Reason articles from August 2007

Reason archives from August 2007

Exporting drug prices.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... In "Exporting Drug Prices" (May), Jacob Sullum points to a real problem with proposals to lift the statutory ban on importing price-controlled Canadian drugs: Once the ban is lifted, drug companies may simply raise the prices of the drugs they...

Assault behind bars.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... Cathy Young's column "Assault Behind Bars" (May) attempts to answer some reasonable questions about prisoner rape by consulting a rather unreason able source. Young's piece relies heavily on the research of Mark S. Fleisher, a former employee...

An epidemic of meddling.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... I take exception to one thing in "An Epidemic of Meddling": lumping smoking into the category of personal choices that don't hurt anyone but the chooser. There is the well-understood theory (in the same way evolution is a well-understood...

The folly of Southern hospitality.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... John F. Sugg provides an excellent critique of the subsidies many Southern cities and states offer companies ("The Folly of Southern Hospitality," May). But the problem is not confined to the U.S. South. When Intel built its first wafer...

reason news.(Letters)(Public notice)
August 1, 2007... We are pleased to announce that Michael C. Moynihan has joined our staff as an associate editor. Prior to his move to Washington, D.C., Moynihan was a fellow at the Swedish free market think tank Timbro. We are also happy to announce the...

Free at last: the Innocence Project hits 200.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN 1982 Jerry Miller, then 22, was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, and raping a woman in Chicago. He was imprisoned until 2006, when he was released but required to register as a sex offender and wear an electronic monitoring device. In April...

Northern lights out: Canada bans bulbs.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN APRIL, Canada's legislature voted to prohibit the sale of old fashioned incandescent light bulbs. The bulbs, which also have been banned in Australia and are facing possible extinction in California and nearly a dozen other states, are being...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Quotation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... "It is vital to keep in mind the distinction between the Libertarian Party and the libertarian movement. The libertarian movement is an incredibly diverse collection of individuals and organizations, many of them educational and quite a few of...

Policing immigrants: Californians force enforcement.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... SINCE 1979 the city of Los Angeles has had an official policy of not troubling its cops with the enforcement of federal immigration law. Supporters of "Special Order 40," as the rule is known, explain that it makes it a lot easier to police...

Trapped in Gitmo: nowhere to go.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN APRIL The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has cleared more than 20 percent of the inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of all charges. So why are they still in prison? One problem: Many of the inmates come from...

Driving while armed: the ACLU defends gun rights.(Citings)(American Civil Liberties Union)
August 1, 2007... SINCE "THE constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one," the American Civil Liberties Union has said, the extent to which the government should restrict gun ownership "is a question left open by the Constitution." In an...

Quotes.(Quotation)
August 1, 2007... "Whereas, in order for Satan to establish his 'New World Order' and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S. There are ways to destroy a nation other than with bombs or bullets. The mostly...

Political BS.(List)(bullshit)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... The smaller, silent half of Penn & Teller is an expert in deception, a prestidigitator who has achieved iconic status by staying very quiet. Now in its fourth season, the duo's highly lauded Showtime Network show Bullshit! tackles illusion from...

Testing metal: the DOJ targets e-gold.(Citings)
August 1, 2007... SINCE 1996 e-gold has enabled consumers to use private digital currencies backed by precious metals. In April a federal grand jury indicted the enterprise, its parent company, and three of its officers on charges that include money laundering,...

Food waste: foreign aid inefficiency.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... LAST YEAR the U.S. government spent $1.2 billion on food aid for more than 50 countries, under six programs involving four federal departments and an independent agency. But not all that activity translates into help for the hungry. According...

Regulate thyself: the FTC doesn't step in.(Citings)(Federal Trade Commission )(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN THE LAST seven years, the Federal Trade Commission has periodically performed the essential government function of sending minors into video game stores, having them ask for games rated "Mature," and recording the results. In April the data...

It took Brian Seaton nine months and cost him 100,000 [pounds sterling] to clear his name after police in Leicestershire, England, charged him with possessing a knife in public without good reason.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... It took Brian Seaton nine months and cost him 100,000 [pounds sterling] to clear his name after police in Leicestershire, England, charged him with possessing a knife in public without good reason. Seaton had accidentally left a Swiss army...

An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Richard Gere.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Richard Gere. The actor kissed Indian actress Shilpa Sherry on the cheek at a New Delhi event to raise AIDS awareness. A judge called the kiss, which outraged Hindu nationalists, an obscene act...

An unnamed Indiana man spent 17 months behind bars for stealing a soda.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... An unnamed Indiana man spent 17 months behind bars for stealing a soda. It seems that jail officials, his lawyer, and the judge in his case all thought he'd been released a year earlier. Only after a new warden took over and ordered a review of...

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was possessed by a demon.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was possessed by a demon. Or so says literature distributed at Enloe High School, a public school in Raleigh, North Carolina. When a representative from a Christian ministry spoke to a class there, he handed out...

Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities banned the weekly TV talk show Sensasi after a guest, actress Rosnah Mat Aris, addressed gossip linking her to a younger man.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities banned the weekly TV talk show Sensasi after a guest, actress Rosnah Mat Aris, addressed gossip linking her to a younger man. The actress noted that Muhammad's first wife was older than him. Broadcast regulators...

Georgette Prince was coming out of an Akron, Ohio, convenience store when a man pushed her back into the store, pointed a gun at her, and told her to get on the ground.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Georgette Prince was coming out of an Akron, Ohio, convenience store when a man pushed her back into the store, pointed a gun at her, and told her to get on the ground. When she did, he pulled her hands behind her and handcuffed her. Outside,...

