any nuclear weapon developed underground could not be used until it is brought above ground at already known locations. A nuclear strike at those locations would keep the weapons out of Iranian hands underneath irradiated soil. That move, however, is only a temporary solution.

It is likely that both Israel and the US have drawn up simulations and plans but every indication is that they are a last resort. The other fact is that these plans aren't precisely secret, at least in general. Leaking the plans now, just shortly after sanctions have been levied against Iran indicate that the plans were likely not coming from Israel.

Iran's general tactic has been to run the clock and delay as much as possible. This indicates that they are likely very close to being finished making nuclear weapons which would change the dynamics of diplomacy greatly. They have every incentive to keep stalling until they've met that landmark.

This plan, being leaked now in the way it was only gives more cover to Iran. The international community and human rights groups will likely jump all over Israel and demand investigations and action. Despite basically looking the other way of actual genocide going on in Darfur, they'll jump to action on the rumor of a hypothetical "genocide." We'll skip past the international community's non-response over Iran's very public desire to commit genocide against Israel.

This leaking has every indication that it was done by Iran, or a supporter or Iran, to give more cover and time. While international eyes are peering at Israel, Iran's program will continue undeterred.

When Knowing Ethics Too Well is an Ethics Violation

2007-01-05T22:26:00.000-06:00

The governor's office is facing a lawsuit over disclosure of the many subpoenas received by our illustrious government. Pay-to-play scams, hired truck, and hiring scams are rampant in the government of Illinois. So what does the Executive Investigator General target for investigation? People who take the annual ethics test too fast because they know the material already (or have an IQ above 70).

The news has made the rounds in Illinois that people who took the ethics test too fast were declared to be non-compliant. It appears that I am one of the people who knows the ethics law too well and has a sound moral compass.

My response was less than kind. The reason for this is as follows:

1) I don't take kindly to being accused of an apparent crime.
2) I really don't take kindly to being declared guilty of an apparent crime.
3) It's especially obnoxious that I've been declared guilty of an apparent crime without any investigation, hearing, trial, consultation, or any of those other things that general constitute a just government.
4) My wife is a week and a half overdue. While this is obviously more an issue for her than it is for me, we're both frayed and this letter turned my mood from sour to downright shitty.

I was in a hurry to get it written before I left the office so there are some typos at the end. The other interesting thing I noticed is that although I said such a violation is apparently a misdemeanor, I'm not so sure that's its the case after a closer look at the statute. Article 50 stipulates the penalties. The training is required in Section 5-10. The penalty section doesn't actually assign a penalty for section 5-10 so it is entirely possible (this is the point where a lawyer can come in and clarify) that not complying with the Ethics training requirement cannot be punished at all.

I've decided to make this public because it's a public record anyway. That and I'm sure some enterprising C-list blogger will think he's terribly clever for filing a FOIA and then declaring me to be unethical to interject that into my campaign for the Unit 4 school board.

At first, I thought I was believed I was fine because I seem to remember going to the bathroom in the middle of the training. Apparently it was before or after I did the web-based training. The training was relatively simple and everyone I know could have taken the test without looking at the accompanying material and aced it. Do we really need web-based classes to say "Thou Shalt Not Steal"? I realize some enterprising lawyer probably got some political connected corrupt crony off because no one ever told him stealing was bad, but that's not the world I live in.

The training was virtually the same as last year and the material is intentionally written to be easy to understand. Besides being familiar with the material because I took the same training before, I've been through the ethics process twice (on the filing end, not the receiving end) so I'm familiar with reporting, the duty to report and whistleblower protections. I also come from a family of lawyers which makes me somewhat of a rule monger. We won't get into the fact that I read very fast.

My response is harsh, yes. However, I don't take kindly to being declared a criminal without so much as a hearing. I called the University Ethics Office and was told the decision was unappealable. On top of that, I don't appreciate Jimenez suggesting that we committed additional crimes by developing a cheat sheet. I'm not sure what kind of people Jimenez hangs out with, but the people I associate with don't need a cheat sheet for a test that didn't even require looking at the material to pass. For the record, I read the material online and the packet they sent with the letter because I am required to.

I revised the form they sent for me to sign so that it didn't admit guilt or even recognize a crime or offense has occurred and sent it back in. I would imagine that I will see no further problems. I still do hope the OEIG might find something better to do with their time.

Press Release: John Bambenek Declares Intention to Run for Champaign Unit 4 School Board

2007-01-04T23:33:00.000-06:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 5, 2007

Contact: John Bambenek
217-493-0760 / jcb.unit4@gmail.com
http://www.parttimepundit.com

Champaign, IL - - On January 5th, 2007, Champaign resident John Bambenek declared his intention to run for the Champaign Community Unit School District #4 school board. The election is being held on April 17th to fill the four seats and one special election that is currently up for election. He is running for one of the four open seats for a full four year term.

Mr. Bambenek currently works as a research programmer for the University of Illinois at the Coordinated Science Lab. His duties include system and network administration as well as a small amount of information security research. He recently gave a presentation in Washington DC on information security and identity theft.

Before joining the University, he worked for Ernst & Young and Capgemini Ernst & Young as a project manager and senior consultant. He worked with many of the top Fortune 500 companies. He is also a freelance columnist and blogger writing on political and cultural issues.

