Reason back issues from August 2008:
The uses of hyperbole: exaggerated doomsday forecasts are false, regrettable, inevitable, and possibly necessary.
Aug 01, 2008; ... FOR NEARLY 20 years two themes have kept reappearing in my journalistic work: The hippies are mangling facts, and Vaclav Klaus isn't the free marketeer he claims to be. What this has to do with F.A. Hayek and global warming I'll attempt to explain in a minute. First a little ...
When coalitions dissolve.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The libertarian-conservative alliance against the New Deal and the Great Society still delivered election victories to the Republican Party as recently as George W. Bush's first election. Matt Welch asks if that alliance is still sound today ("When ...
Free ride.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 01, 2008; ... The State of Georgia used to offer a $7 discount on driver's license fees to people who signed up to be organ donors. Drivers who were eligible for the donor discount were up to 40 percent more likely to sign up as potential organ donors than those who didn't qualify for a discount, such ...
Serve the (old) people.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 01, 2008; ... National service as it was experienced by four of our granddaughters is a complete refutation of Paul Thornton's "Serve the (Old) People" (May). In Israel following high school graduation, women have a choice of army service or national service. My granddaughter Rebecca did both. As a ...
'Technology is at the center'.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 01, 2008; ... I enjoyed Ronald Bailey's interview with the entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel ("'Technology Is at the Center,'" May). Thiel seems exceedingly bright and articulate, with well-thought-out philosophies about our technological future. Yet he showed his ignorance when it came to ...
No child left behind: Texas abuses children to prevent abuse.
Aug 01, 2008; ... TWO WEEKS before the Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected the wholesale removal of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, a spokesman for the state's Child Protective Services (CPS) insisted the case "is not about religion." If you believe that, you may also believe ...
In the raw: contraband milk.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... IN APRIL police hauled off Mark Nolt in handcuffs for being a dairy deviant. Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court cited the Mennonite farmer for contempt after he ignored a 2007 injunction prohibiting him from selling raw milk and cheese. The peddling of unorthodox dairy products ...
Bluff City bluster: tickets for terror.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... FEDERAL, state, and local police jointly conducted a massive sweep in April through the area around the shared borders of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Law enforcement officials described the effort, which they dubbed Operation Sudden Impact, as a "regional anti-terrorism ...
Soda soldiers: drinking age debate.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... IN AN April appearance on the Fox News Channel, Mothers Against Drunk Driving founder Candy Lightner declared that young soldiers "are not adults," which is "why they're in the military." Since they "will follow the leader" and "don't think for themselves," she explained, "they are the ...
35 years ago in reason.(Quotation)
Aug 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "In these days when American taxpayers are becoming both more rebellious and more sophisticated, you now and then hear wonderful stories of a beautiful green paradise in Europe where the snow is white and tight-lipped bankers will tell IRS agents to go ...
Taco turmoil: food truck fight.(Citings)(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... IF YOU want a cheap lunch in Southern California, one of your best options is to hit the streets, which teem with trucks selling tasty tacos for as little as 90 cents a pop. But you'd better move fast, because local legislators have put the food wagons on the run. In April the ...
Absolute immunity: sue your D.A.!(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... THOMAS Goldstein is an ex-Marine wrongly convicted of killing his neighbor. His conviction was based largely on the testimony of the appropriately named Edward F. Fink, a career criminal who said Goldstein had confessed to him in a prison cell. Fink received leniency on his own charges in ...
Quotes.(Quotation)
Aug 01, 2008 ... "Where these gentlemen live, they don't have vehicle ferries. They were fascinated that a ferry could hold that many cars and wanted to show folks back home." --FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs on the conclusion of a year-long global search for two men spotting snapping ...
Rough gravel.(Mike Gravel )(Interview)(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008 ... In April 2006, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel became the first official candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Two years and only about 25,000 votes later, he left the party to seek the Libertarian nomination. "I'm a classical liberal," Gravel said during an April ...
