Reason articles from March 2006

Reason archives from March 2006

Fighting yesterday's battles today.(Editor's Note)
March 1, 2006... REST EASY, AMERICA, As a response to the 9/11 attacks, the Princeton, New Jersey, Fire Department now owns Nautilus exercise equipment, free weights, and a Bowflex machine. The police dogs of Columbus, Ohio, are protected by Kevlar vests, thank...

McCain's war on political speech.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... Is Bradley A. Smith really so naive as to believe that campaign contributions play no role in our corrupt political system ("John McCain's War on Political Speech," December)? This very magazine is filled with articles that prove the opposite....

Let a thousand choices bloom.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... A great advance in education ("Let a Thousand Choices Bloom," December) would be for textbook publishers to offer warranties on accuracy. The whole point of education is to transmit accurate information. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of...

Goodbye to Goldwater.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... After reading Jonathan Ranch's review of Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family ("Goodbye to Goldwater," December), I'm convinced the conservative movement's founding father, the late Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry...

Corporate social responsibility revisited.
March 1, 2006... In the October reason, two businessmen and an economist--Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers, and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman--debated the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The feature generated...

Breaking rent: after Katrina.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... NEW ORLEANS City Council President Oliver Thomas apparently wants to finish the job begun by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans, not surprisingly, is short of places to put people; nearly 142,000 houses and apartments were damaged or destroyed when...

Terror in Nebraska: PATRIOT Act abuses.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... THE USA PATRIOT Act gave law enforcement agencies unprecedented and controversial authority to "sneak and peek" into people's homes and businesses without immediately notifying them. Actually, "sneak and peek" is an incomplete phrase: Since...

25 years ago in reason.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... "Mr. Reagan... should take to heart his very own words that 'libertarianism and conservatism are traveling down the same path,' and he should make this into a policy, not just a bland wish." --Tibor Machan, "Some Thoughts for the New...

Have gun, won't travel: gun-free school zones.(Citings)
March 1, 2006... DURING CHIEF Justice John Roberts' confirmation hearings last fall, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) brought up the Gun-Free School ZonesAct, which made it a federal crime punishable by five years in prison to possess a gun within 1,000 feet of a...

Friends with benefits: targeting gay employees.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... OHIO'S MIAMI University offers domestic partners of gay employees the same benefits--health and dental insurance, recreation center discounts, tuition waivers--that it extends to the spouses of married employees. That doesn't sit well with...

Rocking the bus: mandatory ID checks.(Citings)
March 1, 2006... THE FIRST TIME she was asked to show identification while riding the bus to work, Deborah Davis was so startled that she complied without thinking. But the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. That's how Davis, a middle-aged...

Quotes.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... "Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively, restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality. Censorship as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First...

Covert advertising: the FCC vs. product placement.(Federal Communications Commission)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... WHEN PETER PARKER shot out his webbing and snagged that can of Dr. Pepper in Spider-Man, it seems that impressionable movie audiences across the country suffered deleterious consequences--perhaps in the form of forgetting how much they loved...

Middle-class warfare: military recruits and poverty.(Citings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... IF THERE'S any subject where Marxist theories about economic exploitation still hold sway in America, it's military recruiting. In different ways, Democrats and Republicans both subscribe to the notion that recruits are poor kids driven to...

The British Parliament is considering a bill that would establish a national curriculum for the first three years of a child's life.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... The British Parliament is considering a bill that would establish a national curriculum for the first three years of a child's life. All child care providers, including nannies, would be required to teach it.

The state of Connecticut wants to ban the sale of Seriously Bad Elf beer.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... The state of Connecticut wants to ban the sale of Seriously Bad Elf beer. The British import's label features "a mean-looking elf with a slingshot firing Christmas ornaments at Santa's sleigh as it flies overhead," according to the Associated...

"You don't expect your daughter to go to school and come home with drugs in her bag," says Amanda Butterfield.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... "You don't expect your daughter to go to school and come home with drugs in her bag," says Amanda Butterfield. And you really don't expect to find that police put them there. But that's what happened to the English woman after her to-year-old...