In explaining why he is running for the school board, Bambenek said, "Unit 4 has been a frequent target of my criticism both in my columns and on my blog. I could either continue to complain or roll up my sleeves and try to fix it. I choose the later." Mr. Bambenek is currently scheduling meetings with various community groups and individuals to gather input on the school system. He hopes to restore trust in the school system that was lost in recent years due to actions surrounding the consent decree and other problems.

Mr. Bambenek currently serves as the executive director of the Tumaini Foundation, a Champaign-based not-for-profit. The Tumaini Foundation is a charity that supports rural Tanzania schools by sending them much needed school supplies, medical supplies and computers.

For more information please contact John Bambenek at 217-493-0760 or via email at jcb.unit4@gmail.com.

Conservatives vs. Anti-Liberals

2007-01-03T17:58:00.000-06:00

2006 has been billed as the end of the conservative movement. This is due largely to the mistaken idea that conservatism is the same as Republicanism. What the voters rejected was corruption and good-ole' boy politics. The election clearly showed the divide between conservatives and Republicans. However, there is one additional distinction that needs to be made.

The voters were also turned off by the campaigning style of the Republicans. Namely, the only GOP platform that was heard was why we should vote Democratic. Sure, some nuggets were tossed in like tax cuts. By and large, the GOP used scare tactics to convince conservatives to vote for them. We didn't buy it. Not because we've become liberals, but because we realize if we don't "throw the bums out", the GOP will be less and less honest.

The biggest problem remains that many of the prominent voices of the conservative movement aren't conservatives. Take Ann Coulter for instance. Sure, she's pro-life and if asked would support conservative causes. She doesn't earn a living by advancing conservatism. She earns her living by being an anti-liberal.

In her latest column, she advocates for no position. She is arguing against them. No, scratch that. She's basically doing a comedy routine against Democrats. Much of opinions journalism has become more about pejorative than persuasion. That's what sells columns and books. People turn on Ann Coulter on Fox News to see the fur fly, not to be informed. She does entertain. She does not advocate.

Good thinkers need to both point out flaws in opposing positions and advocate for their own. The aloof don't engage other ideas and their thought atrophies. The unthinking mindlessly attack ideas they disagree with. The childish simply carp on political opponents.

Even when Ann Coulter isn't selling columns, she still does her comedy routine. Recently she was asked several questions by students. She responded with her usual battery of jokes. Ted Kennedy jokes are no longer funny because of her tired repetition of "inflatable dirigible" cracks. At least Rush Limbaugh intersperses advocacy between his jokes and changes them up every now and then.

Having seen Ann Coulter give a speech, her talks are no different. Largely it is a stand-up comedy routine. I'm not sure why people drop the kind of money they do on her. The jokes aren't even funny.

There is a real temptation to engage in the constant political mudslinging that masquerades as "thought" in the press. The problem certainly isn't confined to the right either. For every Coulter there is a Franken. Most people don't think about politics anymore. The media can't even cover political debates without the mudslinging template. We've moved from a society that discusses ideas to a society that discusses people.

Knowing what you are against is one thing. It is more important to know what you are for. In all of Coulter's books, columns and speaking engagements, it's hard to know what she's for.

It is imperative that true political debate become the norm. There will likely always be mudslinging pundits and C-list bloggers muddying the waters. A little needling back and forth isn't a bad thing either. In fact, it's quite healthy. That should not translate into wholesale abandonment of ideas. The Ann Coulters of the world need to be moved to the background.

The ACLU is Fighting for the Trafficking of Women Worldwide

2007-01-02T00:45:00.000-06:00

AIDS is a growing epidemic in the world. There was a time when it was considered a "gay-only disease" but those days are gone. International agencies and world governments are working to solve this problem before a demographic nightmare takes place. However, the ACLU is on the case to push their usual agenda.

The ACLU is arguing before a federal appeals court that the United States is funding AIDS prevention unconstitutionally. Specifically, they argue that having a ban on funds to organizations that promote commercial sex work inhibits free speech. It should be no surprise that the ACLU is in bed with those who want to legalize prostitution.

It is true that advocating the legalization of prostitution is free speech. That doesn't mean that such speech needs to be funded by the government. As much as some like to think otherwise, Uncle Sam isn't an ATM machine for every special interest. The old saying goes, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." If one doesn't like the government's rules, don't take the government's money.

More importantly though is that the advocacy for legalized prostitution and AIDS prevention are mutually exclusive. One cannot support the reduction of AIDS infections and support legal prostitution at the same time. Prostitution remains one of the leading vectors for AIDS infection. This is true in the case of both legal and illegal prostitution.

Prostitutes, because of their many partners, have a greatly increased risk of exposure to HIV. They are likewise able to spread HIV to many other partners. While a promiscuous society can approach a similar infection rate, prostitution is a leading avenue of spreading HIV. While on its face condoms seem like they could prevent the spread of AIDS, the trust is that they don't. HIV infection rates increase in countries that have condom distribution programs. Abstinence programs, on the other hand, has been shown in Uganda to reduce AIDS infections. The simple truth is that when one only has sex with one's spouse, the risk of AIDS exposure approaches zero.

The redefinition of prostitution as "commercial sex work" is just an attempt to legitimize sex trafficking. It should come as no surprise the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have signed on. While both groups are considered "pro-woman", it is odd that they support an industry of flagrant abuse of women. Planned Parenthood in the United States has even been shown to enable to abuse of little girls.