Feds in the fishbowl: whatever floats your boat.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... UNDER the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are granted jurisdiction over the "navigable waters" of the United States. If a boat can float on it, it's theirs to regulate. Over the years, the definition of "navigable waters" ...
Please plea me: false confessions.
Aug 01, 2008; ... IN DECEMBER 2005, James Ochoa was convicted of a carjacking he didn't commit. In a series of damning investigative articles, the OC Weekly reported that prosecutors in Orange County, California, stubbornly pressed on with their case against the 20-year-old, even in the face of mounting ...
Course correction: classroom interference.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... STATE Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) wants to clarify what kind of content is acceptable in Arizona's classrooms, so he has called for a ban on public school courses that are contrary to "western civilization." Pearce's proposal would prohibit a public school from including content deemed to ...
Million-dollar B.A.? Bucks for baccalaureates.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... "HIGH school dropouts forfeit a million dollars in lifetime earnings compared to their college graduate peers," Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings told an audience at san Jose State University in May. Spellings, and countless others who claim that a bachelor's degree on average ...
Daphne Beasley, principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School in Memphis, Tennessee, doesn't like public displays of affection.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Daphne Beasley, principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School in Memphis, Tennessee, doesn't like public displays of affection. She asked her staff to ...
In 1992, when Lino Nakwa was 12, he was kidnapped by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and held captive for about a month.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... In 1992, when Lino Nakwa was 12, he was kidnapped by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and held captive for about a month. The U.S. government acknowledges Nakwa didn't ...
Federal air marshals say some of their members have been harassed at airports, even kept from boarding planes they are scheduled to guard, because their names match those on the federal no-fly list.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Federal air marshals say some of their members have been harassed at airports, even kept from boarding planes ...
When Adam Carroll deployed to Iraq as part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, he asked his father to take care of his two dogs.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... When Adam Carroll deployed to Iraq as part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, he asked his father to take care of his two dogs. Henry Carroll agreed, but he ...
Nepal's government has authorized soldiers and police to shoot to kill anyone protesting the Olympic flame as it makes its way up Mount Everest.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Nepal's government has authorized soldiers and police to shoot to kill anyone protesting the Olympic flame as it makes ...
Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat that gives her an increased chance of heart failure and stroke.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat that gives her an increased chance of heart failure and stroke. Her doctor recommended surgery to correct the problem. But Great Britain's National Health Service ...
Whitewater, Wisconsin, Police Chief James Coan involved at least two detectives and several other city employees--all during working hours--in a quest to find the identity of the pseudonymous John Adams.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Whitewater, Wisconsin, Police Chief James Coan involved at least two detectives and several other city employees--all during working ...
Laura Todd has died several times during the last eight years.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Laura Todd has died several times during the last eight years. Or rather, the federal government keeps declaring the Nashville woman dead, thanks to a mix-up involving her Social Security number. Some of ...
Information, please.(Department of Homeland Security, Freedom of Information Act requests)(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... In 2006, queries to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accounted for nearly half of pending Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2002, by contrast, queries to the department accounted for less than a quarter of total requests. DHS now receives about 100,000 requests annually. ...
Collateral damage: drug informant outrage.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... EARLIER this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida, raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman. Her friends say Hoffman was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and they concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and ecstasy within her social circle. Hoffman was at the ...
Getting his goat: religious freedom in Texas.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Jose Merced wants to cut a few throats, but the city of Euless, Texas, won't let him. Merced, a Santeria priest, is challenging a local ordinance that prohibits the slaughter of goats, an essential part of the sacrifices required by his Afro-Caribbean religion. In April, after ...
Obscenely prosecuted.(John Stagliano's pornography case)(Interview)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] John Stagliano has been in the pornography business for more than 20 years. His long career includes a starring role in the first Chippendales troupe, various parts in porn films, and eventually success as a producer and distributor of adult movies, ...
Look who's coming in third! With Bob Barr's nomination, the Libertarian Party is threatening to achieve historical relevance.
