Feeding the Hungry

As I was doing my research on issues and candidates for this year's election, a thought occurred to me that really started to bug me. Why is it that abortion and gay marriage are the primary issues where conservative Christians expect their legislators to create legislation based on moral issues? There are other Christian issues of significance with societal implications outside the Church, such as widespread divorce (Matthew 19) or adultery (Matthew 5:27). But the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room really is Matthew 35:35: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Social justice issues get very little attention from the Christian Right today, and yet these are the issues that Christ emphasizes.

Johnson's Great Society was a failure. The Democrats typically try to throw government and money at the problem, and the vast majority of the money goes to people who don't need it. So why haven't the Republicans come up with potential solutions to the problem? And why don't Christian conservatives demand action from their elected representatives, in the same way that they demand action on abortion or gay marriage?

An interesting solution came to mind about how this problem could be solved. Perhaps the government could institute a non-refundable tax credit for up to 3% of a person's income. In other words, one might as well contribute 3% to a church or charity, as otherwise the money will be going to the government as taxes. This solution avoids funneling money through government beauracracy. And since it would cost the taxpayer the same to give to charities as it would to give that 3% to the government, a much larger percentage of people would give money to charities. Imagine what soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, and churches could do with resources more adequate for this task.

Candidates Need to Embrace the Web

Tonight, I spent some time researching the state and local candidates for various lesser-known offices. Unlike a race for Governor, a candidate for something like Regent of the University of Michigan doesn't come immediately to mind. So I had to search the web for information on the candidates. In the process, I discovered that some candidates don't even have a website. And for those that did, the information was usually lacking. I found this very suprising, as the Internet is the great equalizer between candidates. It doesn't cost a lot of money to run a basic website, and the candidate can get their message out in an unfiltered manner. If a candidate doesn't choose to have a good website, then I think that they're really missing an opportunity to reach out to the Gen X and Gen Y voters.

For me, I think the information that belongs on a successful candidate's website includes: Who are you? What do you stand for? What do you want to accomplish in office? What experience do you have that is applicable to the job? Why should I vote for you as opposed to someone else?

Several candidates highlighted the individuals and organizations that had endorsed them, but provided no useful information. Knowing that organization XYZ endorsed a candidate is useless without knowing why they endorsed that candidate. I have found that organizations sometimes endorse (and reject) candidates for reasons that have little to do with their primary advocacy role, such as NRLC vs. Sen. McCain.

Hopefully, candidates will improve their websites over the years, and it will help voters who are trying to be informed citizens.

Not Quite a Mea Culpa

As a follow-up to my previous post, Rep. Markey (D-MA) has been receiving a lot of criticism on the Net for his calling for the arrest of Mr. Soghoian. Apparently, the bad publicity has had an effect on Mr. Markey, who issued this press release today. The press release is written in a bit of a patronizing tone, and basically says that Mr. Soghoian was stupid, but shouldn't go to jail for it.

Personally, I think that Mr. Soghoian's "ill-considered demonstration" (as Rep. Markey calls it) was brilliant. Security experts have been telling people for years that TSA's activities were mostly to make people think that the government was doing something - and not providing security at all. Even Sen. Shumer (D-NY) tried to bring attention to the exact same scenario as Mr. Soghoian a year ago. It wasn't until Mr. Soghoian created a little PHP script that the government panicked and realized that the emporer wasn't wearing any clothes. And rather than deal with the problem, they decided to shoot the messenger instead.

Maybe this time, after TSA wipes the egg off of its face, it can start to implement security measures that actually provide security. Now that's a novel idea, isn't it?

Free Speech? Or Helping Terrorists?

After 9/11, an essential element of our "security" has been the fact that only individuals with bording passes, or who have otherwise been approved by the airlines, are allowed to proceed through security screening. However, TSA doesn't validate the authenticity of the boarding passes that individuals have. It has been well known in the security community that anybody can print their own boarding pass, and as long as it appears to be genuine, TSA will accept it. The ticket number and barcode that appear on the boarding passes of many airlines only mean something to the issuing airline.

Chris Soghoian, a PhD student at Indiana University Bloomington, created a demonstration program of how insecure the reliance on boarding passes is. His PHP script could create a replica of a Northwest Airlines boarding pass. This outraged Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who called for the student to be arrested. While Mr. Soghoian hasn't been arrested, the FBI did pay him a visit with an order to shut his site down.