There are a multitude of studies to show the high level of abuse that prostitutes suffer (see a few here). Women are literally bought and sold as property. The incidence of drug addiction is high among women, partially explaining why they became prostitutes to begin with.

The argument for legalization goes something like this. Prostitution will happen anyway but legalization and regulation will help stem the abuses. The argument has 50,000 foot appeal. Using the same logic, slavery (which still exists in many places) should be legalized so underground slaves can be given some measure of human rights. The fact that the ACLU and the bevy of left-wing international groups don't argue for the legalization of slavery shows the logical inconsistency of their position.

Further, the legalization of abortion has shown that it lead to a radical increase in abortion. The legalization will lead to an untold number of women being forced into sex slavery. Make no mistake, women will be forced into commercial sex work in greater numbers if it were legalized.

The government need not be forced into funding programs that have no hope in every helping fix the problem. It certainly should not fund programs that will make the problem worse. Lastly, nothing in the constitution requires the government be forced to fund groups who support the most unthinkable human rights abuses known to man. AIDS prevention dollars should be used for AIDS prevention, not for the promotion of sex slaves.

The Culture of Permanent Boyhood

2007-01-01T23:33:00.000-06:00

What do you think of when someone mentions "men's entertainment?" Probably strip clubs, Playboy, pornography or other penis-centric activities. Behavior once characterized by a pubescent seventh-grader has been established as the gold standard of manhood.

This attitude pervades the sex-crazed Western world. When in Italy a few years ago I noticed frequent nudity during TV commercials. Almost every time a topless woman was show, the commercial was for a cell phone. I have yet to place the connection between naked women and text messaging. While commercials shown in the United States are not quite as exhibitionist, they still suffer from the same sexual pathology.

Almost every movie that attempts to cater to a male audience will include obviously gratuitous nudity. Commercials that market products to men will likely include some female model. As the saying goes, "sex sells." Technology conferences that include product expos include the gratuitous "booth babes" that attract men by their pants instead of their minds. The same is true for auto expos.

It is easy to blame marketers for using women as cheap props and catering to the worst in men. The fact is, however, marketers would cease using sexuality in an instant if it didn't work. Society has socialized men into being led around by their pants. The few men that speak out against such insipid nonsense are instantly labeled as dweebs.

Historically, this pattern of male over-sexualization has not been the norm. Men who openly lusted after women were derided and viewed as dishonorable. Those who engaged in premarital sex where shunned by their families and communities. Women, for their part, would simply not tolerate men who could not control their libidos. The rule didn't necessarily hold for the cultural elite. Their morals have always been more flexible in every time and civilization. However, they still maintained the public façade of fidelity.

The rise of feminism and the sexual revolution has altered this dynamic. Previously, male sexual wanderlust was generally opposed by women. Women used their position to enforce, to some extent, male sexual fidelity. The sexual revolution and the brands of feminism that drove it dealt with the problem differently.

The anecdote most commonly heard is how unfair that a man who sleeps around is a "stud" and that a woman who does the same is a "slut." The implication that generally follows is that a woman should be allowed to be just as promiscuous as men seem to be. It quietly assumed that the worst men among us were the model of manhood and then held up the model for women to emulate.

To be fair, feminism (or more precisely "Sex and the City feminism") is not to blame for the boyish tendencies of the modern male. Those tendencies have existed since the beginning of time. However, by encouraging the behavior by labeling it normal and then encouraging women to do the same has made the problem epidemic.

The result has been nothing short of tragic. Young men and women simply do not know how to relate to each other outside the bedroom. When talking about women's health, odds are the conversation is solely around birth control. Discussions on men's health are more likely about sexual performance. Sex is meant to precede relationships, not flow naturally from them. Men have always been averse to commitment. Society now encourages this behavior.

The true brunt of this boyishness is felt by women. They are generally left raising children alone by men who refuse to commit. Most studies indicate men are more likely to cheat than women. Additional studies show the emotional devastation that women endure when they find their spouses are frequent purveyors of pornography (i.e. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 28, 198-206).

Men are harmed, albeit to a lesser degree. They are left unable to engage in an intimate relationship with a woman. They enter loveless after loveless relationship never able to look at their partner as anything more than an object. Over the long term, they begin to feel the brunt of loneliness and emptiness.

It is time that both men and women stand up and say enough is enough. Women, for their part, need to insist on sexual maturity from men they are or will be involved with. Men must not tolerate those among us to continue to act like pubescent 13-year-olds. Until more people stand up and treat sex as sacred instead of a worthless commodity to be traded without thought, the damage to women and men will continue.

The Pettiness of Local Politics and Frivolity of Illinois Election Law

2006-12-28T20:15:00.000-06:00

The election season for local offices is heating up in Champaign. Recently the deadline passed for city mayor and city council. Of the 13 sets of petitions to get on the ballot, 11 had objections. Some of those objections are significant. For instance, mayoral candidate Mingee did not get enough signatures. Others border on absurd, such as the objection to city council candidate Freddie Gordon (he didn't staple the forms). The entire list of petitions and objections can be seen here.

First, candidates for office should follow the rules and be fully familiar with them. If a candidate cannot be trusted to file paperwork correctly they can't be trusted with political power. It should be just as simple as that. Some of the packets that were filed in the election show that the candidates simply did not put much effort into them. There should be no reason to have "scratched out" content when the form can be submitted with no errors in the first place.

