Reason articles from February 2009

Reason archives from February 2009

Schwarzenegger's failure: if the California governor is the face of "moderate" Republicanism, the party is even more doomed than the 2008 elections suggest.(From the Top)(Arnold Schwarzenegger)
February 1, 2009... YOU CAN'T REALLY argue with Arnold Schwarzenegger's political success. In 2002 the California Republican Party, still suffering from the anti-immigrant fervor cooked up by former Gov. Pete Wilson, failed to win any statewide offices for the...

Divided in Nevada.(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Is Nevada America's most libertarian state? David Weigel claims it is ("Divided in Nevada," November), but I'm not convinced. Sure, the legalized prostitution angle makes it more libertarian than, say, Utah....

Fear of a Unified Government.(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2009... Veronique de Rugy tells us that Ronald Reagan shows up as one of the big presidential spenders ("Fear of a Unified Government," November). She makes no distinction between budgets submitted by the president to Congress and budgets created and...

Idiocracy now!(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2009... I think David Weigel was expecting too much from the movie Swing Vote ("Idiocracy Now!," November). If you want movies that are high-level commentary on the state of the world from a libertarian perspective, then you should only attend movies...

Czar wars: intellectual property watchdog.(Citings)(Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... AMERICANS aren't just getting a new president this year. We're getting a new czar. On October 13, President George W. Bush signed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, or PRO-IP. It creates the final...

Pot holders rejoice: drug decriminalization.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... IN NOVEMBER, Massachusetts voters approved Question 2, a ballot initiative that eliminates criminal penalties for possessing up to an ounce of marijuana. Pot smokers carrying small amounts of marijuana will no longer be subject to arrest or the...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "True to form, the November elections elevated those who promised the maximum and spoke truth the minimum." --Thomas Winslow Hazlett, "Brickbats" "The fact that most Americans don't know the real price tag...

I want a new drug: pharmaceutical spending.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... MARCIA ANGELL, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, has argued that Americans spend so much money on pharmaceuticals partly because many of the drugs people now take "are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older,...

How big is small? Federal contracting scam.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... LOCKHEED MARTIN doesn't fit most people's definition of a small business. The defense contractor has 140,000 employees, and in 2007 it netted $3 billion in profits. Yet $143 million of its revenue that year came via 207 federal government...

Checkpoint Diego: don't go near the border.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... IN SEPTEMBER 2008, social worker Vince Peppard and his wife drove to Mexico to purchase some tiles. On the way back, Peppard was stopped at a federal border security checkpoint on a road east of San Diego. According to Peppard, once he reached...

A newer deal? Recession to depression.(Citings)
February 1, 2009... IN THE WAKE of last fall's financial-market turbulence, New York Times columnist Patti Krugman's wish was clear. Interviewed by PBS's Charlie Rose on October 23, the newly minted Nobel laureate in economics said he hoped Barack Obama would...

Quotes.(Citings)
February 1, 2009... "Today there is a categorical difference between what Republicans stand for and the principles of individual freedom." --former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) on the failures of compassionate conservatism, writing in The Wall...

The immediate future.(List)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... RU Sirius is the editor of H+, a new online quarterly for the transhumanist set; it covers everything from body modification to radical longevity. Sirius has promised to continue editing the periodical for "approximately 300 years," but here he...

Eyes on the U.K.: Britain's surveillance state.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... THE UNITED KINGDOM already has more surveillance cameras per capita than any other country. Now the British government reportedly plans to monitor every phone call, website visit, text message, and email, entering the information into an...

Product displacement: FCC vs. free broadcasting.(Citings)(Federal Communications Commission)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... THANKS TO TiVo, DVDs, the Internet, and other technologies that increase consumer choice and control, TV viewers are freer than ever from the intrusion of annoying ads. Not surprisingly, product placement in TV shows is on the rise. The net...

E.R. crowding: are the uninsured to blame?(Citings)
February 1, 2009... ACCORDING TO the conventional wisdom, as enunciated by an editorial in the October 31 Raleigh News & Observer, "We all pay for the uninsured already: those patients without access to a 'medical home' simply clog our emergency rooms with...

An auction for 56 foreclosed properties in Utah fell through when the owners rejected the bids.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An auction for 56 foreclosed properties in Utah fell through when the owners rejected the bids. Auctioneer Eric Nelson says the banks and private lenders who owned the properties decided to wait and see if they might...