Among the Florida tourist attractions the federal government wants to "harden" under a $90 million grant program meant to protect infrastructure from attack are Dinosaur World and Weeki Wachee Springs.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Among the Florida tourist attractions the federal government wants to "harden" under a $90 million grant program meant to protect infrastructure from attack are Dinosaur World and Weeki Wachee Springs. Among the sites left off the list,...

Chinese authorities have arrested more than 100,000 members of the Falun Gong religious movement and sent at least 20,000 to labor camps.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Chinese authorities have arrested more than 100,000 members of the Falun Gong religious movement and sent at least 20,000 to labor camps. According to Chinese human rights activists, members of unregistered religious groups who are imprisoned...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded the San Diego-based Titan Corporation more than $550,000 for equipment and work related to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded the San Diego-based Titan Corporation more than $550,000 for equipment and work related to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. The company currently faces two lawsuits in connection with the...

Police in the Iranian town Bojnourd.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Police in the Iranian town Bojnourd have seized 65 store mannequins because they weren't properly veiled.

When the Olympics come to London in 2012, members of the "Olympic family," including athletes, government officials, and corporate sponsors, will have special traffic lanes set aside for their use.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... When the Olympics come to London in 2012, members of the "Olympic family," including athletes, government officials, and corporate sponsors, will have special traffic lanes set aside for their use. Ordinary drivers will be herded into the...

French Revolution.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Members of the French National Assembly reverse the Culture Ministry's attempt to outlaw sharing music and movies online. Instead, they back a monthly royalty scheme of about $8.50 a month for file swapping.

Veteran drinker.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... State Rep. Jim Splaine (D-Portsmouth) wants to lower New Hampshire's drinking age for military personnel to 18. Splaine figures that if they can handle a weapon, they can handle a beer.

iEconomy.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Mobile electronic gadgets fuel a tech boom from Korea to California to Switzerland. NAND flash-memory chips were a $10 billion market in 2005 and will hit $18 billion worldwide by 2008, the IT research firm Gartner Inc. estimates.

Speech insurance.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Officials in Polk County, Florida, eliminate a rule requiring anyone who wants to set up a display-often holiday-themed--outside county government offices to purchase a $500,000 liability insurance policy.

Download defense.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Patricia Santangelo, a single morn in Wappingers Falls, New York, refuses to fold when the recording industry charges that she is a music pirate. A federal judge notes the 43-year-old is "an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa...

Beating diabetes.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute find a genetic link between a high-fat diet and the onset of type 2 diabetes. A single gene in a key enzyme seems to disrupt insulin production, which suggests using that enzyme to develop a...

Tech war.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... You would never know it from the relative law enforcement attention, but cybercrime now outpaces illegal drug sales in annual proceeds, netting over $105 billion in 2004. The FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey also pegs the average loss per...

Drugged out.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Medicare's new drug benefit confuses seniors more than ATMS and VCRS combined. A letter from Humana Inc. listing a help line for the program accidentally directs Iowa residents to a phone sex line. Good Samaritans with laptops and Net...

Outlaw guitar.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... The Music Publishers' Association chief says the operators of guitar tablature sites should go to jail. The owners of the mechanical rights to songs plan to follow the recording industry's path of suing and harassing music lovers in the hope of...

Chubby chasers.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Lawmakers in Argentina's Buenos Aires province pass a law requiring women's clothing shops to stock all sizes from 6 to 16. Failure to provide the proper range of sizes brings a fine of up to $170,000.

Standing precedent.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... A teacher calls a Palm Beach County high school student "so ungrateful and so un-American" for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in class. The school district requires written parental permission for such disobedience.

Caption action.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... A Federal Communications Commission mandate that all new TV programming be closed captioned kicked in January 1, leaving stations confused and liable--at $8,000 per violation--for any misstep. Stations now have an incentive not to air emergency...

Ghost of Tonkin: cover-up covered up.(Citings)
March 1, 2006... IT HAS BEEN common knowledge for years that the murky events triggering the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution--the closest Vietnam ever got to a U.S. declaration of war--were manipulated by then-President Lyndon Johnson to encourage the country to...

Complaint fraud.(Data)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... In late November, just as the Senate Commerce Committee was about to hold an "Open Forum on Decency," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a sharp increase in complaints about the content of broadcast programming, from 6,161 in...

