Reason articles from May 2009

Reason archives from May 2009

Obama's double-talk: while the president talks sobriety, his policies take America on an economic bender.(From the Top)(Barack Obama)
May 1, 2009... HIGH-FLYING presidencies tend to reveal their base character in trivial moments. In March 2002, when the nation was still massively behind George W. Bush in the wake of the September IT attacks, he gave the first obvious signal that his...

Bush's Midnight Regulations.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Veronique de Rugy scolds the outgoing president for what she projected he would do ("Bush's Midnight Regulations," February), but her projections turned out to be wildly wrong. She forecast that President George W....

Who's Your Daddy?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... Cheryl Miller's "Who's Your Daddy?" (February) suggests that infertile couples are being denied the chance to procure a child through a financial transaction because of the demands of offspring already created in this manner. But the assertion...

Bongs Away!(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... Reading about the law's attack on marijuana paraphernalia ("Bongs Away!", February) reminded me of my college days 20 years ago, when we used to smoke out of a Coke can. One of my friends used to rattle the empty can as a call to arms to meet...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction notice)
May 1, 2009... Florida Republican Angela Corey was incorrectly identified in "Attacking the Defense" (March). She is the state attorney, not a public defender. The location of Fort Bliss was incorrectly identified in "Room to Maneuver" (March). It is in...

The indefinite future of indefinite detention: President Obama may close Guantanamo, but the policy it represents will continue.(Columns)(Column)
May 1, 2009... BARACK OBAMA promises to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January. But the policy the prison has come to symbolize, indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects, is likely to continue. The form it takes will tell us...

Conservation theater: as green as an SUV tow truck.(Citings)(Sport utility vehicle)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NEWLY ELECTED Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) wanted to promote the alternative energy being developed in his district. So when it was time to be sworn in, he decided to drive a prototype fuel cell car, General Motors'...

Pennsylvania railroad: juvenile court corruption.(Citings)
May 1, 2009... IN 2004, responding to concerns about the unusually high rate and cost of juvenile incarceration in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, "I'm not in the business to determine whether...

35 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The alchemists of today (often known as 'new economists') haven't found the philosophers' stone either--but they have found a substitute: the Keynesian stone. It turns gold into paper." --Eugene Guccione,...

Bag check: Metro search and seizure.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... IN OCTOBER the Washington, D.C., transit system initiated a bag check policy that permitted specially trained Metro police to conduct random searches at any of 86 subway stations. The policy allowed riders to refuse a search as long as they...

Connecticut vs. Cuba: communist cabs.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... WANT TO catch a cab in Havana? Good luck. Longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro had a particular hatred for private taxis and their drivers, whom he accused of seeking "juicy profits" and buying up the state-subsidized gasoline that his...

Quotes.
May 1, 2009... "One cannot underestimate how widely admired Tom Daschle is in Washington for his integrity." --political commentator and former presidential adviser David Gergen on the day the former Senate majority leader withdrew his nomination as...

Citizen empowerment.(List)(citizen participation in politics)(List)
May 1, 2009... Paul Jacob, president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation, did jailtime in the 1980s for refusing to register for the draft. Since then he's been working to curb politicians' power via term limits. Last year he was indicted for allegedly...

The nose knows: thirdhand smoke alarm.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... EVERYONE knows you inhale "secondhand smoke" in a room where someone else is smoking. But what do you inhale in a room where someone smoked the day before? If your answer was "virtually nothing," you are sadly misinformed about the hazards of...

Hips abroad: medical outsourcing.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... LAST FALL osteoarthritis patient Adrienne de Forrest of Colorado had her hip resurfaced in Chennai, India, by orthopedic surgeon Vij ay Bose. Texas contractor David Jones had triple heart bypass surgery in New Delhi. Both surgeries for the...

Overstimulating K-12: education spending.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... THE FINAL VERSION of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--a.k.a. "the stimulus bill"--called for allocating about $115 billion for K-12 education. This will come on top of the approximately $60 billion a year that the federal...

Storm ahead: financial crisis fact sheet.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... STIMULUS package or not, the history of past financial crises suggests America can expect grim economic times for a while. In a January working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Carmen M. Reinhart of the...

