Reason articles from April 2008

Reason archives from April 2008

Ron Paul's mistake: why a message of freedom works better than whipping up white resentment.(From the Top)
April 1, 2008... HERE'S HOW FAR American politics, and libertarian politics in particular, have progressed in two short decades: On January 21, 2008, supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul launched an unofficial "money bomb" for the...

Burn the Rich.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Matt Welch is right on the money in "Burn the Rich" (January). Perhaps the most important point that the critics of privatized firefighting have overlooked is that the firefighting services about which they complain...

Guests in the Machine.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... I was surprised to read Kerry Howley's praise for a guest worker program and her advocacy for its implementation in the United States ("Guests in the Machine," January). I find it hard to believe that any proponent of limited government would...

Remembering 'The Forgotten Man'.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... Amity Shlaes says in her interview ("Remembering 'The Forgotten Man,'" January) a lot that should be said. But she also says some things that shouldn't be said, especially about the Federal Reserve. Shlaes adopts Milton Friedman's thesis that...

Mint condition: Liberty Dollar raid.(money laundering and fraud)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... IN NOVEMBER the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Indiana offices of the company that sells the privately minted metal coins known as Liberty Dollars, an alternative currency beloved by those who think U.S. paper money is inherently...

Cigar Bar: safe from Cuban terrorism.(embagoes against Cuban tobacco and national security issues)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... IN 2003 President George W. Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security to tighten enforcement of the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Now the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the effort going into policing Cuban cigars might be...

30 years ago in reason.(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Persons who rely on the Supreme Court test that something is obscene only if it has no redeeming value are 'depraved, mentally-deficient, mind-warped queers' the Utah Supreme Court said in upholding a Salt Lake City...

Forfeiture folly: cover your assets.(Citings)
April 1, 2008... FOR MOST OF their lives, Luther and Meredith Ricks worked at a steel foundry near Lima, Ohio. They say they've lived frugally and managed to save more than $400,000 over the years; they don't trust banks, so they kept their savings in a safe in...

Citizen lockdown: the plot against Americans.(national security plan in case of emergency)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... "FOR SOME months," the document begins, "representatives of the FBI and of the Department of Justice have been formulating a plan of action for an emergency situation wherein it would be necessary to apprehend and detain persons who are...

Quotes.(Quotation)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... "The problem is not that economists are unreasonable people, it's that they're evil people." --Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, quoted in The New York Times, January 31 "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against al- Qaeda?" -cover of...

Too good to be legal: fake news from the music industry.(Recording Industry Association of America's report)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... THE RECORDING Industry-Association of America has a warning for music fans: If an album seems too good to be legal, it probably is. In a "video news release" sent to television stations shortly before Christmas, the trade group warns:...

Pirate island: online gambling dispute.(Antigua and Barbuda's complaint against United States' online gambling )(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... IN 2003 THE tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda (population: 69,000) argued that America's restrictions on online gambling violated international trade agreements. When the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in the islands' favor,...

Bright idea: lobbyists win light ban.(incandescent bulb ban)
April 1, 2008... THE INCANDESCENT light bulb died on December 19. Its funeral was attended by House and Senate leaders, President George W. Bush, and several commemorative signing pens. When the president signed the 2007 energy bill (passed by a veto-proof...

Passing bad bills.(Jeff Flake's opinion on worst bills)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)is a hard-core fiscal conservative, famous for voting against his own party's bills and for his willingness to talk trash about his colleagues' legislative efforts. Citizens Against Government Waste calls him a...

Silencing the dead: judicial double standards.(attorney-client privilege )(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Is AN ATTORNEY released from the attorney-client privilege after his client dies? In North Carolina, the answer apparently is yes--but only flit helps prosecutors. Lee Wayne Hunt is serving time in that state for a double murder he insists...

Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl planned to spend a few days in New York shopping and sightseeing, but she was arrested upon arrival at JFK International Airport.(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl planned to spend a few days in New York shopping and sightseeing, but she was arrested upon arrival at JFK International Airport. It seems Lillendahl overstayed a U.S. visa more than...

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered all female civil servants to wear Islamic head scarves.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered all female civil servants to wear Islamic head scarves. He also has declared women to be the root of all crime committed in Chechnya because they have sex with men.

A seventh-grader in Parker, Colorado, is facing disciplinary action for making a list of people he doesn't like.(Brickbats)
April 1, 2008... A seventh-grader in Parker, Colorado, is facing disciplinary action for making a list of people he doesn't like. "We determined there apparently was no threat or intent to harm anyone," said a spokeswoman for the school system. Still, officials...

Officials at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suspended 70 students for five days for protesting a new rule mandating that they tuck their shirts into their pants.(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Officials at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suspended 70 students for five days for protesting a new rule mandating that they tuck their shirts into their pants. Officials say the protesters broke a school rule against "encouraging...

In response to a lawsuit filed by the French booksellers union, France's highest court has ruled that Amazon.com may no longer offer free delivery of books in that country.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... In response to a lawsuit filed by the French booksellers union, France's highest court has ruled that Amazon.com may no longer offer free delivery of books in that country. The price of books is highly regulated in France, and booksellers may...

The Tennessee Department of Revenue has started posting agents to watch cigarette sales in stores in surrounding states, all of which have lower cigarette taxes.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The Tennessee Department of Revenue has started posting agents to watch cigarette sales in stores in surrounding states, all of which have lower cigarette taxes. Tennessee law bans people from bringing more than two cartons of smokes into the...