Deanna Gonzales says she was in the shower when she heard shots fired.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Deanna Gonzales says she was in the shower when she heard shots fired. She didn't even realize police were in her Colorado Springs home, but they had just killed her dog. It turns out the cops had convinced her children to let them in. One of...

In Chicago vote registration materials were sent to "Princess Nudelman.".(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Chicago vote registration materials were sent to "Princess Nudelman." Beth Nudelman wrote back to say that Princess would not be voting in 2008 because she is a) dead and b) a goldfish.

The Federal Communications Commission is deciding who will get the channels it forced the satellite radio companies Sirius and XM to set aside for minority groups as a condition for approving their merger.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... The Federal Communications Commission is deciding who will get the channels it forced the satellite radio companies Sirius and XM to set aside for minority groups as a condition for approving their merger. Ars Technica reports that an...

Tampa International Airport police learned from Canadian customs officials that Robert Christianson had some outstanding warrants, so as soon as he stepped off a plane they arrested him.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Tampa International Airport police learned from Canadian customs officials that Robert Christianson had some outstanding warrants, so as soon as he stepped off a plane they arrested him. His crimes: having a dog with no license and allowing a...

Police officers in Massachusetts earn up to $40 an hour directing traffic at highway work sites.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Police officers in Massachusetts earn up to $40 an hour directing traffic at highway work sites. Naturally, they are upset that new state rules allow civilians to do the same job. So they've been showing up at work sites to jeer the flaggers,...

Someone posted a warning about a possible police sobriety checkpoint on a message board devoted to events in Rockland, Massachusetts.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Someone posted a warning about a possible police sobriety checkpoint on a message board devoted to events in Rockland, Massachusetts. A few weeks later, police Lt. Barry Ashton went on that same message board to say an investigation had...

An Amtrak train running from Los Angeles to San Diego ran out of fuel about 15 miles from the station.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... An Amtrak train running from Los Angeles to San Diego ran out of fuel about 15 miles from the station. That stretched the two and-a-half-hour trip into four hours for the train's 83 passengers. "It's not uncommon for trains to run out of fuel...

The stakes get bigger.(Follow-Up)(online gambling laws)
February 1, 2009... In October 1999, when Tom W. Bell wrote a story for reason about online gambling, Internet betting was a $651 million industry. In 2005 it was a $12 billion industry worldwide. Today a reliable figure is hard to come by, as changes in U.S. law...

Daylight spending: spring forward, fall back.(Citings)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... WHEN THRIFTY Benjamin Franklin spotted a chance to save precious tallow, he didn't hesitate to pipe up. Franklin suggested that people adjust their sleep schedules in the summer months to enjoy the "economy of using sunshine rather than...

Rain delay: $720 million stadium, 10-cent roof.(Citings)
February 1, 2009... YOU CAN FORGIVE football fans in Indianapolis for dropping their nachos when they learned about a glitch in the shiny new Lucas Oil Stadium the city built for the Indianapolis Colts: The facility isn't waterproof. That came as a surprise,...

Let my students drink.(Soundbite)(alcohol drinking in college students)(Interview)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College, says his time on campus taught him that trying to stop college students from drinking was a fool's errand. The 1984 federal law raising the minimum drinking...

The reversals of market wisdom: and vice versa.(Column)
February 1, 2009... REMEMBER WHEN Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned us, back in September, that the economy was about to collapse unless Congress immediately authorized him to spend $700 billion on "troubled assets" held by banks? Remember when he said banks...

Where did it all go wrong? A thrilling and dispiriting year for libertarian politics.(Column)
February 1, 2009... ON THE AFTERNOON of July 6, 2007, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas emerged from his taxi to what was becoming a shockingly familiar sight: Dozens of fans waving handmade or Internet-bought "Ron Paul" signs. They had been waiting outside the Mayflower...

The successories president: the posterized secret of Obama's success?(Barack Obama )(Column)
February 1, 2009... ON THAT HISTORIC evening in November, as Barack Obama definitively made passe the notion that we cannot, the president-elect's acceptance speech signified a triumph not just for his campaign but for motivational wall decor. Like a Successories...

