Reason back issues from January 2007:
Getting beyond politics as usual.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
Jan 01, 2007; ... I'M WRITING this just a few days after the midterm elections, and the dust from the Great Democratic Revival--or was it the Amazing Republican Implosion?--has yet to settle. As the Democrats prepare to take control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, it's not ...
Ova for sale.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Kerry Howley is to be congratulated for her beautifully written firsthand examination of the egg donor experience ("Ova for Sale," October), but her criticisms of the IVF industry struck me as a little ungenerous. She would prefer "unblinking honesty" about the exchange of money for human ...
The State of War And Domestic Terrorism.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... John Mueller says his views on the risks posed by terrorists have provoked less disagreement than he expected ("The State of War and Domestic Terrorism," October). Allow me to add my small voice to that disagreement. Mueller argues that we should save our money and just treat ...
They don't know Jack.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... There is no question that the incident involving Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) helped the GOP tremendously, as David Weigel points out in "They Don't Know Jack" (October). The graphic image of cash in the freezer was just perfect for Joe Six-Pack's typically nonretentive memory, and a ...
America gives a shit.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... I agree with everything Jeff Jarvis says in "America Gives a Shit" (October). Therefore I was quite surprised to read the circumlocution "f-words." Surely a magazine committed to free minds and free markets can print the word fuck. A taboo, in a certain sense, is a form of ...
The real mommy wars.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Shannon Chamberlain's commentary on the "mommy wars" fascinated me ("The Real Mommy Wars," October). The mommy wars are fought solely by women who feel guilty about the choices they've made. Caitlin Flanagan and Carrie Lukas must overlook people like myself, the underachievers of our ...
CleanFlicks v. Kate Winslet's Breasts.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Maybe Hollywood is stupid, as Nick Gillespie says in "CleanFlicks v. Kate Winslet's Breasts" (October), to underserve the religious market for wholesome family entertainment. But a company that creates a secondary revenue stream on modified source material is still stealing. ...
The longneck Tail.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2007; ... While I enjoyed Jay Brooks's article on craft beers ("The Longneck Tail," October), you should have used a more up-to-date photo as an illustration. Manhattan Brewing has been out of business since 1993, and Cold Spring ...
reason news.(letters)
Jan 01, 2007 ... We're happy to welcome Radley Balko as reason's newest senior editor. Previously a policy analyst at Cato, Radley is also a columnist at the Fox News website, the force behind the excellent blog The Agitator, and a longtime reason contributor. His most recent story for us was October's ...
Squat for teacher: searching students.(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... THE U.S. SUPREME Court has ruled that school officials may search students without warrants and test them for drugs without individualized suspicion. But Congress evidently believes students still have too much privacy. In September, on a voice vote without hearings, the House ...
Keep off the gras: New Jersey vs. duck liver.(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... NO ONE IN the state of New Jersey produces foie gras, and no Garden State farmer has announced any plans to start force-feeding ducks or selling liver pate. But that hasn't stopped two members of the state Assembly from proposing legislation to regulate the process and ban the pricey ...
30 years ago in reason.(Citings)
Jan 01, 2007 ... "Gene McCarthy summed up the campaign just right. Accused of being a 'spoiler,' the independent candidate said: 'If there was ever a year when it didn't matter if you spoiled things, this is it.'" --Bill Birmingham, "Quickies" "The old liberal panacea for solving ...
Tired ideas: reef rescue rebuffed.(Citings)
Jan 01, 2007; ... LIKE MANY well-intentioned ideas from the '70s--leisure suits, the Mustang II, the eight-track tape a 1972 project to dump 2 million tires off the coast of Florida has gone horribly wrong. What was supposed to be an artificial reef brimming with life has instead become an undulating ...
'Bizarre' effects: tax plans face off.(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... TWO BOSTON University economists, Laurence Kotlikoff and David Rapson, recently compared our current tax system with the proposed "FairTax"--a 23 percent federal sales tax, intended to replace all existing federal income, payroll, estate, and gift taxes. They wanted to see how a shift to ...
