Reason articles from March 2009

Reason archives from March 2009

Your money or your democracy: it's the most privileged industries that demand protection.(From the Top)
March 1, 2009... "WE'RE MORE worthy of a bailout than the jokers on Wall Street," Jason Whitlock wrote in The Kansas City Star just before the annus bailoutus of 2008 wound to a close. The "we" in this case wasn't Detroit's Big 2.5 automakers, or the...

Are you better off than you were 40 years ago?(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Veronique de Rugy makes a strong case that freedom has increased in the U.S. since reason began publication in 1968 ("Are You Better Off Than You Were 40 Years Ago?," December). One additional data point in her favor...

What's the Matter With Libertarians?(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Jesse Walker is misguided when he claims that right-wingers should not have fought the Cold War in the early 1980s because the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse ("What's the Matter With Libertarians?," December). He falls into the...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2009... CORRECTIONS: In "Sterilized by the State" (December), Paul Lombardo's academic affiliation was identified incorrectly. He is a law professor at Georgia State University. In "The Look of reason" (December), Susanna Dulkinys should have been...

reason news.(Letters)
March 1, 2009... We're pleased to announce that Michael C. Moynihan has been promoted to senior editor.

Gay by force: legal equality does not mean requiring universal acceptance of homosexuality.(Column)
March 1, 2009... ON NOVEMBER 19, the same day the California Supreme Court agreed to review a new ban on same-sex marriage, the online matchmaker eHarmony settled a New Jersey discrimination complaint by agreeing to serve gay singles. A week later, a Florida...

Vanity lair: Congress honors itself.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... IN THE EARLY 1990s, Congress got the idea that America needed an underground facility where tourists could escape D.C.'s sticky Augusts and biting Februaries while lining up to tour the Capitol. Estimated cost: $70 million, In the 15 years...

Blunt talk: loose cigar sales banned.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... PRINCE GEORGE'S County, Maryland, has banned the single sale of cheap cigars, which can now be purchased only in packs of five or more. Single blunts, according to the county council, are a) gateways to cigarette smoking and b) drug...

35 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Harry Browne is in many ways a modern day Epicurean. 'You can't change the fate of a nation,' he says, 'but you can do a great deal to make sure you're not affected adversely by it.'" --John Hospers, "The New...

Misery gets company: incarceration record.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... IN 2007, according to a December report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a record 2.3 million Americans were behind bars. That was 1.5 percent more than in 2006. The number includes about 780,000 people in local jails, 1.4 million in...

Who's harassed now? Sexual politics in California.(Citings)
March 1, 2009... IN 2003, ON the eve of his historic election as California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger was hit with a multipart series in the Los Angeles Times alleging that the famous actor had groped 16 unwilling women in the workplace. Partly as a...

Computer abuse: legal peril for Web users.(Citings)
March 1, 2009... IN 2007 THE prosecuting attorney for St. Charles County, Missouri, said he would not bring charges against Lori Drew for her role in a MySpace prank that apparently provoked a 13-year-old girl to kill herself. The reason was simple: Although...

Quotes.
March 1, 2009... "It's something that they need to assist them in daily living." --Matthew Carmel, president of Constitution Arms, on his desire to get Medicare reimbursement certification for a gun he designed called the Palm Pilot, which allows people...

Soothsayer speech: no fortunetelling ban.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... THE CRYSTAL ball is dim, but spirits and signs indicate further victories for freedom of speech, even when money changes hands and consumer protection is allegedly at stake. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In October a federal judge overturned...

Safe bet: online gambling surrender.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... A 2006 law charged financial institutions with blocking transactions related to "unlawful Internet gambling" But the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act did not define unlawful Internet gambling, and neither did the rules that federal...

Attacking the defense: elected public defenders.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... CIVIL LIBERTARIANS often have misgivings about electing judges and prosecutors, since voters tend to be more enthusiastic about putting lots of people in jail than they are about protecting due process. But the risks associated with electing...

Media recession.(List)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... The Fox News late-night talk show Red Eye mixes equal parts personal and political trash talking. Here host Greg Gutfeld--the former editor of Men's Health, Stuff, and U.K. Maxim--celebrates the effects of the recession on the media with the...

