Reason back issues from March 2006:
Fighting yesterday's battles today.(Editor's Note)
Mar 01, 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 God. Mason County, Washington, is the proud ...
McCain's war on political speech.(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 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. Why does he think Congress and President Bush ...
Let a thousand choices bloom.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 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 factual errors in numerous textbooks at the K I2 ...
Goodbye to Goldwater.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 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 Goldwater, must be rolling over in his grave. ...
Corporate social responsibility revisited.
Mar 01, 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 further conversation in other media outlets, ...
Breaking rent: after Katrina.(Citings)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 the city flooded. Thomas' plan? Impose rent ...
Terror in Nebraska: PATRIOT Act abuses.(Citings)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 cops can legally commandeer property under the ...
25 years ago in reason.(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 President" "The election was a ...
Have gun, won't travel: gun-free school zones.(Citings)
Mar 01, 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 school. In 1995 the Supreme Court overturned the ...
Friends with benefits: targeting gay employees.(Citings)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 state Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr. (R-Cincinnati), who in ...
Rocking the bus: mandatory ID checks.(Citings)
Mar 01, 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 Colorado woman with four grown children ...
Quotes.(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live ...
Covert advertising: the FCC vs. product placement.(Federal Communications Commission)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 Mr. Pibb. "The public needs to know when they're ...
Middle-class warfare: military recruits and poverty.(Citings)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 enlist by desperate financial conditions. Most ...
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)
Mar 01, 2006; ... The British Parliament is considering a bill that would establish a national curriculum for the first ...
The state of Connecticut wants to ban the sale of Seriously Bad Elf beer.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 ...
"You don't expect your daughter to go to school and come home with drugs in her bag," says Amanda Butterfield.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 daughter Kia went to an antidrug event ...
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)
Mar 01, 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 ...
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)
Mar 01, 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 ...
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)
Mar 01, 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 ...
Police in the Iranian town Bojnourd.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Police in the Iranian town Bojnourd have seized 65 ...
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)
Mar 01, 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 ...
French Revolution.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Members of the French National Assembly reverse the Culture Ministry's attempt to outlaw sharing music ...
Veteran drinker.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... State Rep. Jim Splaine (D-Portsmouth) wants to lower New Hampshire's drinking age for ...
iEconomy.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Mobile electronic gadgets fuel a tech boom from Korea to California to Switzerland. NAND flash-memory chips were a ...
Speech insurance.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Officials in Polk County, Florida, eliminate a rule requiring anyone who wants to set up a ...
Download defense.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 ...
Beating diabetes.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 ...
Tech war.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... You would never know it from the relative law enforcement attention, but cybercrime now outpaces illegal drug sales in annual proceeds, ...
Drugged out.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 ...
Outlaw guitar.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... The Music Publishers' Association chief says the operators of guitar tablature sites should go to jail. The owners of the mechanical ...
Chubby chasers.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Lawmakers in Argentina's Buenos Aires province pass a law requiring women's clothing shops to stock ...
Standing precedent.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... A teacher calls a Palm Beach County high school student "so ungrateful and so un-American" for refusing to stand ...
Caption action.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... A Federal Communications Commission mandate that all new TV programming be closed captioned kicked in January 1, leaving stations ...
Ghost of Tonkin: cover-up covered up.(Citings)
Mar 01, 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 support military escalation in Southeast Asia. At ...
Complaint fraud.(Data)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 the second quarter of 2005 to 26,815 in the ...
Tech delusions: laptops for the poor.(Citings)
Mar 01, 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 machines," are equipped with a power-generating ...
Kidnapped by aliens.(Soundbite)(Interview)
Mar 01, 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 of pedophiles," politically biased, and ...
Old propaganda and new: Bush is wrong to use the Cold War's covert tactics in the new twilight struggle.
Mar 01, 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 northern Bohemia in Communist Czechoslovakia, ...
Torturing logic: is pulling fingernails really just an aggressive manicure?(Columns)
Mar 01, 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 legislation sponsored by a Republican senator ....
Dead man tells no tales: media docility and another no-cost federal killing.(Rent)
Mar 01, 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 air marshals, Dave Adams, a spokesman for the ...
Are we ready for the next 9/11? The sorry state--and stunning waste--of homeland security spending.(Cover Story)
Mar 01, 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, Congress has appropriated nearly $180 billion ...
Why poor countries are poor: the clues lie on a bumpy road leading to the world's worst library.
Mar 01, 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 chaotic Douala International Airport by my friend ...
Absolution in your cup: the real meaning of fair trade coffee.
Mar 01, 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 collection of young entrepreneurs just learning the ...
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)
Mar 01, 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, 256 pages, $27.95 IN THE FALL ...
Fat suit chic: Moribund Hollywood visits morbidly obese America.
Mar 01, 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 two-things-to-all-people anti-genius of current ...
The Silence of the Cats: Trent Lott still refuses to speak frankly about racism.(Herding Cats: A Life in Politics)(Book Review)
Mar 01, 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. Pinter's characters avoid discussing the ...
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)
Mar 01, 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 (1915-2001) was an English ...
The Wal-Mart crusade: big-boxing a mega-retailer's ears.
Mar 01, 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, poverty, outsourcing, racial prejudice, ...
Drug freak show.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 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 junkie giving birth to a deformed baby, and a girl ...