So, is the United States any safer now that Mr. Soghoian's web tool is not operational? Not in the slightest. Granted, Mr. Soghoian's actions were the equivalent of standing in front of the schoolyard bully and telling him that he is an idiot. But the point that he was trying to make is still perfectly valid. It is useless (from a security perspective) to rely on printed boarding passes that don't contain a digital signature or other authentication mechanism. Any person who ever prints out a boarding pass could save the HTML, and edit it to make as many boarding passes as he wants.

Instead of calling for the arrest of people who are telling the truth about our nation's security, perhaps Mr. Markey should urge Congress to implement some oversight over the TSA. Perhaps Congress could require that the TSA hire some real security experts, who could spend their time developing effective security measures instead of developing color threat charts.

And just to show that political stupidity is party-neutral, Vice President Cheney was on Scott Hennen's talk show. While talking about interrogation techniques, Mr. Hennen asked Mr. Cheney, "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Mr. Cheney responded, "Well, it's a no-brainer for me." Today, White House officials were scrambling all over themselves to insist that Mr. Cheney was not referring to torture techniques like waterboarding, but that he really just meant that a "dunk in water" was fine. Oh, and I bet they have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell us too...

Democracy in Action

So, with the election fast approaching, I'm doing my research on candidates and proposals. The proposals for Michigan this year have some pretty serious implications. Unfortunately, none of the proposals is perfect.

Proposal 06-1 is not a bad idea. It would require that user fees from parks, hunting permits, etc. would be used solely for conservation and recreational purposes. If this proposal passes, then the legislature can't implement a "stealth tax" for the general fund by raiding the accounts funded by recreational user fees. The primary downside to the proposal is that it is yet another ammendment to the Michigan constitution. Despite my dislike for padding our state constitution with lots of ammendments, I will probably vote "yes" for this proposal.

Proposal 06-2 seeks to ban affirmative action in state government entities. It would make Michigan a true "equal opportunity" state, at least as far as state government is concerned. However, among the criteria it uses to ban discrimination is gender. This would cause problems for gender-specific programs, such as initiatives to encourage more women to enter science and math fields. I also wonder what it would mean for things like the women's only dorms at the University of Michigan, since there are no men's equivalents. On the other hand, I have seen the negative effects of affirmative action at the state level, and I would love for it to be abolished. I still have to decide how I want to vote on this proposal.

Proposal 06-3 might be popular in rural areas of Michigan, but it's not going to affect me in the slightest. Anyone have an opinion on "mourning dove" hunting?

Proposal 06-4 seeks to ensure that what happened in the Kelo v. City of New London decision doesn't happen in Michigan. Unlike many ballot proposals for ammendments to the state constitution, I believe that this issue does belong in our constitution. The idea of the government taking property from one individual using eminent domain and giving it to another, for private use, is abhorent. Unfortunately, the proposal has one flaw that concerns me. It requires that an individual who loses his residence due to eminent domain be paid 125% of the "fair market value". This means significant additional expense for public projects. That isn't too bad, but the "fair market value" statement might provoke significant litigation, which does concern me.

Proposal 06-5 is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It seeks to lock in inflation-adjusted increases for educational spending in Michigan. Sounds like a good idea, right? But the devil is in the details. First, it requires that the current funding be increased by $565 million. There are only 9.9 million people in the state, of which about 5.7 million (based on 2005 census numbers) are of a working age. Once you factor in unemployment and stay-at-home parents, let's assume that there are 5.4 million working people. $565 million over 5.4 million people is $104 per person. But if you account for tax brackets, it's likely that many middle class families will be paying a lot more than that. Worse, if mass layoffs in the auto industry reduce the state's tax revenues significantly, then every state service except education will be decimated.

But that's only the beginning. School districts with declining enrollments will be funded based on the average of the last three years, not what the current per-pupil funding would provide. This means that Detroit will continue to receive more money that it deserves for the forseeable future. The state would slowly take over the retirement burden from schools and colleges (contributions will be capped), even if the institution (like the University of Michigan) could afford it. Both of these are going to drive income taxes up, and the benefit will be marginal. Not all school systems in Michigan are spending their money wisely.

So, a "no" vote on Proposal 06-5 is pretty much a slam-dunk.

Anyways, that's it for now. I'll probably write about the City of Ann Arbor proposals later this week.

Shocking? Not Really

There has been a lot of discussion in the past week about North Korea's nuclear test on October 9. People are concerned that the world became a lot more dangerous overnight. The common word that many commentators have been using is "shocked". But what is shocking about North Korea having a semi-successful test? Everyone knew that North Korea was trying to build nuclear weapons. In order to be "shocked", people must have either assumed that North Korea was bluffing, or they assumed that North Korea wouldn't be able to build them.

