Reason articles from August 2008

Reason archives from August 2008

The uses of hyperbole: exaggerated doomsday forecasts are false, regrettable, inevitable, and possibly necessary.
August 1, 2008... FOR NEARLY 20 years two themes have kept reappearing in my journalistic work: The hippies are mangling facts, and Vaclav Klaus isn't the free marketeer he claims to be. What this has to do with F.A. Hayek and global warming I'll attempt to...

When coalitions dissolve.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The libertarian-conservative alliance against the New Deal and the Great Society still delivered election victories to the Republican Party as recently as George W. Bush's first election. Matt Welch asks if that...

Free ride.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... The State of Georgia used to offer a $7 discount on driver's license fees to people who signed up to be organ donors. Drivers who were eligible for the donor discount were up to 40 percent more likely to sign up as potential organ donors than...

Serve the (old) people.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... National service as it was experienced by four of our granddaughters is a complete refutation of Paul Thornton's "Serve the (Old) People" (May). In Israel following high school graduation, women have a choice of army service or national...

'Technology is at the center'.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... I enjoyed Ronald Bailey's interview with the entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel ("'Technology Is at the Center,'" May). Thiel seems exceedingly bright and articulate, with well-thought-out philosophies about our technological future....

No child left behind: Texas abuses children to prevent abuse.
August 1, 2008... TWO WEEKS before the Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected the wholesale removal of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, a spokesman for the state's Child Protective Services (CPS) insisted the case "is not about religion."...

In the raw: contraband milk.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... IN APRIL police hauled off Mark Nolt in handcuffs for being a dairy deviant. Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court cited the Mennonite farmer for contempt after he ignored a 2007 injunction prohibiting him from selling raw milk and cheese. The...

Bluff City bluster: tickets for terror.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... FEDERAL, state, and local police jointly conducted a massive sweep in April through the area around the shared borders of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Law enforcement officials described the effort, which they dubbed Operation Sudden...

Soda soldiers: drinking age debate.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... IN AN April appearance on the Fox News Channel, Mothers Against Drunk Driving founder Candy Lightner declared that young soldiers "are not adults," which is "why they're in the military." Since they "will follow the leader" and "don't think...

35 years ago in reason.(Quotation)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "In these days when American taxpayers are becoming both more rebellious and more sophisticated, you now and then hear wonderful stories of a beautiful green paradise in Europe where the snow is white and...

Taco turmoil: food truck fight.(Citings)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... IF YOU want a cheap lunch in Southern California, one of your best options is to hit the streets, which teem with trucks selling tasty tacos for as little as 90 cents a pop. But you'd better move fast, because local legislators have put the...

Absolute immunity: sue your D.A.!(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... THOMAS Goldstein is an ex-Marine wrongly convicted of killing his neighbor. His conviction was based largely on the testimony of the appropriately named Edward F. Fink, a career criminal who said Goldstein had confessed to him in a prison cell....

Quotes.(Quotation)
August 1, 2008... "Where these gentlemen live, they don't have vehicle ferries. They were fascinated that a ferry could hold that many cars and wanted to show folks back home." --FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs on the conclusion of a year-long global...

Rough gravel.(Mike Gravel )(Interview)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... In April 2006, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel became the first official candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Two years and only about 25,000 votes later, he left the party to seek the Libertarian nomination. "I'm a...

Feds in the fishbowl: whatever floats your boat.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... UNDER the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are granted jurisdiction over the "navigable waters" of the United States. If a boat can float on it, it's theirs to regulate. Over the...

Please plea me: false confessions.
August 1, 2008... IN DECEMBER 2005, James Ochoa was convicted of a carjacking he didn't commit. In a series of damning investigative articles, the OC Weekly reported that prosecutors in Orange County, California, stubbornly pressed on with their case against the...

Course correction: classroom interference.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... STATE Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) wants to clarify what kind of content is acceptable in Arizona's classrooms, so he has called for a ban on public school courses that are contrary to "western civilization." Pearce's proposal would prohibit a...

Million-dollar B.A.? Bucks for baccalaureates.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... "HIGH school dropouts forfeit a million dollars in lifetime earnings compared to their college graduate peers," Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings told an audience at san Jose State University in May. Spellings, and countless others who...

Daphne Beasley, principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School in Memphis, Tennessee, doesn't like public displays of affection.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Daphne Beasley, principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School in Memphis, Tennessee, doesn't like public displays of affection. She asked her staff to give her the names of students who were couples, the...

In 1992, when Lino Nakwa was 12, he was kidnapped by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and held captive for about a month.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... In 1992, when Lino Nakwa was 12, he was kidnapped by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and held captive for about a month. The U.S. government acknowledges Nakwa didn't voluntarily join the officially designated terrorist group. But it says...

Federal air marshals say some of their members have been harassed at airports, even kept from boarding planes they are scheduled to guard, because their names match those on the federal no-fly list.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Federal air marshals say some of their members have been harassed at airports, even kept from boarding planes they are scheduled to guard, because their names match those on the federal no-fly list. One agent says...

When Adam Carroll deployed to Iraq as part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, he asked his father to take care of his two dogs.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... When Adam Carroll deployed to Iraq as part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, he asked his father to take care of his two dogs. Henry Carroll agreed, but he already had three dogs of his own. Cumberland County, North Carolina, officials say...

Nepal's government has authorized soldiers and police to shoot to kill anyone protesting the Olympic flame as it makes its way up Mount Everest.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Nepal's government has authorized soldiers and police to shoot to kill anyone protesting the Olympic flame as it makes its way up Mount Everest. But first, it says, the troops should try to squelch the protests through nonviolent means.

Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat that gives her an increased chance of heart failure and stroke.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat that gives her an increased chance of heart failure and stroke. Her doctor recommended surgery to correct the problem. But Great Britain's National Health Service rejected the doctor's...

Whitewater, Wisconsin, Police Chief James Coan involved at least two detectives and several other city employees--all during working hours--in a quest to find the identity of the pseudonymous John Adams.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Whitewater, Wisconsin, Police Chief James Coan involved at least two detectives and several other city employees--all during working hours--in a quest to find the identity of the pseudonymous John Adams. Adams' crime: He criticized Coan and...

Laura Todd has died several times during the last eight years.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Laura Todd has died several times during the last eight years. Or rather, the federal government keeps declaring the Nashville woman dead, thanks to a mix-up involving her Social Security number. Some of the results: Her bank closed her credit...

Information, please.(Department of Homeland Security, Freedom of Information Act requests)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... In 2006, queries to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accounted for nearly half of pending Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2002, by contrast, queries to the department accounted for less than a quarter of total requests. DHS now...

Collateral damage: drug informant outrage.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... EARLIER this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida, raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman. Her friends say Hoffman was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and they concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and...

Getting his goat: religious freedom in Texas.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Jose Merced wants to cut a few throats, but the city of Euless, Texas, won't let him. Merced, a Santeria priest, is challenging a local ordinance that prohibits the slaughter of goats, an essential part of the sacrifices required by his...

Obscenely prosecuted.(John Stagliano's pornography case)(Interview)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] John Stagliano has been in the pornography business for more than 20 years. His long career includes a starring role in the first Chippendales troupe, various parts in porn films, and eventually success as a producer...

Look who's coming in third! With Bob Barr's nomination, the Libertarian Party is threatening to achieve historical relevance.
August 1, 2008... NEVER IN THE history of the Libertarian Party has an idea been executed so smoothly as the nomination of Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman--and former drug warrior--from Georgia. True, it took six ballots at the party's national...

First amendment lite: how the feds police liquor-related thought crime.
August 1, 2008... IF YOU'RE A perfume manufacturer and you'd like to name your latest fragrance Opium, no government agent will stop you. The world's flagship soda is called Coke. A company called Chronic Candy has been selling lollipops flavored with cannabis...

Carbon-based prohibition: if some environmentalists have their way, simple math suggests life as we know it will end.
August 1, 2008... IN 1916 a blanket ban on beer seemed like far-fetched idea. But prohibitionists cracked the door open by promising to keep whiskey available by prescription. Within three years, the country was dry. Nearly a century later, environmentalists...

What's the matter with Chicago and Seattle and New York and Boston ...? We rank the worst nanny-state cities in America.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ON MAY 15, 2008, a goose graced the right side of the Chicago Sun-Times' front page, poking its beak into the paper's masthead, over the headline "Back on the Menu." The day before, the Chicago Board of Aldermen had...

An alliance for freedom? Republican strategist Grover Norquist insists the Leave Us Alone Coalition is alive and well.(Interview)
August 1, 2008... BORN IN 1956 and raised in Massachusetts, Grover Norquist is the unofficial head of what he calls the "Leave Us Alone Coalition," a loose affiliation of people and groups dedicated to, as the subtitle of his new book Leave Us Alone puts it,...

Earning their keep: a new breed of urban Catholic high school asks disadvantaged kids to work for their tuition.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ALMOST EVERY weekday, 14-year-old Tiffany Adams rises before 6 a.m. in the Newark, New Jersey, home she shares with her grandmother and sisters. She dons her school uniform and catches two New Jersey Transit buses...

Crying wolf: are we all fascists now?(The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning)(Book review)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf, New York: Chelsea Green, 192 pages, $13.95 Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of...

The day the music dies: why your tunes won't play for sure.(playsforsure)
August 1, 2008... This fall customers of the now-defunct MSN Music Store, Microsoft's abortive attempt to compete with iTunes, will be in for a nasty surprise: They will no longer be able to transfer their music to new computers. Worse, thanks to the 1998...

Francesca Coppa on the vidding underground.(Interview)
August 1, 2008... SINCE THE 1970S, an underground subculture has been making and privately screening short films. The artists are fans--and critics--of cult TV shows, from StarTrek to Homicide: Life on the Street. Their movies are music videos, edited from...

Conservatives against empire: The forgotten tradition of the antiwar right.(Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism)(Book review)
August 1, 2008... Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, by Bill Kauffman, New York: Metropolitan Books, 304 pages, $25 IF YOU ARE trying to discover how a particular conservative understands...

The afterlife of American clothes: Haitian entrepreneurs find value in our castoffs.
August 1, 2008... WHEN THRIFTY shoppers in Boston and Miami pick through secondhand shirts at local Salvation Army outlets or estate sales, they are as likely to meet Haitians as hipsters. Some of the immigrants will simply be collecting clothes to mail back to...

The (diminishing) return of Pandering: politicians keep doling out giveaways to a public that increasingly doesn't want any.(Essay)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN A POLITICAL season simply oozing hope, change, and historical firsts, here's something that might actually be encouraging: a widening gulf between promised election-year giveaways and the expressed desires of the...

Hope floats.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SEASTEADING--homesteading on the high seas--is an idea that has long attracted libertarians, along with others who would like to see a little more competition between forms of social organization. The idea is to get...