However, the amount of landmines that appear in the quest to get on the ballot can only be designed to keep rookies off the ballot. Rookies, for the purpose of this article, are people like you and me as opposed to professional politicians. They are the exact people the Founding Fathers wanted in office when they talked about citizen legislators.

Starting with the challenge to the incumbent mayor, it should first be noted that the challenge was filed by Michael Richards who lost his election bid for County Clerk. His objection for Mayor Schweighart is that he did not put which city he was running for mayor for. To file for election in city races, one must file the petitions with the city clerk of that town. To run in Champaign, you file with the Champaign City Clerk. In Urbana, you file with the Urbana City Clerk. It is patently obvious where one intends to run for mayor, it is the city they filed the packet in. It's obvious that Richards is spending his free time harassing actual elected office-holders.

The objection for city council candidate Freddie Gordon shows just how easy it can be to be knocked off the ballot. All that he missed was not stapling his petition sheets together. Other candidates did not put the right date for election; some did not refer to the office in the precise technical manner.

While candidates for office should take the due time and attention to file their papers correctly, the fact that the smallest of details can cause a candidate to be thrown off the ballot is disconcerting. It should not take a team of lawyers to review paperwork ensuring proper stapling to get normal people on the ballot. The voters are perfectly capable of determining which candidates are worthy of office, there doesn't need to be hurdles placed by the election commission to trap people for innocent oversights (not to be confused with patent stupidity).

Ballot access should be relatively easy and without undue burdens for those who don't wish to affiliate with a party. Democracy is best suited when there is the widest array of choice possible. Voters are capable of figuring out the rest.

Full Disclosure: I am pursuing candidacy for the Champaign Unit 4 school board. (Filing date: Jan. 29-Feb. 5, 2007).

Al Qaeda's Economic War and Online Identity Theft: A Perfect Storm

2006-12-22T14:19:00.000-06:00

Online identity theft has become a constant concern in a world of online shopping and bill paying. In the rush to move to the internet age, many companies simply neglected security concerns and the result has luckily not been as bad as it could have been.

In 2005, I did an estimate of the amount of money that was compromised because of online identity theft and came up with $24 billion in the United States alone. With the help of Agnieszka Klus, I redid the study recently with more realistic numbers and found over $55 billion was compromised. That amount is enough to pay off the entire state debt of Illinois.

Despite this large amount of money being at risk, very little of that money actually gets stolen. What investigators have found is despite it being relatively easy to steal money online, the current fraud protections make it hard to steal a great deal of money; "The straw is only so big", according to one government source. The running assumption is that online identity theft would be used for theft and there is a finite limit of the amount of theft that can actually take place. This has allowed financial institutions to build in this amount into their business models and simply write the cost of fraud and fraud protection into the price for their services.

The idea that we, as a society, should rely on only one layer of protection (the limitation on how much can be stolen) is absurd and violates defense in depth. Eventually someone will figure out a way around the straw. More importantly, however, earlier this month proved false the assumption that identity theft would be used solely for stealing money.

On December 1st, the Department of Homeland Security warned of an "aspirational threat" to United States banking interests by Al Qaeda. A website claiming to be affiliated with Al Qaeda encouraged the cyberattack against US financial interests using denial of service attacks and viruses. While the specific methods of attack are "low tech" and easy to prevent, it shows that terrorist groups are moving to expand their tactics to include economic warfare.

If the goal of identity theft is to make money, the incentive is to keep taking as much as you can. If the goal is economic warfare, the behavior changes dramatically. As a concrete example, Al Qaeda could use run-of-the-mill hacker techniques to build a large botnet to steal identities. It could then use those machines that they have taken over to process fake transactions in the name of that consumer.

For instance, they could use a consumer's home PC and process transactions at amazon.com to buy a bunch of books using the credit card information and home address of the consumer. It is not clearly a case of fraud because the hacker is not getting any personal gain. Does Amazon or the credit card company believe that the consumer really didn't make the order when the product is going to their home address?

Now repeat this attack for a thousand consumers, ten thousand consumers, or one hundred thousand consumers. What would happen with the ensuing media coverage is that consumers would think twice about shopping online if their assets can't be protected. They would think twice about paying bills online or banking online if they're bank accounts can't be protected. If done correctly and on a large enough scale, it would lead to a dramatic loss of confidence in electronic commerce and could push the United States economy back ten years.

The fundamental problem with electronic commerce is that transactions are not effectively authenticated. If someone knows all the right information, they can place a transaction in your name. We've learned that in the digital age that stealing information from consumer PCs is remarkably easy. However, there exists technology today to fix this problem.

Two-factor authentication (something you "have" and something you "know") would mitigate the risk of stolen information. Some banks use key chains that generate random numbers to authenticate users to their bank accounts. This must be widely applied to not only bank accounts but general financial transactions online. As another example, instead of entering credit card information with a keyboard, a user could insert a credit card with an embedded smart card into a card reader attached to their computer. The reader could have a keypad to enter a PIN to make the transaction secure and the card reader would happily give the online merchant all the information it needed to complete the transaction.

There are a variety of technologies to properly authenticate users to make purchases and these should be adopted. Al Qaeda and other groups are already on the lookout to undermine our economy. The question is will we stop them before it's too late.

