Reason articles from March 2007

Reason archives from March 2007

The credulity of Castro's defenders.(Fidel Castro)
March 1, 2007... BY THE TIME you read this, Fidel Castro may already be dead, taking with him to the grave one of the sorriest legacies in 20th century politics. Despite the immiseration (to use an apt Marxist term) of his people, his ruthless censorship, his...

A healthy dose of anarchy.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... Neille Ilel nailed the dichotomy between the two kinds of emergency aid groups in New Orleans ("A Healthy Dose of Anarchy," December). It's good there is someone writing about this. I've always wondered how, after the storm, all this hysterical...

Who deserves the libertarian vote?(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... "Who Deserves the Libertarian Vote?" (December) provided a good array of opinions. I think it would be best to forget parties altogether. If someone has libertarian positions as a Democrat, don't vote for him because "the Democrats are a better...

Butch Otter rides again.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... Rep. Butch Otter ("Butch Otter Rides Again," November) voted against the PATRIOT Act and in favor of prohibiting flag burning. From a purely libertarian perspective, the PATRIOT Act--to address a situation in which lives may be at stake--is...

Cold comfort: big Pharma and the drug war.(Food and Drug Administration on pseudoephedrine drugs)(Pfizer Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... WHEN THE media first seized on the methamphetamine scare, critics lambasted the pharmaceutical industry for its complicity in producing the illegal stimulant. They charged that drug companies, out of greed, were refusing to replace the...

40 years war: surveilling Americans.(Citings)(managing records)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... JUST A FEW days before the November elections, the Department of Homeland Security made an announcement carefully crafted to be read by almost nobody. It slipped a notice in The Federal Register, the government's daily publication, about an...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Quotation)
March 1, 2007... "The whole idea of 'guiding' private industry by announcing beforehand what quantities of different goods firms ought to produce over a long period of the future is a muddle from beginning to end." --F.A. Hayek, "'Planning' Our Way to...

Bowling together: sprawl and social virtue.(Robert Putnam)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... THE SPREAD-OUT, suburban, auto-centered way of life has been blamed for everything from anomie to obesity. The well-known sociologist Robert Putnam has even quantified his animus against sprawl, claiming that it decreases community involvement...

Zoned out: sex offender residency restrictions.(Citings)(Legislation)
March 1, 2007... A JERSEY City ordinance that took effect in December bars sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school, day care center, park, playground, sports facility, library, theater, or convenience store. Together those zones cover virtually...

Quotes.(Citings)(Quotation)
March 1, 2007... "I still think this is a great country. In Mexico, they would have just shot me." --maverick dairyman Hein Hettinga on being barred from underselling the dairy cartel, quoted in The Washington Post, December 10 "One particularly good...

Stark revelations: Internet porn by numbers.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... LAST YEAR the U.S. Department of Justice hired Philip B. Stark, a statistician at the University of California at Berkeley, to scour the Web for porn. The government wanted hard numbers to bolster its defense of the Child Online Protection Act,...

Prisoner's dilemma: incarceration and crime.(violent crime control)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... AFTER A nearly two-decade decline, violent crime in the U.S. has begun to inch upward again. The shift has been powered almost entirely by small-to-mid-sized cities such as Cincinnati, Charlotte, and Baltimore. Crime in larger cities such as...

Subsidy creep: pork and produce.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... NOT EVERY American farmer relies on federal subsidies. Watermelon, potato, garlic, berry, and other produce farmers have stuck it out on their own and done well; their crops bring in $52 billion a year, about half the agricultural value of the...

Bar brawl: Europe's vodka wars.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... UNDER NORMAL circumstances, the question "what's your drink?" suggests congenial hospitality. In the European Union it has sparked an angry trade dispute that's pitting country against country. Right now, the region's regulations state that...

Smoke-free homes: ever-expanding smoking bans.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... IN 1998, when California's ban on smoking in virtually all indoor workplaces took full effect, the idea of forcing all bars and restaurants to be smoke-free still seemed strange. Since then about 20 other states have adopted similar...

Four eighth-grade girls in Marion, Indiana, were suspended from school for five days.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Four eighth-grade girls in Marion, Indiana, were suspended from school for five days. They say it's because they all wore matching outfits one day, and school officials thought that if they were dressed alike they must be in a gang. Principal...

A German court has fined Juergen Kamm more than $4,000 for selling anti-Nazi merchandise.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... A German court has fined Juergen Kamm more than $4,000 for selling anti-Nazi merchandise. Kamm put crossed-out Nazi symbols on buttons, stickers, and T-shirts and sold them to opponents of the far right. But German law forbids any reproduction...

In October temperatures dropped to near freezing in DeKalb County, Georgia, but local school officials refused to turn on the heat.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... In October temperatures dropped to near freezing in DeKalb County, Georgia, but local school officials refused to turn on the heat. They say it's school policy not to turn the heat on until October 30. And once the heat is on, it stays on at...

The Indonesian edition of Playboy contains no nudity.(Brickbats)(charge for obscenity in magazine)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The Indonesian edition of Playboy contains no nudity. In fact, it's reportedly tamer than some other magazines that are sold in the country. But its editor, Erwin Arnada, faces up to 32 months in prison on charges of publishing indecent...

