Reason articles from March 2004

Reason archives from March 2004

Book of revelations.(Editor's Note)
March 1, 2004... FEW JOURNALISTS CHALLENGE the conventional wisdom with more power than John Stossel, the co-anchor of ABC's 20/20, the auteur behind widely watched specials such as Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?, and the author of this month's cover story,...

Divorcees and Social Engineers.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Cathy Young bends over backward to be fair in "Divorcees and Social Engineers" (December), and as usual she mostly succeeds. But we may be missing an opportunity to probe deeper into a perversion of government power without precedent in our...

Drug rush.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Jacob Sullum rightly suggests that the strongest argument in favor of letting Rush Limbaugh keep his freedom after he admitted abusing prescription painkillers is that, so long as he's not hurting anybody else, it's nobody's business what he...

The smaller the better.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Ron Bailey's look at nanotechnology ("The Smaller the Better" December) takes both its most ardent cheerleaders and its most ardent opponents a bit too seriously. As early as 1951, the mathematician John von Neumann laid the groundwork for...

35 Heroes of Freedom.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... I'm baffled by the list of great freedom fighters in the December issue ("35" Heroes of Freedom"). If reason wished to include entertainment celebrities, why Madonna, Willie Nelson, and Dennis Rodman? Why not Charlton Heston, who was active in...

Poor Man's Hero.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... It is fine for Johan Norberg to say "people are dying" because of the West's trade policies ("Poor Man's Hero," December), but he seems to have missed the point of the various successes he cites: The poor countries have something to do with...

Bob Barr, Civil Libertarian.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... "Bob Barr doesn't fit most people's image of a civil libertarian," writes Jesse Walker ("Bob Barr, Civil Libertarian," December). I'll say. He certainly hasn't struck the Libertarian Party that way. In fact, the L.P. found Barr's record in...

That won't fly: TSA confusion.(Citings)(Transportation Security Administration)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... MANY AIRLINE passengers with common names--including actor David Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet fame--have been scratching their heads trying to figure out why they raised red flags on the federal "no fly list" distributed to airports around the...

Democracy in Haiti: national building aftermath.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... AN ECONOMY staggering from years of external sanctions, a militaristic dictatorship overthrown through American might, a U.S. president's commitment to democratic nation building--that was Haiti in 1994. The aftermath of Washington's '90s...

25 years ago in reason.(Citings)
March 1, 2004... "Wall posters [in China] have openly praised the economic achievements of... hated Taiwan.... One poster... acknowledged that 'Taiwan now has one of the highest standards of living in all of Asia.'" --Robert Poole Jr., "The China...

Unreal numbers: drug abuse cost estimates.(Citings)
March 1, 2004... WHEN SURVEYS indicate that drug use is steady or falling, bureaucrats and politicians trying to shore up support for the war on drugs can turn to another set of numbers: According to analyses commissioned by the federal government, "the...

Contempt for free speech: who's a journalist.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... PAUL TRUMMEL 18 a cranky old man who made himself a terror to some of his neighbors at a federally subsidized housing complex for poor old people in Seattle. Now he has made himself a test case for determining who enjoys the protections of the...

Quotes.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... "I think I'm the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who would reinstate the draft.... When I look at the problems of some of our kids in America nowadays and then I go visit the troops, I see what a great benefit it is to give...

Source.(Citings)(political fund)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... "Follow the money" has long been a useful rule of thumb for observers of politics, but it's never been quite as easy as it is today. Fundrace.org compiles contribution data on the presidential contenders and organizes them in charts and...

New York City public school teachers have given a failing grade to the latest curriculum guide from the city's Education Department.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... New York City public school teachers have given a failing grade to the latest curriculum guide from the city's Education Department. Among many other errors, the guide told teachers to identify students' "strengthens and weaknesses" and to...

Texas housewife Joanne Webb is facing obscenity charges.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Texas housewife Joanne Webb is facing obscenity charges. If convicted, she could serve up to a year in jail and pay a fine as high as $4,000. Her crime? Selling a vibrator to undercover narcotics agents.