Bush's midnight regulations: the 43rd president may set yet another dubious record.(Column)
February 1, 2009... THE POLITICAL SCIENTIST James Pfiffner has compared the ability of a lame-duck president to achieve anything in his final months in office to "a balloon with a slow leak that shrinks with each passing week until it hits the ground" Yet in his...

The next catastrophe: think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a politicized financial disaster? Just wait until pension funds implode.(Cover story)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FUNDS WORTH trillions of dollars start to plummet in value. Political pressure to be "socially responsible" distorts the market decisions of government-related enterprises, leading to risky investments. Investors who...

Bongs away! How the crusade against drug paraphernalia punishes controversial speech.
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A FEW WEEKS BEFORE Barack Obama was elected president, Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, filed criminal charges against the makers of the Whizzinator, a fake penis used to deliver clean...

You can put your weed in there: what to do after the last head shop closes.
February 1, 2009... IN THE UNLIKELY event that the government manages to eliminate the drug paraphernalia market, will everyone stop smoking pot, as U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan maintains? Unfortunately for Buchanan, there are some do-it-yourself alternatives...

Who's your daddy? Children of sperm donors are seeking more information about their once-anonymous fathers, sometimes at the risk of the fertility industry itself.
February 1, 2009... EIGHT YEARS AGO, a woman we'll call Sarah discovered that she was not biologically related to the father she had known all her life. Sarah, her mother revealed, was "donor-conceived." Her parents, after trying without success for a pregnancy of...

Shopping for fertility markets: when it comes to reproductive technology, Americans are more tolerant than the French.
February 1, 2009... "IN A world without AIDS," says Bernard Lejeune of the Edith Cavell Clinic in Brussels, "women would probably go to Club Med and get laid, and the problem would be solved." But not only does the world have AIDS, the French world in...

'Chiefs, thieves, and priests': science writer Matt Ridley on the causes of poverty and prosperity.(Interview)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MATT RIDLEY, an Oxford-educated zoologist, turned to journalism in 1983, when he got a job as The Economist's science reporter. He soon became the magazine's Washington correspondent and eventually served as it's...

Alien world: how treacherous border crossing became a theme park.(Culture and Reviews)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT'S A LITTLE before 10 p.m. when I climb into the back of a pick-up truck full of crouching young Mexicans. We're in the lush Mezquital Valley just outside Ixmiquilpan, a dusty strip town cramped with car part...

Speak softly and carry a concealed handgun: would a nicer NRA be more effective?(Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist)(Book review)
February 1, 2009... Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, by Richard Feldman, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 296 pages, $24.95 IN SEPTEMBER the National Rifle Association unveiled a $15 million advertising campaign urging voters in key states to "Defend...

Frontier greens.(Briefly Noted)(From Counterculture to Cyberculture)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1968 the first Whole Earth Catalog invoked the "power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." Four...

Bureaucracies at war.(Briefly Noted)(The Wire)(Television program review)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] David Simon and Ed Burns, co-creators of the celebrated HBO crime drama The Wire, have brought their seven-part miniseries about the first 40 days of the Iraq War to DVD. Based on the book by former Roiling Stone...

The Bonzo years.(Briefly Noted)(Reagan: The Hollywood Years )(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The 40th president of the United States (along with his simian co-star) finally gets his due as a matinee idol in Marc Eliot's Reagan: The Hollywood Years (Harmony Books). Often used as a punch line, Reagan's screen...

The amazing Ditko.(Briefly Noted)(Steve Ditko biography, Strange and Stranger )(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "With great power comes great responsibility" was the message writer Stan Lee saw in Spider-Man. The superhero's co-creator, artist Steve Ditko, adored Ayn Rand and didn't believe his artistic power created any...

Scion of Frankenstein: Michael Crichton, novelist and policy provocateur.
February 1, 2009... MICHAEL CRICHTON supplied Hollywood with a series of hits, and he created the hospital drama E.R., one of the most successful TV shows of the last two decades. But the pop novelist, medical doctor, and sometime public-policy provocateur, who...

In search of lost principle: the Republicans could benefit from rereading their two-page masterpiece.(Contract With America)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOR A LONG time conservative rhetoric used to make me fall asleep early. When some Bob Grant fulmination on WABC-AM would go on too long, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say to myself, "I'm...

We, robots.(Artifact)(singing robots)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MEET EDUARDO MIRANDA'S singing robots. Miranda is a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at the University of Plymouth. He built these two warbling toasters, gave them both a vocal...