Aug 01, 2008; ... NEVER IN THE history of the Libertarian Party has an idea been executed so smoothly as the nomination of Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman--and former drug warrior--from Georgia. True, it took six ballots at the party's national convention in Denver to nominate the man. True, the ...
First amendment lite: how the feds police liquor-related thought crime.
Aug 01, 2008; ... IF YOU'RE A perfume manufacturer and you'd like to name your latest fragrance Opium, no government agent will stop you. The world's flagship soda is called Coke. A company called Chronic Candy has been selling lollipops flavored with cannabis flower essential oil for eight years. Energy ...
Carbon-based prohibition: if some environmentalists have their way, simple math suggests life as we know it will end.
Aug 01, 2008; ... IN 1916 a blanket ban on beer seemed like far-fetched idea. But prohibitionists cracked the door open by promising to keep whiskey available by prescription. Within three years, the country was dry. Nearly a century later, environmentalists are thinking the same way about ...
What's the matter with Chicago and Seattle and New York and Boston ...? We rank the worst nanny-state cities in America.
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ON MAY 15, 2008, a goose graced the right side of the Chicago Sun-Times' front page, poking its beak into the paper's masthead, over the headline "Back on the Menu." The day before, the Chicago Board of Aldermen had repealed the city's notorious foie gras ...
An alliance for freedom? Republican strategist Grover Norquist insists the Leave Us Alone Coalition is alive and well.(Interview)
Aug 01, 2008; ... BORN IN 1956 and raised in Massachusetts, Grover Norquist is the unofficial head of what he calls the "Leave Us Alone Coalition," a loose affiliation of people and groups dedicated to, as the subtitle of his new book Leave Us Alone puts it, "getting the government's hands off our money, ...
Earning their keep: a new breed of urban Catholic high school asks disadvantaged kids to work for their tuition.
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ALMOST EVERY weekday, 14-year-old Tiffany Adams rises before 6 a.m. in the Newark, New Jersey, home she shares with her grandmother and sisters. She dons her school uniform and catches two New Jersey Transit buses across the city, arriving at Christ the ...
Crying wolf: are we all fascists now?(The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning)(Book review)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf, New York: Chelsea Green, 192 pages, $13.95 Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, by Jonah Goldberg, New York: ...
The day the music dies: why your tunes won't play for sure.(playsforsure)
Aug 01, 2008; ... This fall customers of the now-defunct MSN Music Store, Microsoft's abortive attempt to compete with iTunes, will be in for a nasty surprise: They will no longer be able to transfer their music to new computers. Worse, thanks to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), no one else ...
Francesca Coppa on the vidding underground.(Interview)
Aug 01, 2008; ... SINCE THE 1970S, an underground subculture has been making and privately screening short films. The artists are fans--and critics--of cult TV shows, from StarTrek to Homicide: Life on the Street. Their movies are music videos, edited from pieces of those programs and other sources into ...
Conservatives against empire: The forgotten tradition of the antiwar right.(Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism)(Book review)
Aug 01, 2008; ... Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, by Bill Kauffman, New York: Metropolitan Books, 304 pages, $25 IF YOU ARE trying to discover how a particular conservative understands conservatism, a good place to start is ...
The afterlife of American clothes: Haitian entrepreneurs find value in our castoffs.
Aug 01, 2008; ... WHEN THRIFTY shoppers in Boston and Miami pick through secondhand shirts at local Salvation Army outlets or estate sales, they are as likely to meet Haitians as hipsters. Some of the immigrants will simply be collecting clothes to mail back to family in Port-au-Prince, but others are part ...
The (diminishing) return of Pandering: politicians keep doling out giveaways to a public that increasingly doesn't want any.(Essay)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN A POLITICAL season simply oozing hope, change, and historical firsts, here's something that might actually be encouraging: a widening gulf between promised election-year giveaways and the expressed desires of the populace on the receiving end. Has ...
Hope floats.(Brief article)
Aug 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SEASTEADING--homesteading on the high seas--is an idea that has long attracted libertarians, along with others who would like to see a little more competition between forms of social organization. The idea is to get out into international waters and set up ...