Drug brakes: is a slow FDA a safe FDA?(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... EVER SINCE Congress helped speed up the Food and Drug Administration's rate of drug approvals in 1992, critics have complained that the relatively quick approval times put patients in danger. So when Merck's Vioxx was shown to cause heart attacks in 2004, a chastened agency slowed the ...
Quotes.
Jan 01, 2007 ... "I can blow off someone's head at close range and splatter blood, but I can't light a good Cuban." --Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, on the new no-smoking rule for his character, in Parade, October 1 "The labs start to decline, and you're happy. But the imported ...
Several people swimming at Kanopolis Lake in Kansas got a bit of a surprise when a B-52 bomber dropped nine bombs into the water. Lt. Col. Jeff Jordan, commander of the Smoky Hill National Guard Range, told the Associated Press the plane dropped the bombs by mistake while on a training mission.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Several people swimming at Kanopolis Lake in Kansas got a bit of a surprise when a B-52 bomber dropped nine bombs into the water. Lt. Col. Jeff Jordan, commander of the Smoky Hill National Guard Range, told ...
Police in West Midlands, England, say they received numerous complaints about anti-social behavior in one neighborhood.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Police in West Midlands, England, say they received numerous complaints about anti-social ...
Fifteen-year-old Mirage Rousseau of Manchester, New Hampshire, came home one afternoon to find two police officers in her bedroom without a warrant.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Fifteen-year-old Mirage Rousseau of Manchester, New Hampshire, came home one afternoon to find two police officers in her bedroom without a warrant. The cops told Rousseau they were looking for ...
Thailand's Culture Ministry has banned a line of condoms called Tom Dundee because officials say the name could encourage children to have sex earlier.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Thailand's Culture Ministry has banned a line of condoms called Tom Dundee because officials say the name could encourage ...
Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, admit they issued valid building permits for new houses that exceed local height limits.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, admit they issued valid building permits for new houses that exceed local height limits. They say builders ...
Legislation expected to pass in Scotland would require shops selling swords, machetes, and other non-domestic knives to have a special license and to record all sales.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Legislation expected to pass in Scotland would require shops selling swords, machetes, and other non-domestic knives to have a ...
Police in Preston, England, are asking local officials to ban "vertical drinking" in bars.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Police in Preston, England, are asking local officials to ban "vertical drinking" in bars ....
For 31 years, Jean Groves has had a sign on her fence that reads "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses.".(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... For 31 years, Jean Groves has had a sign on her fence that reads "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses." She says even Jehovah's Witnesses got a laugh out of it. But police in Hampshire, England, weren't ...
The Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has banned mobile taco stands.(Brickbats)
Jan 01, 2007; ... The Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has banned mobile taco stands. Commissioners say the move is aimed at boosting ...
Contact killings: the new normal in Iraq.(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... WITH characteristic deadpan delivery, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shocked and amazed nobody with a September report announcing that "the United States generally has not met its goals for reconstruction activities in Iraq with respect to the oil, electricity, and water ...
Internet unleashed: ICANN escape.(Citings)(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... THE U.S. Department of Commerce must love the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, because it is setting it free. ICANN, the California-based nonprofit organization that assigns Internet domains, such as .corn, and country domains, such as .uk, is finally on its way to full ...
Texas floor 'em.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] Officials bow to reality and open a ...
Big Bully.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] A judge in Miami sides with Take-Two Interactive, maker of the video game Bully, and against garner nemesis ...
Sen. Spliff.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] During a book promotion tour, Illinois Sen. Barack ...
Fat city.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] Economists at the University of Toronto discover that the sprawl-causes-obesity claim is exactly backward. Their ...
Wright stuff.(Balance Sheet)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] The Wright Amendment Reform Act of 2006 gradually sunsets the 1979 restrictions on airline flights from Dallas' Love Field, ...