Angela Hickling of Derbyshire, England, says she looked for but could not find a ball her neighbor's son allegedly kicked into her garden.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Angela Hickling of Derbyshire, England, says she looked for but could not find a ball her neighbor's son allegedly kicked into her garden. That apparently didn't satisfy the neighbor. The next day an officer from the Derbyshire Constabulary...

Kallen Ford and a friend were playing hacky sack outside Colorado's Boulder County Courthouse when a police officer approached.
March 1, 2007... Kallen Ford and a friend were playing hacky sack outside Colorado's Boulder County Courthouse when a police officer approached. The cop took their sack and issued Ford a $250 fine for "releasing projectiles on the mall."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has banned trucks from selling beer on the street.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has banned trucks from selling beer on the street. "I want the National Guard to stop the beer trucks and take them to the nearest command post. No more trucks," he said in a televised speech. When his call was...

Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov has prohibited state employees from having gold teeth.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov has prohibited state employees from having gold teeth. Gold and silver crowns are considered a sign of affluence in Central Asia, and some reports indicate up to half of all current government workers will...

Benign cells? Cancer and mobile phones.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... IN 1993 David Reynard declared on Larry King Live that a cell phone had caused his wife's fatal brain cancer and that he was suing for damages. He lost the case due to a lack of scientific evidence for his claim, but his TV appearance set off a...

Driving capital markets offshore.(Data)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... In 2005, 24 out of 25 of the year's largest initial public offerings (IPOs) took place outside the United States. Does that mean American capital markets are losing their appeal? A new study says yes. In a working paper for the Committee on...

Pagan precedent: church, state, and school.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... MEET IDOLATRY'S new best friend, the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Falwell's devotion to defending religious expression in public school has helped young pagans spread their spiritual beliefs during the Christmas season. In September school...

Who gives to charity?(Soundbite)(interview with Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University)(Interview)
March 1, 2007... In Who Really Cares?: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism (Basic Books), Arthur C. Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University, examines charitable giving across America. He finds that people who donate...

Bob Barr and the Libertarians: a former republican congressman joins a third party.(Column)
March 1, 2007... MOVIEGOERS WHO WALKED into last year's surprise blockbuster Borat were treated to images of naked male wrestling, the attempted kidnapping of Pamela Anderson, and something truly surprising: an interview with former Republican congressman Bob...

Enforcing virtue: is social stigma a threat to liberty, or is it liberty in action?(Column)
March 1, 2007... IT'S THE DEBATE that won't die: the endless face-off between conservatives and libertarians over the tension between liberty and morality. In his foreword to the 1998 anthology Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate--much of it...

Where are the democrats? When it comes to Iraq, the opposition party is afraid to oppose.
March 1, 2007... IT'S HARD TO get out of a deal with the devil. That's the congressional Democrats' dilemma as they continue to treat the Iraq war as a speed bump on their pathway to the perks of restored power. Take Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Asked on...

Who owns your body parts? Everyone's making money in the market for body tissue--except the donors.
March 1, 2007... ALISTAIR COOKE'S body lay cold in the embalming room of an East Harlem funeral home, suspended in the brief limbo between death and cremation. A "cutter" soon arrived to make a collection. He sliced open Cooke's legs, sawed the bones from the...

Dangerous when in power: does government protect us from hazardous products, or does it put us in harm's way?
March 1, 2007... GEORGE BARNES worked as a shipfitter at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for 25 years, from 1967 to 1992. In 2005 he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, a condition he blamed on exposure to asbestos at the yard. A San Francisco jury agreed...

The life and times of Milton Friedman: remembering the 20th century's most influential libertarian.(Milton Friedman)(In memoriam)
March 1, 2007... WHEN MILTON FRIEDMAN stepped forward on December 10, 1976, to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences from the King of Sweden, he needed bodyguards. His moment of glory was marred by a mob of protesters outside gathering to...

Fidel's favorite propagandist: how a New York Times reporter's passion for Castro led him astray.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Man Who Invented Fidel: Cuba, Castro, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times, by Anthony DePalma, New York: Public-Affairs, 308 pages, $26.95 AHA' FINALLY WE'VE discovered the missing ingredient in American journalism, the...

Why the iPod personalizes everything.
March 1, 2007... The conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan once grumpily lamented the rise of "the iPod people." Walking down a New York street in February 2005, Sullivan saw each person "in his own musical world, walking to their soundtrack, stars in their own...

Red Elvis: the strange tale of the Soviets' favorite rock 'n' roll star.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Union, by Reggie Nadelson, New York: Walker & Company, 352 pages, $14.95 SOFT MEMORIES of East Germany's lost "glories" are...

No small matter: is theoretical physics stuck--and should you worry?(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 392 pages, $26 LEE SMOLIN became a physicist in the 1970s amid heady expectations that the field was...

Father of funk: the life--and afterlife--of James Brown.(James Brown)(In memoriam)
March 1, 2007... IN 1968 Amiri Baraka declared James Brown "our number one black poet." He wasn't the only writer who felt that way. Larry Neal, one of Baraka's confederates in the radical Black Arts Movement, later recalled that Brown was a hero to Neal's...

Zero tolerance for silly pictures.(Artifact)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... YEARS AFTER the letter jackets and class rings have been put away, adults smile with mild embarrassment at their goofy high school yearbook photos. High school senior Patrick Agin, age 17 and a proud member of the Society for Creative...