Reason articles from April 2007

Reason archives from April 2007

Truly maverick thinking.(Editor's Note)(presidential elections )
April 1, 2007... THE PRESIDENTIAL election of 2008 is less than two years away, and a good number of would-be chief executives either have already thrown their hats into the ring or are threatening to do so. There are basically two types of early announcers...

Internet unleashed.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... We in the Internet Governance Project were astounded to read in reason that ICANN has been "set free" from the U.S. government ("Internet Unleashed," January). Contrary to Katherine Mangu-Ward's article, ICANN has no "private life." Its early...

Ticking bombs vs. ticking bombast.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Jim Henley sets up a straw man ("Ticking Bombs vs. Ticking Bombast," January) by attacking an idea nobody is actually proposing--that we allow security officials to torture with impunity. No serious, thinking person in a position to influence...

The pinpoint search.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Even the crude technology of the drug-sniffing dog could grossly abrogate my civil rights. It'll be even worse when the cop on the street gets to use the "pinpoint" search technology described in Julian Sanchez's article ("The Pinpoint Search,"...

Crying censorship.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I have just read Cheryl Miller's "Crying Censorship" (January). I am not an expert on art, but I have been a plumber for the last 25 years. In those years, I have "censored" many of pieces of the kind of art described in Miller's article with a...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction notice)
April 1, 2007... "Sim Pickings" (Citings, February) identified Dan Miller as chief economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. His proper title is senior economist.

reason news.
April 1, 2007... Our March issue included a brief article about Patrick Agin, a high school senior in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Agin, a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, had submitted a photo of himself to the school yearbook in which he wore...

Learning infractions: teaching kids to snitch.(Citings)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... CITY OFFICIALS in Fayetteville, Arkansas, have added a new lesson to the curriculum: teaching fourth-and fifth-grade students how to spot building code and zoning violations. Kid-friendly characters--Willie Weeds, Vinnie the Violator, Curbside...

Taxi reform: free to drive.(Citings)(Legislation)
April 1, 2007... ANCHORAGE IS home to more than 270,000 residents--two-fifths of Alaska's population--but has issued only 158 permits for taxi cab operators. Residents complain that getting a cab is a struggle, and it's no wonder: The city has offered only four...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)
April 1, 2007... "I spent four years in 29 jails and prisons on four continents--all this for being in a car where someone else had, without my knowledge, less than half an ounce of marijuana. I wouldn't say my treatment was cruel, but I would say very...

Hard cell: the FCC's secret cell phone map.(Citings)(Federal Communications Commission)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... SINGE 2004 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has compiled a map of cell phone provider outages across the country. Would you like to see it? Sorry: The FCC immediately classified all the information, on the grounds that if it fell...

Google envy: subsidized search engines.(Citings)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... IN 2005 France and Germany decided to subsidize and develop a new Internet search engine, to go by the name Quaero (Latin for "I seek"). Germany--whose current chancellor, Angela Merkel, was never a fan of the project--backed out last December,...

Quotes.(Quotation)
April 1, 2007... "I think the fence is least effective. But I'll build the goddamned fence if they want it." --Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on border control in the February Vanity Fair "I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from...

Bad blow: hurricanes and global warming.(Citings)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... HURRICANE Katrina's "real name is global warming," the environmentalist Ross Gelbspan wrote in The Boston Globe in 2005. Gelbspan's comment reflected the speculations of several climatologists who believe global warming is making hurricanes...

Official extortion: eminent domain abuse.(Citings)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... ON JANUARY 17, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Bart Didden, an entrepreneur in Port Chester, New York. It thus let stand one of the more egregious abuses of eminent domain authority since the court's infamous Kelo v. New...

SarbOx showdown: taking Sarbanes-Oxley to court.(Citings)(Legislation)
April 1, 2007... THE SARBANES-Oxley Act, passed in 2002, was billed as a way to prevent large-scale frauds like the Enron scandal. In practice, it has done more to frustrate publicly held companies with picayune restrictions on businesses' internal practices....

You call that a secret? Plugging leaks with subpoenas.(Citings)(Legislation)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... IN OCTOBER someone emailed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a four-page "information paper," dated December 20, 2005, that addresses "the permissibility of photographing enemy prisoners of war... and detainees in the Iraqi Theater of...

The public libraries in Levy County, Florida, used to have 55 volunteers, mostly retirees, who helped with stacking books and other tasks.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The public libraries in Levy County, Florida, used to have 55 volunteers, mostly retirees, who helped with stacking books and other tasks. Now they have two. Many of them quit when the county demanded that all volunteers undergo drug tests. "We...

Mark Capps began crossing a Seattle street just as the "Don't Walk" signal started to flash.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Mark Capps began crossing a Seattle street just as the "Don't Walk" signal started to flash. He made it across before the traffic light changed, only to get a $46 jaywalking ticket. He says he then watched police ticket eight more people in...

Darlene Rangel and Kevin Stanley each got hit with a $50 fine after the two reportedly told police they were taking part in a sexual massage in a Roanoke, Virginia, motel room.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Darlene Rangel and Kevin Stanley each got hit with a $50 fine after the two reportedly told police they were taking part in a sexual massage in a Roanoke, Virginia, motel room. But it wasn't the sexual part that earned them the fine. It was the...

The government of Sao Paolo, Brazil, wants to ban all outdoor advertising by 2008.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The government of Sao Paolo, Brazil, wants to ban all outdoor advertising by 2008. If it stands up to court challenge, the ban will cover everything from billboards to signs on buses to fliers passed out on the sidewalk.