Loose moose.(Balance Sheet)(Moosehead Breweries Ltd.)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [up arrow] Moosehead Breweries sends more than 1,700 cans of Moosehead Lager to Canadian troops fighting in Kandahar. Canadian defense ...
Shocking death.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] Kip Black dies in a hospital after police in North Charleston, South Carolina, zap ...
Barry squeezed.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] James South, chairman of Marquette University's Philosophy Department, asks a Ph.D. student to take a "patently offensive" Dave Barry quote off his office door, which is apparently not among the ...
The 29-year-old virgin.(Balance Sheet)(federal guidelines for abstinence-only education funding)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] New federal guidelines say the government can use millions in abstinence-only education funding to persuade men and women up to age ...
Homo-mart.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] The American Family Association tells members to steer clear of Wal-Mart because the giant retailer ...
Cafe Americain.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] France is expected to ban smoking in all public places, ...
No charge.(Balance Sheet)
Jan 01, 2007; ... [down arrow] Though never charged with a crime, Ali Partovi remains behind bars more than five years after he was ...
Immigrants cause insurance crisis!(Data)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Since 1987 the percentage of Americans without health insurance--purchased privately, provided by employers, or provided by the government--has risen from 12.9 percent to 15.9 percent. That figure is often used to suggest a steadily worsening crisis that only government intervention can ...
Woodpecker massacre: the threat of threatened species.(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... ACCORDING to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), only 15,000 red-cockaded woodpeckers remain in the United States. Eager to protect the mature pine forests in which they nest, the agency recently informed the residents of Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina, that it had detected the ...
Saucer scandal: UFO cover-up!(Citings)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... DRAWING on newly declassified documents, two journalism teachers have unearthed a bona fide UFO cover-up at the British Ministry of Defence, which went out of its way to conceal ongoing investigations of reported unidentified flying objects. No, the Brits didn't have a flying saucer and ...
Vietnamese resistance: god and government in New Orleans.(Citings)
Jan 01, 2007; ... WHEN THE Bring Back New Orleans Commission met in November 2005 to discuss its far-off plans to gradually rebuild and repopulate the flooded city, the Rev. Luke Nguyen rose to talk about the thousands of Vietnamese who had fled his neighborhood in August. To the panel's surprise, he ...
End of the rainbow.(Soundbite)(Burning Rainbow Farm )(Interview)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Tom Crosslin didn't envision a violent confrontation with the government when he started holding cannabis-themed music festivals in rural Cass County, Michigan, in 1995. But he faced a local prosecutor, Scott Teter, who was determined to shut down the gatherings on Crosslin's property, ...
The myth of the 'values voters': the Republicans hand libertarian votes--and the elections--over to the Democrats.(Columns)
Jan 01, 2007; ... AT THE DEMOCRATS' official election night party in Washington, D.C., all eyes were on Florida--for about 10 seconds. At 8 p.m. network exit polls confirmed that Rep. Katherine Harris, for this crowd the arch-villain of the 2000 election, was lopsidedly losing her bid for a Senate seat. The ...
One man's culture war: Bill O'Reilly sticks up for the little guy--that is, himself.(Columns)
Jan 01, 2007; ... ON OCTOBER 5, 2006, Bill O'Reilly left his fellow Fox host Neil Cavuto nearly speechless with a rant against the liberal financier and philanthropist George Soros, whom Cavuto had just interviewed. O'Reilly called Soros "the single most dangerous individual in the United States of America ....
Ticking bombast: what would you do to save millions of lives?(Rant)
Jan 01, 2007; ... LET'S SAY YOU'VE caught a suspect and you're sure he's a terrorist, and you're sure there's a nuclear bomb somewhere in Manhattan, and you're sure he knows where it is, and you're sure this particular terrorist has been trained to resist torture just long enough that you could never get ...
