Set my primaries free!

John Bambenek is at it again. He's "filed a complaint with" (i.e. written a letter to) the Michigan Attorney General complaining about the suggestion made by kos of Daily Kos that Michigan Democratic voters vote for Romney in Michigan's open primary. TheSquire pretty much eviscerated his complaint by looking at what Michigan law actually says, as does lawyer Adam B.

I'm not posting about the silliness that is Mr. Bambenek's latest attempt at notability, but rather about some things he's said elsewhere. He is also a "freelance columnist" at a Kankakee paper, where he wrote this about a possible Illinois Constitutional Convention:

Open ballot access should be implemented. Every person should have equal ballot access regardless of political affiliation or nonaffiliation and a true democracy requires nothing less. The freedom to vote does not mean much if there is no real choice.

So I find that difficult to reconcile with what Mr. Bambenek says here:

FYI, open primaries are unconstitutional, see:
NAACP v. Alabama
Gitlow v. New York
Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut
Miller v. Brown

So he's arguing that open primaries are unconstitutional based on federal cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and therefore based on the U.S. Constitution.

But then there's this:

In theory, parties could open up of their own accord, but forcing by law is unconstitutional... so fine, to be strictly technical, a legally-imposed open primary is unconstitutional which is exactly what you came up with. Thanks for doing the footwork.

On one hand, he's arguing that we need an Illinois state constitutional convention to require open primaries, but on the other hand, he's arguing that the U.S. Constitution prohibits making open primaries mandatory.

Inconsistency, thy name is Bambenek.

UPDATE I: I see he has published the same column in the Daily Illini.

UPDATE II: Moon_grrl tells us how she really feels.

FEC rules: Still not notable

The FEC has ruled on John Bambenek's complaint against Daily Kos. They rejected his reasoning. No one was surprised. Here is the Kos post.

Via ArchPundit, Illinois Reason, and IlliniPundit.

How much is a blog post worth?

John Bambenek is making a nuisance of himself again. He has filed a complaint with the FEC that the popular political group blog Daily Kos is an unregistered political committee. I discovered this when I saw that Atrios (another popular blogger) had bestowed upon him his semi-regular award of "Wanker of the Day."

His argument is essentially that DK provides the gift of "free advertising" to political campaigns and candidates. Since a paid advertisement on DK costs $9,000, he argues that must mean a blog post must be worth "at least that much." The only source of revenue to DK that I'm aware of is paid advertisements from the Advertising Liberally network. Those don't meet 2 USC 431. Therefore, the only possibly contribution to DK would be the value of the individual blog posts, made by unpaid community members. These clearly don't meet the status of a "contribution:"

2 USC 431(9)B: The term "contribution" does not include - (i) the value of services provided without compensation by any individual who volunteers on behalf of a candidate or political committee

The good news is that both the right and left blogosphere are fairly united in the absurdity of this complaint.

The thing I find frustrating is that I'm not convinced it has been made in good faith. The timing is suspicious. It's only a week until the Yearly Kos convention starts up in Chicago. So I rather just think this is a ploy to get attention. The sad thing is that it worked.

Local troublemakers

This is weird. While I was away for the holidays, John Bambenek's page was resurrected from it's deleted status at Wikipedia, then quickly put through the deletion process again. Weirdly, there were three sockpuppet accounts created during the process: JohnBambenek, ChrisPerardi, and Narciblog. Mr. Bambenek used to edit at Wikipedia under the userid Jbamb, but appears to have left early last year, so he does not appear to be the person behind the JohnBambenek account. The ChrisPerardi account was blocked because it was a sockpuppet of JohnBambenek. The Narciblog account was blocked for being a troll, though I suspect it was a similar sockpuppet.

I just wanted to state for the record that the Narciblog account at Wikipedia was not me.

This would be the "anti-harlot" platform

Back from vacation. Leaving again soon. No time to blog, but I'll make some.

Thanks to Archpundit, I've found out that John Bambenek is running for school board. This is the same John Bambenek that recently published an anti-feminist screed in the Daily Illini. When asked to produce evidence for some of the ridiculous claims he made, he quoted a conservative think tank's unscientific "study," then distorted the research of nine actual scientists.

Bambenek complained in the DI earlier this year that UIUC doesn't teach creationism in its science classes. That's not particularly surprising; crystal healing isn't taught at medical schools, either. To be fair, he has said that creationism will not be part of his platform, which he hasn't decided on yet. On the other hand, if he pushes his religious ideology into the schools, I don't care if it was part of the platform he ran on or not.

Not surprisingly, Bambenek is against any sex ed other than demanding celibacy. In an absolutely stunning display of boneheadedness, he also seems to be against the HPV/cervical cancer vaccine. How someone can be against something that can have such horrifying consequences yet is so easy to prevent (or at least protect against) is simply beyond me.

Couldn't we just put lead in the water? It would be so much more efficient.

UPDATE I: Run! The feminists are invading. Err, um, that is I mean to say: Greetings, Feministingers!

UPDATE II: OK, to be fair, Mr. Bambenek comments that he isn't against the HPV/cervical cancer vaccine, just against calling it a "cervical cancer vaccine." Frankly, I think it's a distinction without a difference, since no one really cares much about HPV infection itself, but rather about the fact that it causes cancer. I bet if you asked random people on the street if they would get an "HPV vaccine," they'd give you a blank look. If you asked them if they would get a "cervical cancer vaccine," they'd answer in the affirmative. "Vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer" is a bit of a mouthful, anyway.