The problem with non-proliferation is that basic single stage nuclear weapons are straightforward to build. The hardest components are acquisition of enough uranium, and building a successful enrichment process. Since North Korea already had an enrichment process for its nuclear power program, obtaining enriched uranium was not a problem. With enough enriched uranium, the big concern is actually ensuring that your device doesn't go supercritical before you want it to.

So it's not shocking at all that North Korea was able to replicate 1940's era technology and conduct a nuclear test. In fact, it is suprising that they were unable to accomplish it earlier. While its discomforting that a nation with unbalanced leadership now has the ability to make nuclear weapons, it was just a matter of time before North Korea had them.

Thursday Randomness

Tonight, I met up with several of my current and former co-workers for Happy Hour at the Old Dominion Brewing Company. Our Happy Hour event was to celebrate new jobs for a couple of my friends, who are heading off to join a small startup in Virginia. We had a great time tonight, and hopefully, we'll be able to continue doing Happy Hours as a regular event.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend. I'm hoping that the weather will be nice so that I can go biking (or at least a long run). I also need to use some of the time to catch up on work and errands around the house.

On the geek side of things, I have been doing some research on an interesting computational problem. How does one handle multidimensional Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) that require hundreds to thousands of gigabytes of storage? There are a variety of interesting solutions out there -- you wouldn't believe how many FFT implementations exist.

Dreaming of a Vacation

Life has been pretty busy lately, and I really wish it would settle down. Work has been busy, I seem to always be taking care of chores at home, and I have a laundry list of things that haven't gotten done. Part of it is just that I have too much going on, and part of it is due to less than efficient time management. I could really use a long vacation somewhere. A month in the Bahamas sounds really nice right now.

Other than that, life's not too bad. Fall is definitely here, and it's starting to get a little chilly. But the weather has been beautiful. I'm hoping that I will get a chance to go up to Skyline Drive at some point soon to see the leaves change.


Evening settles in over the mountains of southern Pennsylvania

Clinging to Power

As if the Republicans didn't have enough to worry about this Fall, House Speaker Dennis Hastert isn't making life any easier for them. He has done a dismal job of handling the fallout from the Foley scandal. He has changed his story every thirty seconds, and has claimed he had no idea about Foley's inappropriate behavior. (Rumor in Washington is that almost everyone knew that Foley was sleazy.) Some Republicans realize that Hastert has become a liability, and have declined offers for Hastert to campaign for them. Yet Hastert clings to being Speaker of the House, even at the cost that the Democrats may pick up more seats in November. While I doubt that any politican in Washington is going to step forward and take responsibility for themselves (even if Hastert didn't know, he should have known), you would think that once in a while, Party self-interest would come into play.

Spammers Win One

A known spammer (David Linhardt, aka e360 Insight) sued the anti-spam group Spamhaus because Spamhaus lists them as being a spammer. The spammer sued them in an Illinois Court, despite the fact that Spamhaus operates solely in the United Kingdom. Due to some issues with Spamhaus's legal defense strategy, the Illinois Court has issued a judgement of $11,715,000.00 against Spamhaus, and is proposing an order directed towards ICANN to revoke Spamhaus's domain name. There is a significant amount of concern in the IT community about this action. The obvious question is how does the United States claim jurisdiction over an entity that resides solely in the United Kingdom? Earlier this year, the United States Government urged the European Union to back away from proposals to move the root DNS servers to the control of an international body (like the United Nations). Their main argument was that every little nation could use that to impose its laws on the Internet. And here a court in the United States is doing exactly that. This could give supporters of a "UN-controlled Internet" a lot of ammunition. And that would be a disaster for everyone.

I'm hoping that the United States Court of Appeals will reject this nonsense. If Spamhaus goes dark, not only will a lot more spam find its way into people's e-mail, but it means that any spammer can sue (and quite possibly win) if somebody anywhere in the world calls them a spammer. In the meantime, I added code to my graylisting proxy tonight to support RBL's (the lists of spammers published via DNS). Since the spammers hate Spamhaus with a passion, my mail server is now looking at what Spamhaus has to say.

Republicans are no Longer Conservative

Last night, I was driving up to Pennsylvania, and was channel surfing on the radio as I drove. For a while, I was listening to Sean Hannity, and during his show, he was proudly noting the latest economic numbers, including a 4.6% unemployement rate, increased tax collections, etc. He was especially proud of how the deficit is down to only four-hundred-something billion dollars (I think it was $450 billion) from six-hundred-something. I was amazed that he was proud that we are spending over four-hundred billion dollars more than we take in each year. When Clinton was in office, conservatives slammed the President for having a deficit that was about half of that. What happened to fiscal conservatism?