In Wyoming, Michigan, rifle-toting cops in protective gear entered classrooms in Lee Middle and High School and announced there was a threat to the school.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... In Wyoming, Michigan, rifle-toting cops in protective gear entered classrooms in Lee Middle and High School and announced there was a threat to the school. They then took the students into the hall and patted them down. It was just a drill, but...

Everything that Sonia Celaya and her parents owned, including the home they lived in for 35 years, was destroyed by a fire during a raid one night by Gilbert and Scottsdale, Arizona, police.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Everything that Sonia Celaya and her parents owned, including the home they lived in for 35 years, was destroyed by a fire during a raid one night by Gilbert and Scottsdale, Arizona, police. The cops say they came to serve a warrant for stolen...

Testing your strength: gene doping in 2008.(Citings)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... THE WORLD Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), an independent organization concerned chiefly with keeping drugs out of Olympic competitions, is developing tests for a form of cheating that doesn't exist yet. The agency banned "gene doping," the...

America's biggest cash crop.(Data)(marijuana)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, agricultural price supports cost American consumers about $27 billion a year by making food more expensive. But that figure omits the government's biggest price support program:...

Loan arrangers: microcredit online.(Citings)(kiva.org)(Website overview)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... GOT $25: Want to buy a cow? How about just part of a cow? Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the idea of micro-credit: loans to tiny businesses that are ordinarily shut out of the finance system. Now a newly...

The young American empire.(Soundbite)
April 1, 2007... In American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (Hill & Wang), Patrick Griffin, a historian at the University of Virginia, both re-examines the role of frontiersmen in the American founding and discusses the origins of modern...

Reformers vs. the old guard: will fiscal conservatives retake the GOP? Four key members to watch in Congress.(Columns)(Grand Old Party)
April 1, 2007... "SINCE NOVEMBER 7, we really have three groups of Republicans," says Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). "We have the born again, who are fiscally conservative and remember what it means to be a Republican. We have the unmoved, those who've got gavels...

The impact of academic bias: professors do lean to the left--but are students listening?(Columns)
April 1, 2007... THE DEBATE OVER bias in the academy usually follows a predictable pattern. Conservatives tout a survey or study that says American college campuses are teeming with pinkos. Liberals assail the report as conservative propaganda. Conservatives...

America's No. 1 endangered species: is the middle class losing its "place at the table"?(Rant)
April 1, 2007... WHO SPEAKS for the middle class, that endangered species of American vanishing more rapidly than Joe Biden's presidential aspirations ? Who cares about the forgotten 90 percent of citizens who classify themselves as neither upper nor lower...

Be afraid of President McCain: the frightening mind of an authoritarian maverick.(John McCain)(Cover story)
April 1, 2007... THE JOHN McCAIN presidency effectively began on January 10, 2007, when George W. Bush announced the deployment of five more combat brigades to Iraq. This escalation of an unpopular war ran counter to the advice of Bush's senior military...

How traffic jams are made in city hall: the bad logic and failed policies of transportation planners.
April 1, 2007... IF YOU WANT to know why so few people use mass transit, meet Sue, a college administrator in Minneapolis. If anyone would use transit, Sue would. She's single, she lives in a condominium, and she can afford any additional out-of-pocket expense....

'It's our job to stop that dream': the endless, futile work of the Border Patrol.
April 1, 2007... BORDER PATROL AGENT Elizier Vasquez gets out of his car on Elephants Head Road, a smear of dirt and gravel wedged between two slices of desert. His eyes comb the rust-colored Arizona dirt that stretches for miles to the north, south, and west,...

Bums.(Cartoon)
April 1, 2007... BACK IN 2000 OR SO, A FREELANCE JOB BROUGHT ME TO DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO FOR A TWO-WEEK STAY... THIS WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF THAT CITY'S "HOMELESS CRISIS," AND THE 10--BLOCK WALK FROM MY HOTEL TO MY PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT WAS CHOKED WITH CRAZED...

Florida's forgotten rebels: rediscovering the most successful slave revolt in American history.(Movie review)
April 1, 2007... JOHN HORSE'S story feels like an answer to every Hollywood studio's wish list: a mix of Spartacus, Braveheart, Amistad, and Glory, with just a pinch of Dances With Wolves. A sweeping tale of a decades-long struggle against oppression, the movie...

The secret of The Secret: a cult self-help DVD fleeces the credulous.
April 1, 2007... You are a money magnet, the masterpiece of your own life, and abundance is your birthright. The universe is a giant vibrating ATM, ready to shower you with new cars, fine jewelry, unexpected checks in the mail, and magical sunsets--but...

The West will rise again: is the South's hold over American politics on the wane?(Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, by Thomas F. Schaller, New York: Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26 THE NAME IS already starting to fade a little, like that of an actor who hasn't starred in anything bigger than...

Designing dissent: protest posters and the blind spots of the modern left.(The Design of Dissent )(Book review)
April 1, 2007... IN THE LATE 18th century, the English anti-slavery crusader Thomas Clarkson stumbled on a novel and powerful way to promote the end of slavery in the British empire, one especially well-suited to a culture with relatively cheap printing presses...

Boston bomb scare.(Artifact)(cartoon program Aqua Teen Hunger Force advertising campaign)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... IGNIGNOKT AND ERR are Mooninites, space creatures from the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They're foulmouthed, they give bad advice ("Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust and friendship"), and...