Cornelius F. Salonis spent two months in a Minnesota jail on drug possession charges before lab tests showed the white powder police found in his car was deodorant.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cornelius F. Salonis spent two months in a Minnesota jail on drug possession charges before lab tests showed the white powder police found in his car was deodorant. His attorney blamed a faulty field test.

In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old boy has been placed in juvenile detention on child pornography charges.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old boy has been placed in juvenile detention on child pornography charges. A female classmate reportedly took nude photos of herself and sent them to his cell phone.

The British government is set to ban "happy hour" discounted drink promotions in bars, according to British press reports.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... The British government is set to ban "happy hour" discounted drink promotions in bars, according to British press reports. It may also prohibit bars from offering women free or reduced-price drinks and require health warnings on alcoholic...

Daytona Beach, Florida, has banned Santa Claus.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Daytona Beach, Florida, has banned Santa Claus. City officials say they will fine shop owner Sheila LaBosco if she allows a man dressed as Santa to hand out candy canes on the sidewalk outside her store, since he would violate city laws against...

Why did police seek former Orange County, California, Republican Party Chairman George Andrews for questioning?(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Why did police seek former Orange County, California, Republican Party Chairman George Andrews for questioning? Someone overheard him at an auto repair shop talking on his cell phone about the prospects for gun control policy under Barack...

Utah has prohibited grocery stores and convenience stores from selling fruity alcoholic drinks.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Utah has prohibited grocery stores and convenience stores from selling fruity alcoholic drinks. Package stores can still sell those drinks, but only if the labels show the alcohol content in capital letters. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Beaufort County, South Carolina, Council Member Laura Von Harten said she would vote against a proposal to rezone a local Catholic church so it can expand.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Beaufort County, South Carolina, Council Member Laura Von Harten said she would vote against a proposal to rezone a local Catholic church so it can expand.She cited the Catholic Church's opposition to female priests and to "uterus rights." "I...

For hundreds of years, spas in Asia have used carp to eat the dead skin off their customers.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For hundreds of years, spas in Asia have used carp to eat the dead skin off their customers. It's supposedly relaxing and healthy. Tuyet Bui decided that the treatment might prove popular in her nail salon in Kent,...

Dutch police cited a 27-year-old man for smoking a joint in one of Amsterdam's famous coffee shops.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Dutch police cited a 27-year-old man for smoking a joint in one of Amsterdam's famous coffee shops. Smoking pot is legal there, but the man, who was not identified by the local press, mixed the pot with tobacco before rolling the joint. That...

Lender ender: SEC vs. loan clearinghouse.(Citings)(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... FEELING A little wary of banks these days? Until recently, people looking to get a small loan had another option: Prosper, an online auction site that let individual lenders choose whom to loan money, leaving the two parties to negotiate terms...

Pay up: higher insurance premiums.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... ALMOST ANY economist could tell you that health insurance mandates increase the price of coverage for everybody. But by how much? Thanks to research recently published in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, we now have an answer: a lot....

ID and surveillance.(Follow-Up)
March 1, 2009... The cover story of our August-September 2003 issue, "Suspected Terrorist," reported on computer industry millionaire John Gilmore's court challenge of the mysterious legal requirement to show ID before getting on a plane--"mysterious" because...

Free beer: brewing individualism.(Citings)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... BEER AND individualism go together like beer and pretzels, according to a study reported in the February Journal of Consumer Research. Marketing researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio compared beer guzzling habits across...

High art.(Soundbite)(David Hillman interview)(Interview)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] David Hillman isn't the first classics scholar to have cited historical texts that suggest recreational drug use was common in antiquity, but doing so at the University of Wisconsin in 2004 almost cost him his...

Draft Dodgers: for DIY brewers, prohibition lasted until 1978. But once unleashed, they revolutionized the industry.(do-it-yourself)(Column)
March 1, 2009... FOR CONNOISSEURS of Budweiser, the 1970s were a pale golden age. In every supermarket across the land, the King of Beers maintained its status as the grocery world's most superfluous monarch, reigning over just a handful of domestic...