Ahzar Zaidi of Roswell, Georgia, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for having too many cars.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Ahzar Zaidi of Roswell, Georgia, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for having too many cars. A city ordinance bars homeowners from having more than four autos visible from the street. Zaidi has four cars. But when his children...

Before you shake your moneymaker in New York City, make sure the bar you're in is licensed for that sort of thing.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Before you shake your moneymaker in New York City, make sure the bar you're in is licensed for that sort of thing. The state Supreme Court has upheld a city ordinance banning social dancing in bars, restaurants, and any club that doesn't have a...

A nation on the dole.(Data)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... More than half of all Americans-53 percent--now depend on government for their income. In 1950 the figure was just 28 percent. While that number shot upward, the proportion of workers in the private sector fell. The economist Gary Shilling...

No need for speed: a town re-regulates its roads.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... SOMETIMES a stop sign is not a stop sign. In the scenic planned community of Sunriver, Oregon, residents and visitors can glide through intersections without fear of a ticket. Cops who clock cars going 35 miles per hour in 25-mph lanes decline...

Insecurity complex: myths of job volatility.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... AT A JOINT Economic Committee hearing in February, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed that American incomes had become unacceptably volatile, victim to "tectonic shifts" caused by technology and international competition. Schumer asked the...

In praise of digital disorder.(Soundbite)(Interview)
August 1, 2007... David Weinberger has been a philosophy professor, an entrepreneur, a jokewriter for Woody Allen, and a campaign adviser to Howard Dean. Currently he's a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. His first...

The real Bill Richardson: is the presidential contender a libertarian Democrat?(Columns)
August 1, 2007... SPEAKING TO A liberal audience at the New America Foundation in May, Bill Richardson, the half-Hispanic governor of New Mexico, had a chance to create a campaign image from scratch. He chose this one: "I'm a market-oriented Democrat." His...

Jerry Falwell's paradoxical legacy: political victories and cultural failures.(Columns)
August 1, 2007... THE DEATH OF televangelist Jerry Falwell in May at age 73 drew the curtain on a paradoxical career. Falwell was a founding father of the Christian right, which has succeeded in uniting religion and politics to a degree unthinkable in the late...

Tony the nanny: Tony Blair's shameful record on civil liberties.(Rant)
August 1, 2007... IN A TEARY-EYED press conference more becoming of an emotionally incontinent Hollywood starlet than a prime minister on his way out, Tony Blair announced that he would leave Downing Street. His resignation could not come a moment too soon....

Dying for lifesaving drugs: will desperate patients destroy the pharmaceutical system that produces tomorrow's treatments?
August 1, 2007... TEN YEARS AGO, doctors drilled a hole into John Gotschall's skull, inserted two catheters, and pumped a poison into his brain. Using a child's morphine pump, the team of neurosurgeons pushed diphtheria toxin into Gotschall's temporal parietal...

Our intangible riches: World Bank economist Kirk Hamilton on the planet's real wealth.(Interview)
August 1, 2007... OIL, SOIL, COPPER, and forests are forms of wealth. So are factories, houses, and roads. But according to a 2005 study by the World Bank, such solid goods amount to only about 20 percent of the wealth of rich nations and 40 percent of the...

The limits of anti-Kelo legislation: reformers are trying to outlaw eminent domain abuse. But will the laws they're passing be effective?(Susette Kelo)
August 1, 2007... IN Kelo v. City of Nero London (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the government to condemn property and transfer it to other private owners in the name of "economic development." Upholding the forced transfer of land in New London,...

Robert Heinlein at 100: how the science fiction master created the template for our looser, hipper, more pluralist world.(Biography)
August 1, 2007... THE SCIENCE FICTION writer Robert Heinlein's 100th birthday is July 7. Despite his visions of near-immortals and cryogenic sleep, he didn't live to see it. He died in 1988, mourned by millions of readers who saw him more as a father or a guru...

The right to own a bazooka: and other inalienable rights. (Culture and Reviews).(Comic)(Cartoon)
August 1, 2007... THE MASS MURDER AT VIRGINIA TECH HAS REKINDLED DEBATES OVER GUN LAWS, SUCH AS THE "GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE" THAT ALLOWS FIREARM PURCHASES WITHOUT BACKGROUND CHECKS... SO I OBTAINED PERMISSION TO ATTEND A PRIVATE GUN SHOW HELD BY A LOCAL CLUB...

Getting beyond Roe: why returning abortion to the states is a good idea.(Jane Roe)(Critical essay)
August 1, 2007... The Politics of Abortion, by Anne Hendershott, Encounter Books, 179 pages, $25.95 IN 1985 a prominent liberal legal figure argued that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, was a...

The fetishist next door: the all-American appeal of Bettie Page.
August 1, 2007... Bettie Page, one of America's most enduring brands, is finally taking her inevitable place alongside Gap Kids and Auntie Anne's Pretzels. In March a boutique bearing her name and stocked with demure polka-dot dresses and opaque ladies'...

Hitler's Handouts: inside the Nazis' welfare state.(Critical essay)
August 1, 2007... Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, by Gotz Aly, New York: Metropolitan Books, 448 pages, $32.50 FEW SUBJECTS arouse a historian's reductionist instinct like Nazism. It's hard to resist that desire to...

From UNIVAC to Google: a computer in every kitchen?(Universal Automatic Computer)
August 1, 2007... THE 1969 Neiman Marcus catalog included a futuristic product called the Honeywell Kitchen Computer. The red and white trapezoidal machine came equipped with an H316 minicomputer, a pedestal, a cutting board, and a handful of preprogrammed...

When coinages clash.(Artifact)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN MAY, 20th Century Fox contracted with the Franklin Mint to add an image of a Marvel Comics superhero, the Silver Surfer, to the backs of 40,000 existing U.S. quarters and send them into the U.S. cash stream. They were meant as promotional...