Part-Time Pundit

National Organization of Women Files Suit to Abolish Father’s Day

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The National Organization for Women (NOW) and other women advocacy groups have filed suit against the Bush Administration seeking to abolish Fathers Day. During a press conference held after the filing of the lawsuit, Kim Gandy of NOW said, "the day clearly indicates that it is meant to recognize only fathers."

The American Civil Liberties Union, filing on behalf of the organizations said the day runs afoul of equal protection and Title IX provisions and should be abolished because it is discriminatory against women. "It is time to move beyond the pattern male discrimination against women so prevalent in the home and the workplace," according to a press release.

It wasn't solely the discriminatory aspects of Fathers Day that had the groups aroused, but the fact that Fathers are chiefly responsible for domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, and are often negligent of their children. Many fail to make their child support payments in a timely fashion, if they make them at all. This has many women's groups wondering what is commendable about fathers that should give them a day to celebrate them. Prof. Hrdy in a recent TIME Magazine article showed that at best fathers only spend about 30 minutes a day with their children.

The Chicago Federation of Women is running a campaign, "What Will It Take", to recruit men to admit their fault in domestic abuse and accept a pattern of reparations. Gandy again cited the culture of support for domestic violence among men that has outlets across talk radio, such as Rush Limbaugh, who encourages violence against women.

Andrea Dworkin, in speaking on the lawsuit, said "Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice," and that there is nothing to celebrate simply because a rape resulted in childbirth. Dworkin said, if anything, people should be mourning the great harm done to women at the hands of men on Fathers Day.

Other women's groups focused less on the history of violence of men and their failure to parent their children but instead focused on women's rights. "It's her body and her choice, the right of women to choose motherhood is solely and exclusively hers. After donating his genetic material, the only contribution necessary from men is to mail their child support payments on time," according to Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.

The lawsuit was met with outcries from men's rights groups and family organizations who attempted to file an amicus brief with the court which was rejected almost immediately. The opinion of the court was that such groups were not entitled to voice their views because they violated the separation of church and state "which is the source of the patriarchal attitudes which they seek to defend."

The Bush Administration was unavailable for comment.

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Just like bedding for livestock requires attention, so does bedding for humans. A bedding products guide would be able to tell completely the choices available today. We have special beds that can be set besides windows, then we have the traditional canopy bed. Then the category of slightly contemporary waterbeds exists with a futon as well.
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June 15th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Culture, Satire | 9 comments

The Environmentalists’ War on the Poor

Denver has recently announced a policy that plans to remove 500,000 cars from the road in an aggressive attempt to curb the effects of global warming. This follows on the heels of other plans nationwide to reduce emissions as well as commentary from elites who encourage the further increase in gas prices so fewer people will be able to drive, or at least, will moderate their driving habits.

There is on thing that immediately comes to mind about the Denver plan. To identify which 500,000 cars will be taken off the road, line up every resident with a car and have them organized from poorest to richest. Then count off the first 500,000 starting from the poor end.  Those are the people who won't have cars anymore. It's just that simple.

These attempts to curb global warming by "modifying behavior" are all designed to simply increase the cost of normal human activity. The result is that the people who are priced out of the game are the poor. An example is in order.

Take Al "the Goracle" Gore. With his mantourage and jetsetter lifestyle he uses carbon emissions comparable to many thousands of people. He has mcmansions here and there and despite being a prophet of global doom, he hasn't personally curbed his lifestyle one iota. The sacrifice to save the planet is never meant to restrict the elite's lifestyle; it’s the poor and middle class that need to sacrifice for the "greater good".

With the supposed concern from the Left about the gap between the rich and the poor, it is ironic at best that they support policies that have no other effect than to push the middle class into the poor and to push the poor down further. In its most radical forms, environmentalists believe the Earth is over populated and that the population should be reduced to about 2 billion. You can bet real money that it won't be them that numbers in the 4 billion or so that are unworthy of life. China's forced-abortion policy solicits nary a peep from "human rights activists". The Serra Club supports abortion for a reason.