The European Parliament will reportedly take up a bill next year.(Brickbats)(wild game health)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The European Parliament will reportedly take up a bill next year that would require wild game to be certified as fit and healthy before it is shot.

A Norwegian court has ordered the government to buy a car for a man who says he is too short to use mass transit.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... A Norwegian court has ordered the government to buy a car for a man who says he is too short to use mass transit. The man, who stands about 4 feet, 8 inches, says he was bullied as a child because of his height and has bitter memories of riding...

Louisville police found John W. Riddle riding in a car with a "known prostitute.".(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Louisville police found John W. Riddle riding in a car with a "known prostitute." According to the police report, Riddle had a bottle of Viagra in his pocket, and the prostitute told officers that he had picked her up to have sex. Both were...

Smokers need not apply for sheriff's deputy jobs in Riverside County, California.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Smokers need not apply for sheriff's deputy jobs in Riverside County, California. New hires will soon have to sign a contract pledging not to smoke either on or off the job. Officials say the move is a necessary cost-saving measure: Under...

Shirley Hammond's six-year-old grandson had his heart set on a Super Sound Socker Bopper Bop Buddy, a talking inflatable punching-bag.(Brickbats)
March 1, 2004... Shirley Hammond's six-year-old grandson had his heart set on a Super Sound Socker Bopper Bop Buddy, a talking inflatable punching-bag. But when the 68-year-old Quebec woman tried to order one for him, Sears Canada refused, fearing it would run...

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) doesn't want his NRA TV.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) doesn't want his NRA TV. He's sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging that the National Rifle Association not be granted a media exemption to campaign finance laws banning " electioneering...

Got bilk? Compelling speech.(Citings)(Federal Dairy Promotion Program)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... THE FEDERAL Dairy Promotion Program is determined to help dairy farmers. With their own money. Whether they like it or not. But two traditional dairy farmers are determined to get government hands off their udders. Pennsylvanians Joseph...

Waste not, why not? Excess school savings.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... THE WEB SITE for the Massachusetts State Auditor's Office proudly displays the motto, "The Cruelest Tax of All Is Waste." The same agency has agreed to audit 43 of the state's charter schools for saving too much money. The Boston-based...

Balance sheet.(Citings)(laws and regulations)
March 1, 2004... Fee Simple The Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992 has not resulted in companies buying federal approval of new drugs. A University of Michigan study finds the $1 billion in fees bought big, politically active firms no advantage before...

InvestaPundit.(Data)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... They say the market as a whole is smarter than any individual investor. Therefore, it ought to be exponentially smarter than any one political pundit. That, anyway, is the theory behind the Iowa Electronic Markets, a project run by the...

Do not pass go: transit visas stalled.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... You HAVE TO admire whoever dreamed up this headline for a government press release: "HOMELAND SECURITY AND DEPARTMENT OF STATE TAKE IMMEDIATE STEPS TO MAKE AIR TRAVEL EVEN SAFER." It covers all the bases, reassuring us that what they're about...

Commercial appeals: victories for federalism.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... GIVEN ITS reputation as the most left-leaning federal appeals court, the 9th Circuit is not the first place you'd expect to find a resurgence in federalism. But recently it has distinguished itself as one of the few federal courts trying to put...

Facts on the ground: eminent domain for dummies.(Citings)(San Joaquin Board of Education )
March 1, 2004... IN 2001 WILLARD Eisner was approached by the San Joaquin Board of Education about selling a 36,000-square-foot chunk of his 96,000-square-foot parcel of commercial land in Stockton, California. He wasn't using the area in question, and board...

Outing history.(Soundbite)(Louis Crompton)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... They call it "the love that dare not speak its name" for good reason. Even after the explosion of literature on gay issues since the 1970s, comprehensive examinations of homosexuality in history have been few. An exception is Louis Crompton's...