China's culture ministry says it will ban professional performers from miming, lip syncing, or pretending to play musical instruments.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] China's culture ministry says it will ban professional performers from miming, lip syncing, or pretending to play musical instruments. Those caught breaking the law twice in any two-year period will lose their...

Jasbir Singh said he just wanted to show his support for the police when he placed a police union bumper sticker on his car.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Jasbir Singh said he just wanted to show his support for the police when he placed a police union bumper sticker on his car. One Lockland, Ohio, police officer apparently didn't want Singh's support: He cited him for displaying a law...

After 6-year-old Natalie Shea drew some pictures with chalk on the sidewalk in front of her Brooklyn home, the Department of Sanitation sent her parents a letter.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] After 6-year-old Natalie Shea drew some pictures with chalk on the sidewalk in front of her Brooklyn home, the Department of Sanitation sent her parents a letter threatening them with a $300 fine if they didn't...

Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. has been jailed four times since 2001, lost his job, and had more than $12,000 taken from him to support the child of a different Andre Sharpe with a different date of birth, address, and Social Security number.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. has been jailed four times since 2001, lost his job, and had more than $12,000 taken from him to support the child of a different Andre Sharpe with a different date of birth, address, and Social Security number. After...

Florida's Tri-Rail commuter train service faces a budget deficit.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Florida's Tri-Rail commuter train service faces a budget deficit. How to pay the bills? Soak the people who don't use the system: Tri-Rail officials have asked the state to fund them with a $2 tax on rental cars.

Pennsylvania has banned smoking in private homes and vehicles used for child care services.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Pennsylvania has banned smoking in private homes and vehicles used for child care services. That includes foster homes. Foster parent and smoker Lee Bauman told a local newspaper he has pretty much lived on his back porch since the law took...

To fight terrorism, the British government has proposed a national database of all cell phone owners.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... To fight terrorism, the British government has proposed a national database of all cell phone owners. The proposal would require people to present a passport or other government ID when they buy a phone. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Martin Ryan starved to death over 26 days in a National Health Service hospital in England.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Martin Ryan starved to death over 26 days in a National Health Service hospital in England. Ryan was admitted after suffering a stroke. The stroke left him unable to swallow, and doctors ordered a feeding tube for him, but for some reason staff...

Raegan Booth, 16, and Aby Western, 15, were sent home from Rednock School in England and told not to come back until they dyed their hair brown.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Raegan Booth, 16, and Aby Western, 15, were sent home from Rednock School in England and told not to come back until they dyed their hair brown. Headmaster David Alexander says the girls violated school rules banning "unnatural" hair colors....

Lone Star College threatened to place the Young Conservatives of Texas on probation after the group distributed a flier listing a tongue-in-cheek "Top Ten Gun Safety Tips.".(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Lone Star College threatened to place the Young Conservatives of Texas on probation after the group distributed a flier listing a tongue-in-cheek "Top Ten Gun Safety Tips." A student activities coordinator confiscated the fliers as the group...

Goodbye, Gitmo.(Follow-Up)(closure of Guantanamo naval base)
May 1, 2009... In "Civil Liberties and Enemy Combatants" (January 2005), attorney Harvey Silverglate took a critical look at the Supreme Court's 2004 rulings hashing out the legal rights of suspected terrorists held in the United States and at Guantanamo Bay,...

MySpace = safe space: predator panic debunked.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... EARLY IN 2008, the big names of the online technology world, plus 50 attorneys general, joined forces with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School to form the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. The goal: to figure out...

'Sexting' scare: cell phone follies.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... ONE-FIFTH OF the teenagers surveyed last year by CosmoGirl. com said they had transmitted or posted nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves online. Since the sample was drawn from teenagers who had volunteered to participate in surveys, it may...

The raw deal.(Soundbite)(Burt Folsom interview)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In his provocative new book New Deal or Raw Deal? (Threshold), Hillsdale College historian Burt Folsom takes aim at the iconic legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Drawing on his own research and that of...

