Reason articles from January 2007

Reason archives from January 2007

Getting beyond politics as usual.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... I'M WRITING this just a few days after the midterm elections, and the dust from the Great Democratic Revival--or was it the Amazing Republican Implosion?--has yet to settle. As the Democrats prepare to take control of both houses of Congress...

Ova for sale.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Kerry Howley is to be congratulated for her beautifully written firsthand examination of the egg donor experience ("Ova for Sale," October), but her criticisms of the IVF industry struck me as a little ungenerous. She would prefer "unblinking...

The State of War And Domestic Terrorism.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... John Mueller says his views on the risks posed by terrorists have provoked less disagreement than he expected ("The State of War and Domestic Terrorism," October). Allow me to add my small voice to that disagreement. Mueller argues that we...

They don't know Jack.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... There is no question that the incident involving Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) helped the GOP tremendously, as David Weigel points out in "They Don't Know Jack" (October). The graphic image of cash in the freezer was just perfect for Joe...

America gives a shit.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I agree with everything Jeff Jarvis says in "America Gives a Shit" (October). Therefore I was quite surprised to read the circumlocution "f-words." Surely a magazine committed to free minds and free markets can print the word fuck. A...

The real mommy wars.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Shannon Chamberlain's commentary on the "mommy wars" fascinated me ("The Real Mommy Wars," October). The mommy wars are fought solely by women who feel guilty about the choices they've made. Caitlin Flanagan and Carrie Lukas must overlook...

CleanFlicks v. Kate Winslet's Breasts.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Maybe Hollywood is stupid, as Nick Gillespie says in "CleanFlicks v. Kate Winslet's Breasts" (October), to underserve the religious market for wholesome family entertainment. But a company that creates a secondary revenue stream on modified...

The longneck Tail.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... While I enjoyed Jay Brooks's article on craft beers ("The Longneck Tail," October), you should have used a more up-to-date photo as an illustration. Manhattan Brewing has been out of business since 1993, and Cold Spring Brewing became Gluek...

reason news.(letters)
January 1, 2007... We're happy to welcome Radley Balko as reason's newest senior editor. Previously a policy analyst at Cato, Radley is also a columnist at the Fox News website, the force behind the excellent blog The Agitator, and a longtime reason contributor....

Squat for teacher: searching students.(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... THE U.S. SUPREME Court has ruled that school officials may search students without warrants and test them for drugs without individualized suspicion. But Congress evidently believes students still have too much privacy. In September, on a...

Keep off the gras: New Jersey vs. duck liver.(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... NO ONE IN the state of New Jersey produces foie gras, and no Garden State farmer has announced any plans to start force-feeding ducks or selling liver pate. But that hasn't stopped two members of the state Assembly from proposing legislation to...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)
January 1, 2007... "Gene McCarthy summed up the campaign just right. Accused of being a 'spoiler,' the independent candidate said: 'If there was ever a year when it didn't matter if you spoiled things, this is it.'" --Bill Birmingham, "Quickies" "The...

Tired ideas: reef rescue rebuffed.(Citings)
January 1, 2007... LIKE MANY well-intentioned ideas from the '70s--leisure suits, the Mustang II, the eight-track tape a 1972 project to dump 2 million tires off the coast of Florida has gone horribly wrong. What was supposed to be an artificial reef brimming...

'Bizarre' effects: tax plans face off.(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... TWO BOSTON University economists, Laurence Kotlikoff and David Rapson, recently compared our current tax system with the proposed "FairTax"--a 23 percent federal sales tax, intended to replace all existing federal income, payroll, estate, and...

Drug brakes: is a slow FDA a safe FDA?(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... EVER SINCE Congress helped speed up the Food and Drug Administration's rate of drug approvals in 1992, critics have complained that the relatively quick approval times put patients in danger. So when Merck's Vioxx was shown to cause heart...

Quotes.
January 1, 2007... "I can blow off someone's head at close range and splatter blood, but I can't light a good Cuban." --Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, on the new no-smoking rule for his character, in Parade, October 1 "The labs start to decline,...

Several people swimming at Kanopolis Lake in Kansas got a bit of a surprise when a B-52 bomber dropped nine bombs into the water. Lt. Col. Jeff Jordan, commander of the Smoky Hill National Guard Range, told the Associated Press the plane dropped the bombs by mistake while on a training mission.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Several people swimming at Kanopolis Lake in Kansas got a bit of a surprise when a B-52 bomber dropped nine bombs into the water. Lt. Col. Jeff Jordan, commander of the Smoky Hill National Guard Range, told the Associated Press the plane...

Police in West Midlands, England, say they received numerous complaints about anti-social behavior in one neighborhood.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Police in West Midlands, England, say they received numerous complaints about anti-social behavior in one neighborhood. The behavior in question: children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.

Fifteen-year-old Mirage Rousseau of Manchester, New Hampshire, came home one afternoon to find two police officers in her bedroom without a warrant.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Fifteen-year-old Mirage Rousseau of Manchester, New Hampshire, came home one afternoon to find two police officers in her bedroom without a warrant. The cops told Rousseau they were looking for a suspect in a counterfeiting case, and the door...