Carbon offset programs have been exposed as a fraud and it has just been discovered that hybrid vehicles cause much more environmental damage to produce than a hummer. In the rush to "do something", or at least appear to be doing something, no one every actually examined to see if they were doing something that would have an effect. This mindlessness pervades the entire gamut of environmental thought.

These elites, despite not usually having any real contact with the middle class or the poor, deign to know what is best for us and are more than willing to use government to enforce their values on us from on high. These Henryites demonstrate this arrogant paternalism in their support for bans on smoking (not just in public, but even in private homes), trans-fat bans and their incessant parade of lifestyle legislation designed solely to indicate that the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness applies only to those who have won life's lottery. Call it the secular humanism version of the Prosperity Gospel.

With all the Hollywood and political elites that support environmentalism, you'd think they'd restrict their lifestyle that uses many more resources then dozens if not hundreds of middle-class or poor families. When they close down their large estates and live solely in one 3,000 square foot home (generous for almost any family I know), then they might have some basis with which to tell the rest of us what we need to cut out of our lives.

Until the time comes that they will share in the sacrifices which they demand everyone else to make, no serious consideration can be given to their interpretation of what the common good is.

June 15th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Around the US, Columns, Economics, Law / Legal Issues, Politics | one comment

What the Law is vs. What the Law Ought to Be

Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that a female employee who sued for what seemed to be obvious discrimination in her wages could not bring suit because she took longer than the statutory 180 days to bring the complaint. In her defense, she did not know of the discrimination that took place over the course of 20 or so years until late in the game. Predictably, women's rights groups cried foul saying the Court was stripping protections from women and was enshrining the wage gap. Was the decision misogyny at its worst? Hardly.

The law, as passed by Congress, required that complaints be filed with 180 days of the discriminatory act regardless of when it is discovered. Common sense dictates, certainly in the case of wages (which are often held in confidence), that sometimes it takes more than 180 days to discover an act of discrimination. The law as passed by Congress certainly has its flaws. Even the Bush Administration (which argued in favor of the woman's position) sees the flaws and argued against them.

That said, the argument of the lawyers and the woman's groups was that what the letter of the law says does not matter. If the law is deficient, the Court should simply ignore the law and impose a fair solution. It doesn't matter what the law is; what matters is what the law should be. A fair question would be why such groups believe a Congress or legislature is even necessary or desired.

There are several dangers with this position. First, it attempts to insulate and elevate the judiciary above and beyond the reach of the principle of checks and balances. This was most clearly seen in the case of Terri Schiavo, regardless of where you stood in the case. The legislature and executive at both the state and federal level attempted to check the judiciary in that case, and the judiciary told them to go to hell.

People complained about violating checks and balances, yet two branches tried to stop an action of the judiciary. It betrays the idea that checks and balances only apply to the executive and legislature, yet the judiciary is somehow immune. They also complained of interference in a "private matter", yet the matter was already fully vested in the government before any law was passed… the judiciary is government and a public body.

The legislature writes laws based (in theory) on the lobbying and influence of the people. There are few cases, namely those strictly involving the Constitution, where those laws should be overturned. However, imprudent or even stupid laws aren't unconstitutional. It's up to the people to get their elected officials to change the laws. Bambenek's Third Law might perhaps elucidate a principle here:

Those who complain loudest about a tyranny of the majority most often wish to impose a tyranny of the minority in its place.

This should not be read to defend an imperfect law with regards to discrimination; however, the law as written must be the basis for the law as interpreted. In court, only two sides are presented, the defense and the plaintiff, and one side must win. In the legislature, at least, all sides can get a say and there is a general possibility of compromise. Sure, there are lobbyists and there are abuses, but lobbyists of every stripe and ideology get to have a say.

No one is particularly fond of lobbyists and the abuses that tend to accompany them. The fact that "public interest" law firms have emerged which solely exist to effectively "lobby" the courts to create or define laws should give everyone pause. Lawyers have an exclusive profession and they have a particular worldview. Anyone can call a legislator and give them your opinion. Only lawyers can give judges their opinion, and those people, lawyer jokes aside, are not representative of the entirety of society.