I'm so bored with the NEA: artists demand "stimulus" subsidies.(Columns)(National Endowment for the Arts)(Column)
May 1, 2009... IN THIS LONG season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America's artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece...

When do deficits matter? While Democrats and Republicans switch sides, economists try to pin down a tipping point.(Columns)
May 1, 2009... ON JANUARY 5, The New York Times reported that "the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees today called upon the President to work with them on a deficit-reducing package that would include tax increases and...

Failed states: after a long spending binge, governors go begging for a handout. It won't be their last.(Cover story)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] OF THE $787 BILLION in "stimulus" money Barack Obama authorized with his presidential pen on February 17, at least $144 billion was earmarked for a particularly unstimulating purpose: covering the budget deficits of...

Will we be stimulated? Economists sound off on Obama's stimulus package.(Barack Obama)(Discussion)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ON FEBRUARY 17, President Barack Obama signed into law a sweeping $787 billion stimulus plan that, he said, would begin "the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time." During the contentious...

Blowing the whistle on the house of death: DEA dissenter Sandy Gonzalez reveals the drug war's complicity in torture and murder south of the border.(Drug Enforcement Administration)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SANDALIO "SANDY" GONZALEZ spent 27 of his 32 years in law enforcement with the Drug Enforcement Administration, working in Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Washington, D.C., and eventually taking charge of the agency's...

The politics of superheroes: want a map of the debates of the early 21st century? Watch a comic-book movie.(Culture and Reviews)
May 1, 2009... ON APRIL 28, 200S, Spider-Man, Captain America, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flexed their muscles onstage at the Pentagon. The trio was promoting The New Avengers, a comic book being sent to soldiers around the world. The effort was...

The development dilemma: can parking tickets explain why poor countries are poor?(Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations, by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 240 pages, $24.95 MANY ECONOMISTS think corruption is a rational response to irrational...

Foie fight.(Briefly Noted)(Mark Caro on foie gras production)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mark Caro, author of The Foie Gras Wars(Simon & Schuster), inadvertently kicked off a national debate about the much-derided delicacy with a 2006 story for the Chicago Tribune about an inter-chef squabble. The...

Power pestering.(Briefly Noted)(energy use and quality of life )(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The exhibition "Spark!" at the Charlottesville Community Design Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, is meant to prepare us for "a widespread switch to clean and renewable sources" by encouraging visitors to "address...

Choosing our own future: will we greet new technologies with more regulation or more liberty?(Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, by David Friedman, New York: Cambridge University Press, 351 pages, $30 IN Future Imperfect David Friedman presents a wide variety of possible futures, "some attractive, some...

Punk/metal rules!(Briefly Noted)(This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk )(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Despite its distracting academic jargon, Steve Waksman's This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press) pinpoints an under-appreciated truth: While...

Secret lives, fictional sex.(Briefly Noted)(The Secret Life of an American Teenager )(Television program review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ABC Family's hit Monday night series The Secret Life of an American Teenager offers salacious plots and characters not normally associated with Disney, the network's corporate owner. The show's protagonist is Amy...

News that stays news.(Briefly Noted)(Newseum)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Media critics have had some fun at the expense of the Newseum, the glimmering new 250,000-square foot edifice on D.C.'s Pennsylvania Avenue. It's true that the Freedom Forum--sponsored journalism museum--complete...

Yesterday is tomorrow: revisiting Annie as a new New Deal dawns.(Little Orphan Annie )
May 1, 2009... THE SECOND volume in IDW Publishing's ongoing reprint of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie ends in a familiar place: Just after the 1929 stock market crash, a small-town bank goes under because of wild gambles made with other people's money....

Don't measure me, bro: why broadcasters fear accurate audience ratings.
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN LOS ANGELES' graying hipster population lost its finest radio station in December, an unlikely cup prit was fingered. Mark Sovel, music director for Indie 103.1, an eclectic home for golden age punk and...

Hating Milton Friedman.(Artifact)(anti-Friedman movement )(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... WHEN MILTON FRIEDMAN received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a protester disrupted the ceremony with shouts of "down with capitalism, freedom for Chile." Three decades later, in The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein repackaged...