The crew of a British Ministry of Defense helicopter broke low-flying rules to spy on a sunbathing au pair.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The crew of a British Ministry of Defense helicopter broke low-flying rules to spy on a sunbathing au pair. The downdraft from the chopper caused some 250,000 [pounds sterling] in Sussex mansion was flying over. The ministry says it should not...

Police in Bangladesh arrested cartoonist Arifur Rahman and seized copies of a newspaper supplement containing one of his cartoons.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Police in Bangladesh arrested cartoonist Arifur Rahman and seized copies of a newspaper supplement containing one of his cartoons. The cartoon made wordplay on the name Muhammad, and many Muslims said it insulted their religion.

Medical speech: censoring drug information.(pharmaceutical companies' medical journal articles )(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... MORE THAN a decade ago, Congress allowed pharmaceutical companies to distribute peer-reviewed medical journal articles to physicians describing alternative, "off-label" uses of federally approved drugs. Currently the Food and Drug...

Handout bonanza.(subsidies)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Since the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush has often said that taxpayers spend their money more wisely than the federal government. That sentiment seems to clash with the administration's willingness to prop up businesses and programs...

Psychotic reaction: Putin puts away dissidents.(dissenters' psychological profile)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... IN THE SOVIET era, political persecution sometimes took a pseudoscientific turn: Doctors diagnosed dissidents with maladies such as "sluggish schizophrenia" and confined them to mental hospitals because they dared to criticize the state. A...

Monkeys and money.(Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics)(Interview)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a columnist for Scientific American, and the author of, most recently, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales...

Evolution of a revolution: what next for the Ron Paul movement?(Columns)
April 1, 2008... THE MOST LIBERTARIAN candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, began 2008 with an army of 100,000 enthusiastic donors. Before the primary season began, many of his fans clung to the hope that polls showing...

I'm with stupid: the perennially embattled free speech zone over our chests.
April 1, 2008... ON APRIL 29 a grassroots army of teenaged billboards, provocatively packaged in combed cotton agitprop, will be deployed across the land. Their goal? Raise consciousness, spark discussion, and, if all goes according to plan, get thrown out of...

Take them back to dear old blighty: the ugliest byproduct of the sagging dollar.
April 1, 2008... LAST DECEMBER, Ricky Hatton, a stout-chugging, ruddy-faced British boxer, was laid out on a Las Vegas canvas by the American welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather. The crowd of Union Jack-bedecked fans--"drunken dullards" and "boors,"...

After Putin: as Vladimir Putin prepares to step down and orchestrate his succession, Russia continues to roll back freedom--but not all the way back.
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN ms EIGHT YEARS as Russia's president, Vladimir Putin has clamped down on his country's newborn freedoms and returned it to a more confrontational stance toward the West. His second and constitutionally final term...

The new age of reason: is the Fourth Great Awakening finally coming to a close?
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AMERICAN SOCIETY periodically weathers decades-long storms of moral renovation set off by thunderclaps of Christian evangelism. Old spiritual and moral doctrines get reinterpreted in a new light, producing...

Writer on the storm: former new left leader Carl Oglesby on the '60s, his old friend Hillary Clinton, and the dream of a left-libertarian alliance.(Interview)
April 1, 2008... IN THE 1960s there emerged a New Left. Until it was infected with the viruses of violence and Leninism, it was contemptuous of the Old Left's embrace of bureaucratic centralism and committed to "participatory democracy," civil rights for...

In search of ... the perfect human: on the campaign trail of the New Hampshire presidential primaries.(Cartoon)
April 1, 2008... 1/5/08: NASHUA, N.H.: I WAS A GUEST AT AN EVENT CALLED THE "LIBERTY FORUM," ORGANIZED BY THE FREE STATE PROJECT *... ZZZZZZZ... IT WAS GREAT TO BE SURROUNDED BY SO MANY POLITICALLY LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE FOR A CHANGE, AND NEVER BE ASKED...

The "white slavery" panic: anti-prostitution activists have been equating sex work with slavery for over a century.(Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul)(Book review)
April 1, 2008... Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, by Karen Abbott, New York: Random House, 356 pages, $25.95 IN 1907 A GROUP of evangelicals visited Chicago's Everleigh Club brothel, where they handed...

Shoot Down over Cuba: a bold documentary takes Castro to task for senseless murders.(Movie review)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In June 2000, this magazine published an essay by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley on Hollywood's "missing movies." These were not films that had been neglected by inattentive archivists. They were those tales of injustice...

No bad drugs: the arbitrary distinctions at the root of prohibition.(High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It; The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture)(Book review)
April 1, 2008... High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It, by Joseph A. Califano Jr., New York: Public Affairs, 270 pages, $26.95 The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture, by...

Huzza for Commerce! The emancipatory power of the American hotel.
April 1, 2008... FOR THE WOMEN of the mid-19th century, a fine hotel was a perilous place to be. Not only did respectable gentlewomen run the risk of consorting with prostitutes (a popular book of etiquette advised female travelers to keep a safe distance from...

Playing tag.(Library of Congress' photo collection)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN JANUARY the Library of Congress posted 3,100 public-domain images on the commercial photo-sharing website Flickr. After 208 years of keeping the privilege for itself, the library is finally letting the rest of...