The Media Mob: "Written by partisans to be read by the naïve"

2006-12-21T15:52:00.000-06:00

It seems standard fare for second-rate columnists to write broadsides against bloggers. It's particularly ironic for the journalistic community to berate blogs for poor writing. After all, blogs have supplanted journalism for the literary gutter. To then boast displays the arrogance of someone who claims bragging rights for finished in second-to-last place.

It is true; blogs "produce minimal reportage". However, most blogs don't claim that they are even trying to report. Many bloggers quite clearly state they are giving their opinion on events. This is in contrast to most journalists who claim to report but merely shroud their opinion journalism in the faux cloak of "objective reporting."

What blogs do accomplish, at least the few that actually try to be media instead of diary, is fact-check the "objective journalists." This is where the real contempt for bloggers comes from. Blogs have outted journalistic frauds that would have gone undiscovered despite all the checks and balances in the traditional media.

It is true that our educational system has produced a couple of generations of people wholly intellectually unsuited for intelligent political discourse. That is not a problem of blogs, it is a problem of society. Let's be honest, it's not like reductionistic discourse doesn't have a home in the traditional media too. Before blogs there were sound bites. Before blogs reporting, at least on political matters, was largely receiving faxes from the national parties and repeating their talking points. Fatuity is not unknown to the 24 hour news channels or the nightly news.

Blogs, for their part are quite easily played by the media and politicians alike. All a journalist has to do is criticize blogs and a previously unknown journalist becomes news of the hour on the Internet. Most bloggers do behave like yard apes. The only difference between most bloggers and most journalists is that the later has a sense of elitism about being an ape because they happen to wear a suit while doing it.

Blaming blogs of the "decay" of journalism is more than a little absurd. Journalism was already in a state of decay long before blogs because of their monopolistic attitudes that allowed them to get sloppy. Bloggers took the "journalistic" reigns because of the dramatic failure of the traditional media to (1) report the news effectively and accurately, (2) to be objective or at least honest about their bias, and (3) adapt to the information needs of society.

The free market requires many outlets so that consumers can pick the outlet that meets their needs. If no outlet exists, one will be created and so it was with blogs. That isn't to say all blogs are worthy outlets, they aren't. Most of the hundred or so million blogs get trivial amounts of traffic. However, there are serious blogs out there and serious organizations trying to get blogging professionalized (see the Media Bloggers Association which I am a part of).

It's true that finding a decent blog is like finding a needle in a haystack, but with blogging soon to be on the decline to more serious players will stand out. For those nostalgic for the "good ole days" of journalism, this is decay. For society who wants and need solid, reliable and accurate information and opinion, it is progress. Painful progress, but progress nonetheless.

The Problem with the Culture of Drive-Thru Abortions

2006-12-19T16:31:00.000-06:00

In the quest to remove any and all obstacles and delays in the race for a woman (or girl) to get an abortion, people starting become aware that abusive men were coercing women against their will to get them. By bringing down the full force of constitutional law to make it not only constitutional to kill one's unborn child, but to be able to do so as fast as possible, it made it possible for women to be abused in the process.

First, Planned Parenthood knows and knowingly covers up obvious cases of abuse. One study shows that Planned Parenthood and related organizations failed to report about a minimum of about 10,000 cases of child sex abuse in Illinois in the year 2000 alone. The law is clear that medical providers are required to report suspected cases of abuse. When authorities try to investigate child rape, they are thwarted by Planned Parenthood, who has a financial stake in the problem remaining unaddressed. Legally, this is called a "conflict of interest."

Second, women are coerced to get abortions. I know this because I know women it has happened to. By eliminating even the most sensible restrictions such as parental notification (note that is not parental consent), a woman can be rushed to have an abortion and no questions will be asked. This is a boon to men who don't want to pay child support, don’t want to "lose face" for having a child, or want to cover up for their crimes of impregnating a minor. Coerced abortions are a problem.

However, laws such as HB 5882 in Michigan are a profoundly bad idea. Instead of going after coerced abortions by preventing them, it makes it a crime for a man to even be involved in the decision-making process in any way except for complete deferral. It's another attempt to separate men from children. "Constitutional" law says men have no say in the decision to get an abortion. This law says they aren't even allowed to speak on the subject. Considering the current state of child support laws and custody laws, apparently the only thing men can contribute is their paycheck and all other effort is disallowed.

Sure, the law could catch men who engage in coercion. However, how such violations would ever be proven is a problem since it is entirely a "speech crime." Further, "battered woman syndrome" suggests that women most in need of protection are least likely to seek help and the redress that such a law would allow. In short, more innocent men would be prosecuted than true domestic abusers who ought to be nailed to the wall.

The problem is not that there are no laws to punish coercion, there are. The problem is the weight of the Constitution being brought down to rush women through abortion mills without question. Planned Parenthood has no incentive to think twice about killing a child, abortion is a profit-center for them.

Taking the typical image the pro-abortion crowd likes to use, imagine an abused woman (or girl) who has an abusive boyfriend or family. She discovers she is pregnant and she knows her family or boyfriend will be livid once they discover the pregnancy. She is lonely, scared and has no place to turn. In come the knights in crimson-stained armor, Planned Parenthood. They pledge to help this young woman and bring her into their clinic. They abort the child and send her on her way. The problem is they send her right back into the abusive situation she came from. The problem wasn't the child, the problem was the abusive relationships that remain unaddressed until the next time she gets pregnant and Planned Parenthood wants to make a buck.