That lawyers are running to court to get laws written and that the court has gotten in the business of writing laws, cuts an overwhelming majority of people out of the picture. The important thing to realize is that, regardless of your political affiliation,  this sword cuts both ways. Typically, judicial activism is a left-wing activity. However, if right-wing activists make the bench, left-wing people will find that they'll be on the losing end of court decisions, and there is no one they could lobby, no one they can pressure, and no one they can convince to get their ideas even considered. This is not the way to run a society.

Judges, especially on the federal level, are unaccountable and hold office for decades. It is telling that for a judge to make the Supreme Court his best strategy is to remain essentially silent on every conceivable issue in order to survive the confirmation process. Democracy is not helped by only considering stealth candidates for the bench. The public right to know is compromised when there is nothing to know.

These public interest law firms and groups need to realize that it is in their own interest and the interest of society at large for the courts to apply the law as written.  The practice of judges making up laws as they go and applying the law as they think it ought to be is fraught with peril and destined for rampant corruption. Sooner or later, a price will be paid for such disregard for judicial integrity.

June 13th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Law / Legal Issues, Politics | no comments

Review: Phrack Vol. 64 A Shell of its Former Self

As an information security professional, lately I've become quite bored. The state of hacking today seems to be almost solely employed by the spammer-class of miscreants looking to make as much money as quickly as possible. It's big business now. As such, they continue to exploit the same weaknesses, again and again, and simply lack the spirit and ingenuity of previous generations of hackers.

It is in this environment that the latest issue of the underground hacking magazine Phrack has been written after a long hiatus and under a new team of editors. If the document was a disappointment, it is because of the promise it has failed to live up to. As someone who has a notorious attitude problem, a healthy disrespect for authority, and a marked David complex, I have some sympathy for their underground and anti-authority tendencies, though I've not participated in the underground.

That said, the current issue of Phrack looks like it is written more by disgruntled teenagers trying to be nostalgic for a long passed era which they never even participated in. Much like the anti-war protestors, who continue to try to relive their glory days of the 60s, Phrack is an attempt to live the hacking glory days of the 80s and 90s. The problem with both is that those days are gone. "You can never go home again."

Hacking has been commoditized. With spammers running the show whose bottom-line is money, information security threats have become quantifiable, systemitizable, and predictable. Occasionally there are some really neat new security hacks, the WMF exploit and the ANI exploit come to mind, but by and large, it's the same old stupid tricks done and redone. This is because they continue to exploit the weakest link, the unsophisticated PC user who will still fall prey to 419 scams after all these years. Upwards of 80% of people will click on phishing e-mails if the message looks "good" enough, such as through a social networking site. Any idiot can own hardware now… and they do. It's quantity over quality.

At the same time, many of the old school hacker groups have sold out. Instead of continuing to work on their craft, they've gone to work for the highest bidder. As a result, the old hacking vitality has been lost. The Phrack editors are fond of saying that the information security guys need hackers, or they wouldn't exist. It's true.  I wouldn't be doing the job I do if it weren't for hacking; the problem is that you're boring the hell out of me.

Here is the environment that Phrack is working in, trying to resuscitate a likely dead horse. They're hoping they can succeed, but I doubt it. With all the poor spelling and grammar, it's not likely they are up to the task. How can you try to teach people the syntax of shellcode when you don't have a basic understanding of the syntax of the English language? There is a difference between the cutesy-31337 h4×0r speak and sloppy writing. Phrack 64 was pock-marked with the later.

To be fair, there is some good info in this issue. I found the RDS-TMC article informative and full of fun little tricks I'll have to try on my friends. Some articles rank along the lines of a digital fecal toss. "The Revolution will be on YouTube" was so pointless and insipid I got dumber having read it. Pages are marked with Phrack trying to convince people they are important. Let me introduce Bambenek's Second Law:

If you have to convince people you are (still) relevant, you aren't.

The demise of the hacking underground is a familiar story when capitalism comes to town. While communism is an economic, political, and social theory; capitalism is only an economic theory. When it gets applied as a political and social theory, dysfunction occurs. In the case of the hacking underground, some sold out, others hopped in, and the wheel moved forward with the profit motive, and the fine people at Phrack are disgruntled because they've been left behind.