Tech delusions: laptops for the poor.(Citings)
March 1, 2006... IN NOVEMBER the nonprofit group One Laptop per Child, an offshoot of MIT's Media Laboratory, unveiled a prototype of a $100 laptop meant for underprivileged kids in remote parts of the developing world. The Linux-based PCs, dubbed "green...

Kidnapped by aliens.(Soundbite)(Interview)
March 1, 2006... As a Harvard Ph.D. student in the late 1990s, psychologist Susan Clancy took a skeptical look at the phenomenon of "recovered memories," which had been sending accused molesters to jail for a decade. Her work promptly got her labeled a "friend...

Old propaganda and new: Bush is wrong to use the Cold War's covert tactics in the new twilight struggle.
March 1, 2006... WHEN MY FRIEND Vladan Sir first heard George Orwell's Animal Farm broadcast on either the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe (it's hard to remember which, he listened to both so much), he was 15 or 16, living in the mining-scarred region of...

Torturing logic: is pulling fingernails really just an aggressive manicure?(Columns)
March 1, 2006... I NEVER IMAGINED, immediately after 9/11, that four years later we would be having a debate on whether and how much the United States should torture prisoners--or that the Bush administration would wage a losing battle against anti-torture...

Dead man tells no tales: media docility and another no-cost federal killing.(Rent)
March 1, 2006... IN DECEMBER TWO air marshals gunned down an American citizen in Miami, and most of the establishment media outlets apparently couldn't care less. Immediately after 44-year-old Rigoberto Alpizar died on December 7 in a hail of bullets from two...

Are we ready for the next 9/11? The sorry state--and stunning waste--of homeland security spending.(Cover Story)
March 1, 2006... WHAT DO GYM memberships, the Fourteen Mile Bridge in Mobile, Alabama, and a promotional campaign for a child pornography tip-line have in common? Answer: They all were funded with your homeland security dollars. Since September 11,...

Why poor countries are poor: the clues lie on a bumpy road leading to the world's worst library.
March 1, 2006... THEY CALL DOUALA the "armpit of Africa" Lodged beneath the bulging shoulder of West Africa, this malaria-infested city in southwestern Cameroon is humid, unattractive, and smelly. On a torrid evening in late 2001, I was guided out of the...

Absolution in your cup: the real meaning of fair trade coffee.
March 1, 2006... OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, 1990: A mundane meeting of coffee cognoscenti dissolves into a spectacular clash of personalities. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) represented an undeveloped but rapidly growing industry, a loose...

Curb your enthusiasms: moralists left and right want to control your carnal desires.(Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America)(Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America, by Morgan Spurlock, New York: Putnam, 320 pages, $21.95 Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, by Ben Shapiro, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing,...

Fat suit chic: Moribund Hollywood visits morbidly obese America.
March 1, 2006... When New Line Cinema advertised its Ryan Reynolds vehicle Just Friends as a fat suit comedy, then abruptly changed tack and touted it as a romantic tale of a thin man's innocence regained, the studio's about-face reflected more than just the...

The Silence of the Cats: Trent Lott still refuses to speak frankly about racism.(Herding Cats: A Life in Politics)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Herding Cats: A Life in Politics, by Trent Lott, New York: Harper Collins/Regan Books, 312 pages, $27.50 HAROLD PINTER recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Trent Lott will never win that award. But the two have something in common....

Volatile Stardust: the fertile mind of astronomer Fred Hoyle.(Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science)(Fred Hoyle's Universe)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science, by Simon Mitton, Washington, D. C.: Joseph Henry Press, 401 pages, $27. 95 Fred Hoyle's Universe, by Jane Gregory, New York: Oxford University Press, 406 pages, $29.95 FRED HOYLE...

The Wal-Mart crusade: big-boxing a mega-retailer's ears.
March 1, 2006... A QUACK HAS been defined as someone who's got something good for you no matter what's wrong with you. That must make documentarian Robert Greenwald a kind of anti-quack. No matter what you think is wrong with the world-pollution, street crime,...

Drug freak show.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... THESE HEADS illustrating "a variety of addicts' diseases" are part of a government-supported wax exhibition that opened in Moscow last fall; its theme is "the graphic dangers of drugs." Other images on display include a gangrenous foot, a...