It is the failure of "constitutional" law that leaves these women prey to abusive and coercive relationships. The solution is not more bad laws but to rethink the culture of drive-thru abortions.

Part-Time Pundit Radio Interview

2006-12-17T13:20:00.000-06:00

I was interviewed for 2 hours last night by the Uncooperative Blogger on his radio show. You can listen to the archive here.

Also, check out Uncooperative Bloggers' site, he's the founder of the Coalition Against Illegal Immigration and has some good stuff.

Human Harvesting for Stem Cells Begins in Ukraine

2006-12-16T11:25:00.000-06:00

The BBC is reporting that healthy new-born babies appear to have been killed in order to harvest stem cells for the flourish stem cell trade that has begun in the country. Dr. Hwang Woo-Sook was found last year to have fabricated his scientific claims on stem cell research. A scandal which in no small part involved his subordinates donating their ova or paying women for their ova.

Despite the fact that the science is clear that embryo-destroying stem cell research will require either massive efforts to get women (usually poor ones) to donate their ova or other behaviors that amount to human harvesting, stem cell supporters either ignore the problem or ridicule the claim. Today they can no longer do that.

Ukraine, it appears, killed healthy babies in the name of getting the "biological materials" they need to continue their work on stem cells. The pathological scientific obsession with embryos for this research is disquieting. Adult stem cells are treating people today and have none of the ethical problems that embryo-destroying stem cell research has. Yet they press on.

Far from an anomaly, Ukraine is the future of embryo-destroying stem cell research. There exists no way to even produce enough stems cells for research, much less medical treatment, without getting massive donations of ova or killing babies in the womb. Or for that matter, killing babies already born. Imagine abortion providers, who already have a problem covering up for child rapists, starting up a trade of stem cells from aborted fetuses.

I have every confidence that the scientific community can eventually figure out how to make cures with embryo-destroying stem cell research. However, that was never really what was the concern. I could stop drunk driving by cutting off the tongues of those who commit the crime, yet that would hardly be just. Embryo-destroying stem cell research, and the treatment that it might eventually produce, will require a massive pool of ova (from poor women of course), human harvesting, or both. We have seen the future in Ukraine, the question is, will we still embrace it?

Overlooked Blog Review - Big Dog's Weblog

2006-12-15T15:50:00.000-06:00

Big Dog is an anonymous milblog written by a 24 year retired veteran of the United States Army. He is also the hosts a radio show on conservative talk radio station, Wide Awakes Radio (which is currently down for upgrades). Big Dog primarily writes on political subjects and current events from a conservative perspective and has been blogging since August 2004. Far from being a typical partisan cheerleader, a regular feature of the blog is the "Jackass of the Month award", this month's award going to Republican politicians.

The blog design is clean and easy to access without the cluttering of a tremendous amount of widgets and blogrolls that characterize so many other blogs. The content, not ads, take center stage.

The writing is clear and relevant to the issues of the day. Big Dog brutally slays opposing points of view without descending into the fecal-slinging typical of the gibbering yard apes that can populate the blogosphere. The blog is frequently updated with several new posts a day covering whatever is news at the moment. The one drawback is that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of discussion on the site.

Big Dog's Weblog is active in several conservative blogging groups and provides unique and insightful commentary (albeit direct and blunt) that makes it a must-read particularly for those interested in popular conservatism.

If you would like to suggest a blog for the Overlooked Blog Review, please contact John Bambenek at jcb.blog {at} gmail [dot] com. You can read the guidelines for nominating here. Blogs profiled are given a free month membership to Blog Soldiers.

Federal Court Rules that Establishment Clause Allows Government to Run Religions

2006-12-14T22:11:00.000-06:00

The City of San Francisco recently labeled the Catholic Church to be a hateful organization and engaged in a tirade of anti-Catholic rhetoric. It's not surprising that the City of San Francisco would engage in a childish rant because the Catholic Church reiterated a theological position that has been held for thousands of years, after all, they same council expressed support convicted cop-killers. What is surprising is that the attempt of the City to intervene in a purely ecclesiastical matter was ruled "constitutional" by a Carter-appointed federal judge.

In writing on the case, the federal judge states:

In view of Article IV, section 10, of the Considerations statement, Resolution 168-06 is a measured response. It does not constitute excessive entanglement under existing case law. There is no regulatory enforcement, no law adopted nor other action taken by virtue of the Resolution. It is merely the exercise of free speech rights by duly elected office holders. In sum, Resolution 168-06 does not create an impermissible entanglement between government and religion. Because plaintiffs have also failed to establish that Resolution 168-06 lacks a primarily secular purpose or a primarily secular effect, plaintiffs have failed to plead a cause of action under the Establishment Clause.

In short, that the public action of these officials in speaking on religious matters, in dictating that local Church officials should disregard Vatican directives, does not violate the Establishment Clause. Yet, somehow, when a public official prays in Jesus name that "entanglement" is so severe that the entire weight of the federal judiciary must come down upon it. Taking the common interpretation of the Separation of Church and State (despite that is not what it really means), how can this be reconciled? How can the Establishment Clause at once seek to avoid religiously-run states yet simultaneously allow state-run religions?

The court boldly proclaims that it is not San Francisco's fault the conflict occurred. It never is the fault of the person behaving badly.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provoked this debate, indeed may have invited entanglement, by its Considerations statement.