Blogging is another example. Take the earliest bloggers; they all knew each other and there was a great spirit to it. Now it's been commoditized by splogs, been left behind by those who sold out, and the media has created their own. There are a few good blogs still out there (such as Blogcritics Magazine which is more online magazine, and my own blog of course), but the signal-to-noise ratio is quite low.

Phrack is a relic of the past and a shell of its former self. It has managed to break out of obscurity with new editors and perhaps they can make it into a solid technical magazine once again, but the underground they represent is dead and will remain so. Likely, when the editors figure that out, they'll go on to something else too.

June 5th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, InfoSec, Information Security, Technology / Internet | one comment

New Jersey Department of “Put the Fork Down, Fatty!”

The state of New Jersey has recently announced that it will be creating a state agency to deal with the growing problem of obesity among that state's citizens. This follows on the heels of many other local and state governments taking action against trans fat and other health measures designed to slim down the collective waistlines of the state.

The creation of such an agency is a dangerous political trend. We'll call the political thought behind such actions part of the "Coalition to Protect People from Themselves." People get obese purely through actions (or inaction) of their own. As a society, we eat more and move less than any other nation in the world (though obesity is a growing problem world-wide).

The smoking ban movement, largely successful, has brought into the public consciousness a perception that health decisions are supposed to be part of public policy. In that realm, they could at least pretend to hide behind the effects of second-hand smoke, though anyone who watched close enough knew it was really about sticking to smokers, not about second-hand smoke.

Moves against trans fat, such as what has happened in New York City, and attempts to ban foie gras in Chicago have no such communal health risks. If one person plumps up on trans fat, it means jack to everyone around them. The only one arguably at risk would be the person who ended up underneath these trans fat consumers. These laws are directed purely at citizens who the government believes are not making the best choices and need to be instructed on proper living habits with the force of law.

This near-daily encroachment by the elites in telling us plebes how to live is as meddlesome as it is dangerous. The idea that somehow bureaucratic busy-bodies are better equipped to judge and prescribe our dietary intake is absurd. The key to healthy living is to get the people involved motivated to do it. You can't control peoples' food intake unless you toss them into prison; personal responsibility is key.

More information, sure. Some ads on TV, fine. Trying to do it for people by creating yet more useless state agencies on an already strained budget isn't going to motivate people. Bureaucracies breed dependency, not responsibility. That being said, here's some food for thought.

For now, obesity, smoking, and other "bad health" behaviors are no one's business but the individual involved. There is no societal harm. With the universal health care being pushed by those of the same ideology as the "Coalition to Protect People from Themselves," that dynamic changes greatly. Any personal activity that may theoretically increase the cost of health care no longer is a private matter under a universal health care system. If you get fat and need 12 bypass surgeries, it is society that foots the bill.

One only needs to look to Europe to see how they are handling the problem, since it is their health care system (the one they are moving away from) that the Coalition seeks to emulate. The Health Secretary in the UK has said that the overweight and smokers should be denied health care until they quit smoking or lose weight. That's right, the government says you can't have that "single payer" health care (which should be more appropriately called taxpayer-funded health care) they promised unless you dance to their tune. It's called the Golden Rule. You take the King's gold, you play by the King's rules.

In a universal health care system, the government and society at large have a vested interest in how you live your life - what you eat, how much you workout, your drinking and smoking habits, and so on. You're spending their money, after all.

Government, on one hand, can't be trusted to wiretrap terrorist conversations, but on the other, not only can they be trusted with all of your medical records, but also with authority to make medical decisions regarding your care - indicating how little people have thought through "single payer" health care.

The New Jersey Agency for Fat People is yet another encroachment on the freedom to live out lives undisturbed by silly intrusions by governmental busy-bodies. A free country is no longer free when it has to get Uncle Sam's approval for the family dinner.

June 1st, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Around the US, Columns, Culture, Law / Legal Issues, Politics | one comment