Thailand's Culture Ministry has banned a line of condoms called Tom Dundee because officials say the name could encourage children to have sex earlier.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Thailand's Culture Ministry has banned a line of condoms called Tom Dundee because officials say the name could encourage children to have sex earlier. Tom Dundee is the stage name of a popular Thai country singer. Dundee is also Thai for "good...

Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, admit they issued valid building permits for new houses that exceed local height limits.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, admit they issued valid building permits for new houses that exceed local height limits. They say builders nonetheless must either lower the roofs or raise the ground around many--perhaps hundreds-of those...

Legislation expected to pass in Scotland would require shops selling swords, machetes, and other non-domestic knives to have a special license and to record all sales.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Legislation expected to pass in Scotland would require shops selling swords, machetes, and other non-domestic knives to have a special license and to record all sales. The sale of swords--except to museums, historical re-enactors, fencers, and...

Police in Preston, England, are asking local officials to ban "vertical drinking" in bars.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... Police in Preston, England, are asking local officials to ban "vertical drinking" in bars. Drinking while standing, they say, contributes to violence and other anti-social behavior.

For 31 years, Jean Groves has had a sign on her fence that reads "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses.".(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... For 31 years, Jean Groves has had a sign on her fence that reads "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses." She says even Jehovah's Witnesses got a laugh out of it. But police in Hampshire, England, weren't laughing when they told Groves to...

The Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has banned mobile taco stands.(Brickbats)
January 1, 2007... The Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has banned mobile taco stands. Commissioners say the move is aimed at boosting business in shopping centers. "I'm all for capitalism," Commissioner Bert Nasuti explained. "But there's a...

Contact killings: the new normal in Iraq.(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... WITH characteristic deadpan delivery, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shocked and amazed nobody with a September report announcing that "the United States generally has not met its goals for reconstruction activities in Iraq with...

Internet unleashed: ICANN escape.(Citings)(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... THE U.S. Department of Commerce must love the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, because it is setting it free. ICANN, the California-based nonprofit organization that assigns Internet domains, such as .corn, and country...

Texas floor 'em.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] Officials bow to reality and open a 500-mile stretch of Texas highway with an 80 mph speed limit.

Big Bully.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] A judge in Miami sides with Take-Two Interactive, maker of the video game Bully, and against garner nemesis Jack Thompson. Thompson had asked the court to ban the sale of the game in Florida, arguing that it's a "Columbine...

Sen. Spliff.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] During a book promotion tour, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama admits prior drug use. "I inhaled--that was the point," he says.

Fat city.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] Economists at the University of Toronto discover that the sprawl-causes-obesity claim is exactly backward. Their research finds that people who are more likely to be obese choose to live in "sprawl," not that sprawl makes people who...

Wright stuff.(Balance Sheet)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] The Wright Amendment Reform Act of 2006 gradually sunsets the 1979 restrictions on airline flights from Dallas' Love Field, an anti-competitive bottleneck for Texas and surrounding states. Still, it will take eight more years to end...

Loose moose.(Balance Sheet)(Moosehead Breweries Ltd.)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... [up arrow] Moosehead Breweries sends more than 1,700 cans of Moosehead Lager to Canadian troops fighting in Kandahar. Canadian defense officials contacted the brewery about buying the beer and sending it to Afghanistan, but Moosehead officials...

Shocking death.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] Kip Black dies in a hospital after police in North Charleston, South Carolina, zap him nine times with a Taser. Two weeks before, another local police force had zapped Black sixtimes.

Barry squeezed.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] James South, chairman of Marquette University's Philosophy Department, asks a Ph.D. student to take a "patently offensive" Dave Barry quote off his office door, which is apparently not among the school's "free speech zones." The...

The 29-year-old virgin.(Balance Sheet)(federal guidelines for abstinence-only education funding)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] New federal guidelines say the government can use millions in abstinence-only education funding to persuade men and women up to age 29 to keep their virginity. Ominously, the National Center for Health Statistics says over 90...

Homo-mart.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] The American Family Association tells members to steer clear of Wal-Mart because the giant retailer inked an agreement with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce to help sponsor some of the group's events.

Cafe Americain.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] France is expected to ban smoking in all public places, including bars and restaurants, sometime in 2007. Can a foie gras ban be far behind?

No charge.(Balance Sheet)
January 1, 2007... [down arrow] Though never charged with a crime, Ali Partovi remains behind bars more than five years after he was first incarcerated. Partovi is the last person still in custody from the federal government's post-9/11 PENTTBOM dragnet.

Immigrants cause insurance crisis!(Data)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Since 1987 the percentage of Americans without health insurance--purchased privately, provided by employers, or provided by the government--has risen from 12.9 percent to 15.9 percent. That figure is often used to suggest a steadily worsening...

Woodpecker massacre: the threat of threatened species.(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... ACCORDING to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), only 15,000 red-cockaded woodpeckers remain in the United States. Eager to protect the mature pine forests in which they nest, the agency recently informed the residents of Boiling Spring...