The pinpoint search: how super-accurate surveillance technology threatens our privacy.(Cover story)
Jan 01, 2007; ... ANYONE WOULD CONSIDER it a stroke of bad luck to be pulled over for driving six miles per hour over the speed limit, but Roy Caballes had an additional reason to curse his ill fortune. On the November afternoon in 1998 when an Illinois state trooper stopped him, Caballes was carrying 282 ...
Is Liberalism dead in central Europe? The disturbing return of socialism and authoritarianism in the former Soviet bloc.
Jan 01, 2007; ... WHEN THE SOCIALIST party Smer ("Direction") won Slovakia's parliamentary elections last June, party leader Robert Fico cemented his controversial reputation by forming a coalition government with the Movement for Democratic Slovakia, led by the disgraced former Prime Minister Vladimir ...
Space travel for fun and profit: the private space industry soars higher by lowering its sights.
Jan 01, 2007; ... BARBED WIRE SURROUNDED the Bigelow Aerospace compound, set in a stretch of dry, rock-strewn Nevada desert. Las Vegas glittered in the distance, but otherwise the vista had the desolate look of a lunar landscape, with one difference: The summer heat was oppressive--enough to make you long ...
The trouble with troubled teen programs: how the "boot camp" industry tortures and kills kids.
Jan 01, 2007; ... THE STATE OF FLORIDA tortured 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson to death for trespassing. The teen had been sentenced to probation in 2005 for taking a joy ride in a Jeep Cherokee that his cousins stole from his grandmother. Later that year, he crossed the grounds of a school on his way to ...
What we believe.(Culture and Reviews Comic)(Cartoon)
Jan 01, 2007; ... JUST LOOK AT MY MOLARS. WHAT A MESS! WELL, NOT THE TEETH THEMSELVES SO MUCH AS THE DARK GREY FILLINGS IN EACH ONE OF THEM ... I USUALLY FORGET I HAVE THEM, UNTIL I LAUGH AT SOMETHING AND NOTICE YOUNGER PEOPLE STARING INTO MY GAPING MAW IN HORROR ... MY HOMETOWN NEVER ...
Paradise lost: a populist's nostalgic ode to an America gone by.(Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists)(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Look Homeward, America, by Bill Kauffman, Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 185 pages, $25 AT THE TURN of the 20th century, one of the most popular writers in America dwelled in a small village in upstate New York. After two decades of wandering about Europe and America, Elbert ...
Cold war meets counterculture: how hippie hero Stewart Brand created our wired world.(From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism)(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; ... In 1964, young protesters at Berkeley used computer punch cards as a symbol of everything dehumanizing in postwar American culture. By 1984, an iconic ad presented the Macintosh as a muscular woman destroying a futuristic dictatorship. How did the computer evolve from enemy of ...
Trading on reputation: stateless justice in the Medieval Mediterranean.(Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade)(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; ... Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, by Avner Greif, New York: Cambridge University Press, 526 pages, $80 IN THE EARLY 11th century a trader from Tunisia, momentarily residing in Sicily, wrote a long, distraught letter to a business ...
The era of big government never ended: taking stock of the challenges to freedom.(The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today)(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; ... The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 422 pages $19.95 IT HAS BEEN just 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell. It has also been 17 years since the socialist economist Robert ...
Crying censorship: shocking the bourgeoisie--it's nice work if you can get it.
Jan 01, 2007; ... IN 1921 the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its first show devoted to modern painting. Outraged observers denounced it as "degenerate" a mass of "Bolshevic [sic] philosophy" and "art-trash." One of the featured painters, Robert Henri, saw in the public's reaction the "modern idea of ...
Boy Scouts and pirates.(copyrights)(Brief article)
Jan 01, 2007; ... ON THE WAY to earning the rank of Eagle, members of the Boy Scouts of America take an oath "to help other people at all times" and to keep themselves "physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Now, thanks to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Scouts can do ...