Later in the drive, I was listening to another "conservative" talk radio host who was attacking Colin Powell. Apparently, certain parts of the Republican party are extremely upset with Colin Powell's letter expressing concerns about the attempts to limit the scope of the Geneva Conventions. Colin Powell expressed concern that we would lose the moral high ground. This particular assertion has infuriated parts of the Right. The talk show host was appalled that Colin Powell would make such an assertion, since he should know better that the Democrats would use such a statement for their own purposes.

I am disgusted that people would put party politics over doing the right thing. Colin Powell stood by his principles and denounced attempts to legitimize torture, even though he knew the political pressure he would receive. The fact that the Republican party would be upset over somebody doing the right thing is appalling. I think the Republican Party needs more men like Colin Powell, who are willing to stand up for what is right.

The modern Republican Party has nothing in common with the party that brought us the Contract with America. The principals of balanced budgets, term limits, and smaller government have gone out the window. While I am not fond of the Democrats, if the Republicans lose their majority this Fall, I won't shed any tears over it. After all, the Republicans have turned their backs on what it means to be conservative.

Papers, Please!

As you probably know, the TSA maintains a "No Fly List" that is very successful in keeping grandmothers, anti-war protesters, babies, senators, government workers, and other law-abiding citizens from traveling on commercial aircraft. Officially, the list is meant to keep terrorists off airplanes, since of course, terrorists would use their real name and wouldn't consider getting a fake ID. Beyond those innocent individuals who are completely prevented from flying, there are others that trip the list every time they fly, and have to prove that they aren't terrorists. I have a friend of mine who falls into that category, and he has to show up to the airport early every time he wants to fly.

I was reading a little about the status of Gilmore v. Gonzales, and came across an interesting assertion that is separate from the heart of the case. The assertion was that the "No Fly List" constitutes a Bill of Attainder, which is prohibited by Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution. A Bill of Attainder is a law that restricts the rights of an individual, or a defined group of individuals, without due process of law. Because the government is restricting rights of individual people by name, without those individuals having been convicted in a court of law, the "No Fly List" would be a Bill of Attainder.

The interesting twist is, Congress didn't make a law that restricts people from flying. Instead, the executive branch (the TSA) created a secret Federal regulation that names specific individuals who are not allowed to fly. So this creates an interesting constitutional question. Can the executive branch make a law (umm, "regulation", since the executive branch can't make laws) that the legislative branch wouldn't be permitted to enact?

September 17 was "Constitution Day", which celebrates the signing of the US Constitution. OPM encourages all of the employees of federal organizations to read the Constitution on that day. By law, all educational institutions that receive US funding must provide education on the Constitution on that day. But I think what we need is a law that requires every legislator, elected official, judge, and government employee to read the Constitution each month. I think too many people in government ignore the Constitution. At the rate we're going, pretty soon the Constitution will be treatd like the Ten Commandments, and banned from government.

More TSA Thoughts

As I went through security at Detroit Metro today, I observed a TSA agent trying to persuade a crying four year-old boy to relinquish his blanket in order to run it through the the X-Ray machine. The boy obviously didn't like the ideal of sending it into a machine from which it might not return. In the several minutes it took to get the boy's blanket into the machine, I wondered why the agent didn't perform a manual inspection of the blanket. After all, it's rather difficult to conceal a useful weapon in a three-by-three section of fleece.

As I got to thinking about the state of affairs at TSA, I came upon the realization that the TSA is the real-world equivalent of Norton Anti-Virus.

• They both protect against outdated or low-level threats.


• They both are ineffective against a smart and determined attacker.


• They both are a constant annoyance, and always to try remind you of how good a job they are doing.


• They both serve primarily as a soothing antidote to the masses, making people think that they are secure even if they are not.


• They both consume excessive amounts of resources.


• They both are exceedingly difficult to uninstall and remove.

I'm not suggesting that we don't need security screening, but I believe that it should be done intelligently. Short of draconian measures that nobody would accept (people flying naked while handcuffed to their seats), there is no way to prevent a serious attack by trained individuals. The cheapest way to prevent another 9/11 is to eliminate air travel -- and that's just not acceptable either. If we know that TSA can only be an 80% solution, than we should set its security measures appropriately. Trying to make TSA a 95% solution would be a cost-prohibitive, frustrating, and useless exercise.

In the meantime, let's realize that bottled water, soda, shampoo, lipstick, and baby blankets are not serious security threats. Reacting knee-jerk to every remotely possible threat that comes along is not productive. The "liquid bomb" threat was not prevented by the wonderful TSA, but instead was handled by people who work out of the limelight and proactively prevent terrorist attacks to this country.