Waiting for Antar: Saddam, suicide, and cultural despair.(Columns)
March 1, 2004... WHEN ADEEB BERAKAT, a 35-year-old Palestinian in Jenin, watched the now-famous footage of a captured and docile-appearing Saddam Hussein being inspected for lice, he became angry. "Saddam has been humiliated," he told a reporter, although his...

Opening marriage: do same-sex unions pave the way for polygamy?(Columns)
March 1, 2004... THE DEBATE OVER same-sex marriage moved closer to center stage last November, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that denying marriage rights to gay couples violated the state constitution. To a large extent, the debate is...

Two-faced power: I love my country, but my government confuses the hell out of me.(Rant)
March 1, 2004... DO POLICY MAKERS care about consistency at all? To judge from their recent jumble of mutually exclusive directives, their actual goal might be mass psychosis. Consider the ban on the diet supplement ephedra, a mild stimulant that human...

Confessions of a welfare queen: how rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars.(National Flood Insurance Program)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2004... Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law. --Oliver Goldsmith RONALD REAGAN MEMORABLY complained about "welfare queens," but he never told us that the biggest welfare queens are the already wealthy. Their lobbyists fawn over...

Faith, shame, and insurgency: life in occupied Iraq.
March 1, 2004... UNLESS YOU'RE A VIP who can fly directly into the Baghdad airport, the usual way to get to the city is from Amman, Jordan--a 600-mile, 12-hour-plus drive (depending on the vagaries of Jordanian customs officials) across barren terrain only a...

Babylonian hostility: in Iraq, the Jews--and anti-Semitism--are everywhere.
March 1, 2004... Last August, when Imam Mahdi al Jumeili of the small Hudheifa Mosque in Baghdad's Shurti neighborhood met three American officers to resolve a dispute over soldiers entering the grounds of his mosque, his first question was, "Are any of you...

Coercion vs. consent: a reason debate on how to think about liberty.(The Ambiguities of Reason: Of Large and Small 'r's)
March 1, 2004... The following exchange got underway at the reason 35th anniversary banquet, which was held last November in Los Angeles. Keynote speaker Richard Epstein, the eminent legal theorist and author of the new Skepticism and Freedom, delivered a...

Swingers of the world, unite! A report from an "alternative lifestyles" conference.(Culture and Reviews)
March 1, 2004... THE RECENT DEBATE OVER GAY MARRIAGE INSPIRED ME (IN PART) TO ATTEND THE THIRD ANNUAL "BUILDING BRIDGES' CONFERENCE, HELD IN A HOTEL IN SUBURBAN SEATTLE... I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THIS GATHERING OF SWINGERS, POLYAMORISTS, SADO'...

Blood money: Gettysburg's status as a national symbol is inseparable from its commercial success.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Gettysburg: Memory, Market; and an American Shrine, by Jim Weeks, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 288 pages, $29.95 IN JULY 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George G....

The music never stopped: recordings depend on music, not vice versa.
March 1, 2004... When I was young, I thought the music I heard on the radio was coming from live bands performing in the studios as I listened. I imagined pop groups frantically packing up to make room for the next one, then dashing across town to perform their...

Talkin' 'bout regeneration: politics, pop culture, and teen spirit.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit, by Danny Goldberg, New York: Miramax, 336 pages, $23.95 WHEN THE DEMOCRATS narrowly lost the House and Senate ha 2002, party activists launched a blame game. Presidential...

McLuhan's war: TV and Tailgunner Joe.
March 1, 2004... HERE WE ARE, little more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, and it all seems like a distant, irrelevant dream, like the season of Dallos that turned out to be a figment of Bobby Ewing's imagination. Indeed, more people probably...

Quick change.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... THIS 12-INCH doll of a bearded Saddam Hussein was being marketed by an outfit called Herobuilders.com within 24 hours of Saddam's emergence from his spider hole. While it wasn't the first capture-related "product"--that distinction probably...

Differences in American and European worldviews.
March 1, 2004... Rather than viewing European anti-Americanism solely in terms of current policy disputes, we must look at our deep-seated cultural differences. According to Views of a Changing World, a study conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project,...