Dissatisfaction guaranteed: the federal government should stop guaranteeing loans.(Column)
March 1, 2009... EACH TIME an auto company, small business, or homeowner receives a politically motivated loan guarantee, the giveaway creates yet another unfunded liability for future taxpayers. Now, in response to the economic crisis, the feds have provided...

A better new new deal: how can we get the most bang for our transportation buck? Here are six ideas for the new president and cash-strapped governors.(Cover story)
March 1, 2009... ON DECEMBER 6, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced to a nation battered by job losses and worsening economic conditions that his administration would make "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the...

'I think the SEC was distracted': outgoing Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins talks about bailouts, hedge funds, and what he thinks the SEE should have been regulating.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Interview)
March 1, 2009... THE NICKNAME "DR. No" has been applied to more than former presidential candidate Ron Paul and a certain James Bond villain. In 2005 that's what Business Week called Paul Atkins, then halfway through his six-year stint on the Securities and...

Not one more acre! Ranchers in Colorado's Pinon Canyon fight a massive Army land grab.
March 1, 2009... MACK LOUDEN spits Copenhagen juice on the floor of the empty storage bay of his shuttered feed store in Trinidad, a small town in southeastern Colorado an hour's drive from Louden's ranch. He rests his hand on a leather cell phone holster like...

Room to maneuver: sizing up a land grab.(military bases' land areas)(List)
March 1, 2009... At 663,000 acres, the expanded Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site would be the second largest active military site in the United States. Here are the current top five: * Fort Bliss (California): 1.1 million acres * Fort Irwin (California):...

Can Christiania survive? A countercultural enclave in Denmark fights for its life.(Culture and Reviews)
March 1, 2009... PUSHERSTREET ISN'T what it used to be. The leading source of retail cannabis in all of Denmark, in one of the largest and oldest anarchic enclaves in all of Europe, is no longer the bustling, friendly spice bazaar of years gone by. There's a...

Post-apocalyptic D.C.(Briefly Noted)(Foilout 3)(Product/service evaluation)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You're born in an underground vault, armed by age 10, abandoned by your father at 19, and violently ejected from your radiation-proof sanctuary. Foilout 3, a new video game from Bethesda Softworks, brings to...

Pot mythology.(Briefly Noted)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Marijuana is not anti-establishment because it's illegal," writes High Times Executive Editor David Bienenstock. "It's illegal because it's anti-establishment." I doubt that, and I worry that such...

Conservatism's hollow defeat: the intellectual right, now in the wilderness, keeps deluding itself about supposed past glories.
March 1, 2009... Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, by Kim Phillips-Fein, New York: W.W. Norton, 368 pages, $26.95 The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution, by Gregory L. Schneider, Lanham,...

Second encounter.(Briefly Noted)(Standpoint political magazine )(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When you first pickup the new British political magazine Standpoint, John Dugdale writes in The Guardian, you notice immediately "how good it looks." What else would you expect, given that the artist David...

Cracking the conspiracy.(Briefly Noted)("Secret and Suppressed II" by Adam Parfrey and Kenn Thomas )(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How do we know what we know? This is the meta-question probed in a new collection of conspiratorial investigations and speculations, Secret and Suppressed II, edited by Adam Parfrey and Kenn Thomas of the...

Bubblegum subversion.(Briefly Noted)("Wackies" from Art Spiegelman )(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Topps, the candy and card company, brightened the dark years of 1973 and 1974 with Wacky Packages, a series of stickers parodying popular household products. Argo cornstarch became "Argh: Coarse Stench." Comet...

In darkest Indianapolis: a poor midwestern family is demonized by eugenicists and glorified by radicals.
March 1, 2009... IN 1888, a social reformer named Oscar McCulloch delivered a speech in Buffalo titled "The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation." Indianapolis, McCulloch declared, had been infected by a "pauper ganglion," a depraved clan that...

Hate, 8, and the Golden State: Proposition 8 supporters are being blacklisted. So what?
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WITH NOVEMBER'S Proposition 8, Californians voted to amend the Golden State's constitution by adding a new section to the first of its 35 articles: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in...

Shot by the sheriff.(Artifact)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IMMIGRANTS have plenty of reasons to fear authority in Arizona. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett shot and killed an unarmed illegal immigrant at point-blank range in 2007 and remains on the force after two...