Saucer scandal: UFO cover-up!(Citings)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... DRAWING on newly declassified documents, two journalism teachers have unearthed a bona fide UFO cover-up at the British Ministry of Defence, which went out of its way to conceal ongoing investigations of reported unidentified flying objects....

Vietnamese resistance: god and government in New Orleans.(Citings)
January 1, 2007... WHEN THE Bring Back New Orleans Commission met in November 2005 to discuss its far-off plans to gradually rebuild and repopulate the flooded city, the Rev. Luke Nguyen rose to talk about the thousands of Vietnamese who had fled his neighborhood...

End of the rainbow.(Soundbite)(Burning Rainbow Farm )(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Tom Crosslin didn't envision a violent confrontation with the government when he started holding cannabis-themed music festivals in rural Cass County, Michigan, in 1995. But he faced a local prosecutor, Scott Teter, who was determined to shut...

The myth of the 'values voters': the Republicans hand libertarian votes--and the elections--over to the Democrats.(Columns)
January 1, 2007... AT THE DEMOCRATS' official election night party in Washington, D.C., all eyes were on Florida--for about 10 seconds. At 8 p.m. network exit polls confirmed that Rep. Katherine Harris, for this crowd the arch-villain of the 2000 election, was...

One man's culture war: Bill O'Reilly sticks up for the little guy--that is, himself.(Columns)
January 1, 2007... ON OCTOBER 5, 2006, Bill O'Reilly left his fellow Fox host Neil Cavuto nearly speechless with a rant against the liberal financier and philanthropist George Soros, whom Cavuto had just interviewed. O'Reilly called Soros "the single most...

Ticking bombast: what would you do to save millions of lives?(Rant)
January 1, 2007... LET'S SAY YOU'VE caught a suspect and you're sure he's a terrorist, and you're sure there's a nuclear bomb somewhere in Manhattan, and you're sure he knows where it is, and you're sure this particular terrorist has been trained to resist...

The pinpoint search: how super-accurate surveillance technology threatens our privacy.(Cover story)
January 1, 2007... ANYONE WOULD CONSIDER it a stroke of bad luck to be pulled over for driving six miles per hour over the speed limit, but Roy Caballes had an additional reason to curse his ill fortune. On the November afternoon in 1998 when an Illinois state...

Is Liberalism dead in central Europe? The disturbing return of socialism and authoritarianism in the former Soviet bloc.
January 1, 2007... WHEN THE SOCIALIST party Smer ("Direction") won Slovakia's parliamentary elections last June, party leader Robert Fico cemented his controversial reputation by forming a coalition government with the Movement for Democratic Slovakia, led by the...

Space travel for fun and profit: the private space industry soars higher by lowering its sights.
January 1, 2007... BARBED WIRE SURROUNDED the Bigelow Aerospace compound, set in a stretch of dry, rock-strewn Nevada desert. Las Vegas glittered in the distance, but otherwise the vista had the desolate look of a lunar landscape, with one difference: The summer...

The trouble with troubled teen programs: how the "boot camp" industry tortures and kills kids.
January 1, 2007... THE STATE OF FLORIDA tortured 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson to death for trespassing. The teen had been sentenced to probation in 2005 for taking a joy ride in a Jeep Cherokee that his cousins stole from his grandmother. Later that year, he...

What we believe.(Culture and Reviews Comic)(Cartoon)
January 1, 2007... JUST LOOK AT MY MOLARS. WHAT A MESS! WELL, NOT THE TEETH THEMSELVES SO MUCH AS THE DARK GREY FILLINGS IN EACH ONE OF THEM... I USUALLY FORGET I HAVE THEM, UNTIL I LAUGH AT SOMETHING AND NOTICE YOUNGER PEOPLE STARING INTO MY GAPING MAW IN...

Paradise lost: a populist's nostalgic ode to an America gone by.(Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Look Homeward, America, by Bill Kauffman, Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 185 pages, $25 AT THE TURN of the 20th century, one of the most popular writers in America dwelled in a small village in upstate New York. After two decades of...

Cold war meets counterculture: how hippie hero Stewart Brand created our wired world.(From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... In 1964, young protesters at Berkeley used computer punch cards as a symbol of everything dehumanizing in postwar American culture. By 1984, an iconic ad presented the Macintosh as a muscular woman destroying a futuristic dictatorship. How did...

Trading on reputation: stateless justice in the Medieval Mediterranean.(Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, by Avner Greif, New York: Cambridge University Press, 526 pages, $80 IN THE EARLY 11th century a trader from Tunisia, momentarily residing in Sicily, wrote a...

The era of big government never ended: taking stock of the challenges to freedom.(The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 422 pages $19.95 IT HAS BEEN just 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell. It has also been 17 years since...

Crying censorship: shocking the bourgeoisie--it's nice work if you can get it.
January 1, 2007... IN 1921 the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its first show devoted to modern painting. Outraged observers denounced it as "degenerate" a mass of "Bolshevic [sic] philosophy" and "art-trash." One of the featured painters, Robert Henri, saw in...

Boy Scouts and pirates.(copyrights)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... ON THE WAY to earning the rank of Eagle, members of the Boy Scouts of America take an oath "to help other people at all times" and to keep themselves "physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Now, thanks to the Motion Picture...