Wait, I thought there was no entanglement?

Let's do a brief timeline. 33 AD – Jesus dies, the Catholic Church is founded and holds among a great many other things, that Jewish teaching (which is thousands of years old at that point) on homosexuality is valid. 1776 AD – some Spanish settlers come along and found San Francisco. 2006 AD – In inventing entirely new family structures, the City of San Francisco has a foot-stomping temper tantrum that the Catholic Church decides not to change thousands-of-years-old theological doctrines to suit the whims of the City. That's provocation?

The Catholic Church and its teaching have remained and will remain, unchanged, for centuries before San Francisco exists and centuries after San Francisco no longer exists. In fact, the idea that Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for a Church that has a population 1,735 times larger than that of San Francisco was picking a fight with the City is absurd. The City of San Francisco is a fart in the wind compared to a Church with 1.1 billion members in every country in the world. Somehow, I don't think the CDF knows, much less cares, about the childish rants of city officials.

The City of San Francisco has deigned to tell the Church what it can or cannot believe. It has told local Church officials to disregard Church teaching or "face the consequences." Catholic Charities in San Francisco simply believes that gays don't make good parents. This presents no challenge to the freedom of gays to adopt because they can go to another agency. That's the remarkable benefit to freedom; you can choose to do business with people who share your values instead of being dictated to from on high. Yet, to San Francisco, not accepting the dictums of the liberal elite amounts to hate.

As amusing as the cognitive dissonance of the City board is, infantile rants on the taxpayer dime show more hatred and contempt than the Catholic Church has shown. The only one engaging in name-calling and disparaging is San Francisco.

The federal court, in this case Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, has shown what the left-wing idea of separation of church and state means. It does not mean the institutions are actually separate. It means that religion most conform to whatever absurd and intellectually malformed ideas the left has on a given day. To them, the state must remain supreme.

The Disquieting of the Unchaste: A Review of The Thrill of the Chaste by Dawn Eden

2006-12-13T15:29:00.000-06:00

Dawn Eden quite literally bares her soul in The Thrill of the Chaste to show by personal experience that "Sex and the City" feminism doesn't work nor does it produce happiness. What makes her "everyone's second favorite scary conservative Catholic" (according to Gawker.com) is that her book is the heat-seeking missile of reality smashing full-speed into the delusion of casual sex as fulfillment.

Dawn is brutally honest in the book about her history and the effect it has had on her life. Usually the cliché word used to describe such books is "refreshing." In this case, the better word is "disquieting" because it directly challenged deeply ingrained notions about sex and dating. It exposes "Sex and the City" feminism for responding to misogyny with misandry. Unintentional misandry perhaps but misandry nonetheless.

As a defense of Christian chastity, it pulls no punches. For the sake of discussion on issues of sex, Christians have been at a disadvantage for decades against the free sex crowd. For instance, certain feminists like to brag that we can "finally have a discussion about the female orgasm." Christians aren't beyond such discussions, they simply believe that those discussions take place between husband and wife and see no need to air the conjugal laundry in public.

That said, by not discussing sex in open yet modest terms, Christian sexual ethics have become quickly discarded and not part of the debate. Arguments like "because God say so" don't work in a room full of adults. Dawn, by bringing in personal detail, not only displays great courage but provides powerful refutation to cherished sexual notions that do far more harm to women than they have ever done good. Sex and the City feminism has made it all but impossible for men and women to relate to each other as people. Women enter the "dating world" without the tools to have a relationship… aside from the one in the bedroom. There is a lot of talk and dating advice about people as "sexual beings" as if that was the only aspect of their humanity.

If Christianity ever expects to win people over to a Christian sexual ethic, it must answer in no unclear terms without being pornographic. Many have responded to this balancing act by simply avoiding the debate altogether. The result is many more women and men who have been harmed because they simply know no different.

The central point of the book is vulnerability. In order to have any real relationship, one must be vulnerable to hurt. In a society that values feelgoodism, this idea is anathema. However, by not only advocating vulnerability but demonstrating it in the book, she displays not only great courage but great integrity. Advocating what you yourself would not do is hypocrisy. Many of the children dressed up in adult's skin in today's world likely giggled at the more personal details of the book, but likely many more will be won over by the Dawn's candor. In that way, the book is nothing short of heroic.

The book itself was written as a woman to other women, so in a sense it seems to exclude men. The wreckage of sexual pathology left in the wake of the sexual revolution has incapacitated men just as much as women in the area of romantic relationships and such books hold great value for men who want to understand what the mindset is of the women they try and meet and date. However, reading this book has made me keenly aware that no counterpart from the male perspective is out there and that this is a great oversight of tragic proportions.

The book bills itself on a new sexual revolution built around chastity. This isn't entirely accurate. The book is a relationship revolution that tries to detach sex as the solitary component in male-female relationships. For those about to enter the dating scene or those who are dissatisfied with the "meet" market, this book is a must-read.

The Antitheism of Richard Dawkins: A Review of The God Delusion

2006-12-11T19:14:00.000-06:00

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you can tell a lot from what comments make it on the back of the book. So it is with New York Times bestseller The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Observe the following review from Philip Pullman: "Many religious leaders are men who, it's obvious to anyone but their deranged followers, are willing to sanction vicious cruelty in the service of their faith." While it is ironic that those who would defend relativism shroud themselves in the robe of self-righteous sanctimony, this book is not one of reason. It is one of hate.

It is not a hate caused by someone who has done you grave harm such as killing your family. It is not even a hate caused on some petty slight because you got cut off in traffic. It's a deep-seated hate that consumes and overwhelms. It is a hate without explanation; it is blind and irrational. Dawkins does not present a case for atheism -- he presents a polemic for antitheism. His first principle is that religion is a grave harm to humanity, and he then proceeds to fit the facts around that principle.

The book itself is separated into two main components. The first is a philosophical attack against religion and the existence of God. The second is a long series of case studies showing the supposed harm of religion on humanity. Dawkins is clearly an intelligent and rational being, but throughout the book you can see the struggle between his reason and his irrational hate. Unfortunately for him, the hate usually wins out.

The first portion of the text is rather unremarkable and boring, as it contains many of the same arguments that have been hashed and rehashed for centuries. However, one argument stands out: that those who hold God exists have argued from "personal experience" that God exists -- they know He has touched them somehow in their lives. Dswkins responds by saying that some people experience pink elephants.

With one swift stroke, not only has Dawkins dismembered any proof for religion, but he has annihilated the entire body of human knowledge. Imagine using the argument that some people see pink elephants in a courtroom to discredit a witness on the stand. It is nothing short of intellectual laziness. There are criteria to judge which experiences are credible and which are not, and that includes religious ones.

Dawkins himself brings up the alleged miraculous apparition in Fatima, Portugale, where thousands saw the sun dance in the sky. He disregards "collective hallucinations" as a legitimate explanation, but then quickly runs away from dealing with the event. For that matter, he ignores many well-documented miracles revolving around Mary or the Eucharist. He simply accepts the facts that support his point and tries to disregard the rest, while his rationality can't completely ignore the unfriendly facts that continue to surface.

The second portion of the book takes the more infamous religious figures and sets them up to show how corrupt religion is. First, Dawkins doesn't seem to recognize a difference between being religious and being fundamentalist/absolutist, as he uses the terms interchangeably. Second, case studies are fine to help fill in gaps when accompanied by some other information, but case studies can very easily be used to justify negative stereotypes in the absence of real facts. Every stereotype has its poster child. I can do a case study on the stereotypical black criminal; it doesn't mean I've proven all blacks to be cutthroat murders.

In addition, some of the case studies are just plain ludicrous. There is a common (yet completely devoid of fact) charge that Pius XII helped the Nazis slaughter the Jews. The proof? That the pope didn't issue a statement against the Nazis, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews were protected by the Church. We can forgive an academic mistaking action with making statements; however, the leading Jewish figures of the time all commended the Church for her aid.

Then there is the oft repeated statement that religion causes wars. However, when Dawkins faces the fact that the thoroughly secular governments of Nazi Germany, Stalin's USSR and Mao's China are responsible for the biggest atrocities in recorded history, he quickly abandons any possible connection between those governments and antitheism. He is unable to consider that many wars were not fought over religion, but that religion played a role in wars that would have taken place anyway. For example, the conflict in Northern Ireland is often characterized as a struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The fact is that there are three counties that the Irish (who have a national religion) believe are theirs and the English (who also have a national religion) believe rightly belong to them. The conflict is a geopolitical one. I've not heard of a bombing in Belfast because Henry VIII's fertility issues.

Dawkins mentions the story of Edgardo Mortara, a child of Jewish parents who was baptized secretly and subsequently taken from his Jewish parents. Dawkins avoids dealing with any of the controversy surrounding the incident, including Edgardo's own testimony, because it conflicts with his antitheistic principle. He also states, falsely, on page 312, that no consent is required for infant baptism (Canon 868 in the Code of Canon Law states that in all but the most exceptional circumstances parental consent is required).

He labels Mother Teresa a hypocrite for speaking out against abortion but never mentions exactly what the nature of her hypocrisy is. In fact, when Dawkins enters the squalor that Mother Teresa served in, perhaps then he might be fit to stand over her in judgment.

Dawkins never mentions that the religious give more in charity, volunteer more, and are generally active in trying to make their communities a better place to live. He brings up figures that have long been ignored or have shown themselves to be frauds such as Jerry Fawell, Ted Haggert, Fred Phelps, and so on. He pre-selects the most scandalous religious figures and casually ignores the noblest ones. He makes sweeping generalizations that simply aren't true. Speaking only from the Catholic perspective, I know of no serious Catholic theologian or cleric that says unquestioned faith is a virtue.

Yet his rationality does creep in from time to time. He is skeptical of the onslaught against the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse crisis. While one pedophiliac priest is one too many, there are many other institutions that have far greater problems with sex abuse and covering it up (i.e. Planned Parenthood, high school guidance counselors, etc). He doesn't subscribe to the widespread censorship in the name of "separation of church and state" either, realizing that the Bible is important for literature and a proper understanding of history.

Throughout the book, you can see the internal unconscious struggle in Dawkins between irrational hate and reason. Occasionally his reason creeps to the surface only to be shoved back down again. This latest missive of antitheistic thought, while celebrated by cognoscenti as a defense of reason, is a radical departure from reason. Dawkins states he despises confrontational gladiatorial contests that substitute for intelligent discourse these days, yet he just can't help himself from descending into misanthropic zeal. The book remains a rehash of pop philosophy and loosely strung-together anecdotes, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. A defense of reason? Hardly.