Category: reason

Santa Fe County, New Mexico, Sheriff Robert Garcia says he will
look into why deputies handcuffed a woman suffering a
diabetic attack and left her on the ground. Revina Garcia
had been in a minor automobile accident and did not respond to
deputies when they arrived on the scene. They smashed out the
windows of her vehicle, dragged her out, handcuffed her and left
her face down on the pavement for about a minute before placing her
in a patrol car. Deputies said they believed she was
intoxicated.

Santa Fe County, New Mexico, Sheriff Robert Garcia says he will
look into why deputies handcuffed a woman suffering a
diabetic attack and left her on the ground. Revina Garcia
had been in a minor automobile accident and did not respond to
deputies when they arrived on the scene. They smashed out the
windows of her vehicle, dragged her out, handcuffed her and left
her face down on the pavement for about a minute before placing her
in a patrol car. Deputies said they believed she was
intoxicated.

If you want to understand the U.S.-Iran
controversy, know this: It is not about nuclear
weapons. You’re thinking: Of course it’s about nuclear weapons.
Everyone says so. But Sheldon Richman says one must look at the
leading opponents of the agreement: Israel and Saudi Arabia. For
overlapping reasons, both would hate to see the 34-year-old cold
war between the United States and Iran come to an end.

View this article.

If you want to understand the U.S.-Iran
controversy, know this: It is not about nuclear
weapons. You’re thinking: Of course it’s about nuclear weapons.
Everyone says so. But Sheldon Richman says one must look at the
leading opponents of the agreement: Israel and Saudi Arabia. For
overlapping reasons, both would hate to see the 34-year-old cold
war between the United States and Iran come to an end.

View this article.

Here’s Reason TV’s Thanksgiving release from 2011. It’s less
than 30 seconds long and goes down like a chill shot of cranberry
schnapps, which we sincerely hope does not exist. And it’s a
testament to however quickly contemporary memes come and go, old
movies with high-pitched kids who sound like Towelie from South
Park are forever.

Original writeup follows.
Go here for links and downloadable versions.

In a time of 9 percent unemployment, a faltering global
economy, toxic levels of political rancor, and the release
of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, is there anything left to
be thankful for?

Reason offers a message of hope, redemption, and dada.

About 30 seconds. Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick
Gillespie.

Key moments in Thanksgiving history:

1621: Pilgrims in Plymouth Plantation,
Massachusetts and Wampanoag Indians celebrate a harvest feast that
is generally acknowledged as the precursor to Thanksgiving.

1675-1676: About 40 percent of Wampanoag
tribe killed by colonists and other Indians during King Phillip’s
War.

1777: During Revolutionary War,
Continental Congress makes first Thanksgiving proclamation,
declaring December 18 a day that no work should be done or fun
should be had, thus paving the way for the contemporary
tradition of spending time with family and watching dull NFL
games featuring the Detroit Lions. The original declaration
instructs “That servile Labor, and such Recreation, as, though at
other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the Purpose of this
Appointment, be omitted on so solemn an Occasion.”

1863: Abraham Lincoln sets the last
Thursday in November as the date for a national holiday dedicated
to the idea that even with the Civil War raging, things had been
going pretty well when you got right down to it: “Population has
steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in
the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country,
rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is
permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of
freedom.”

1915: Preacher William Simmons and 15
others revived
the Ku Klux Klan by burning a cross on Georgia’s Stone
Mountain on Thanksgiving, tying the event to the Atlanta opening
the following week of D.W. Griffith’s pro-Klan movie, The
Birth of a Nation.

1924: First Macy’s Day Parade held in New
York City featuring live animals on floats. After multiple episodes
of tigers and bears eating beauty queens and local politicians, the
animals are replaced in 1927 with balloons of Felix the Cat
and other characters.

1939: In a bid to lengthen the Christmas
retail season, Franklin Roosevelt unilaterally declared
Thanksgiving would take place on the third Thursday in November
rather than the last, thus giving rise to what was derided as
“Franksgiving” and what lives on as Black Friday. In 1941, federal
legislation declared Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the fourth
Thursday in November, marking the last time that Congress passed a
law that didn’t cost future generations a lot of money.

1987: Ronald Reagan initiates the custom
of publicly pardoning a turkey on Thanksgiving; lives to regret it
when George H.W. Bush succeeds him as president. Subsequent
presidents pardon two turkeys each holiday, because two is twice as
good as one.

2009: President Barack Obama fattens
turkeys with stimulus dollars, predicts swift end to surprisingly
persistent economic downturn that he inherited from previous
occupant.

2011: In a bid to appeal to GOP voters,
free-falling Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of
Texas refuses to review clemency requests and approves the
execution of innocent turkeys. For the purposes of school-lunch
programs, federal government declares pizza a vegetable and pepper
spray a condiment for educational institutions.

Sources: Wikipedia, 10ZenMonkeys.com, Fevered
Imagination.

More fun at
Reason.tv.

The New York City Council is
considering a ban on the use of electronic cigarettes in bars,
restaurant, and other “public places”—not because there is any
evidence that the devices pose a hazard but because they look
too much like regular cigarettes. Councilman James
Gennaro, a sponsor of the proposed ban, tells The New York
Times, “We see these cigarettes are really starting to
proliferate, and it’s unacceptable.” Why is it unacceptable?
According to the Times, “Mr. Gennaro said children who
could not differentiate between regular and electronic smoking were
getting the message that smoking is socially acceptable.”

So it is not the product that bothers Gennaro as much as the
message it supposedly sends. Presumably he would have the same
complaint if people started wearing T-shirts proclaiming that
“Smoking Is Cool,” although banning those might be constitutionally
problematic. Might there be a way to address Gennaro’s concern
about the impact that the sight of vaping has on impressionable
young minds without resorting to the use of force? I’m just
spitballing here, but maybe parents could explain to their children
the difference between e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine in a
propylene glycol vapor, and conventional cigarettes, which deliver
nicotine in a cloud of toxins and carcinogens generated by burning
tobacco. Even if Gennaro does not trust parents to educate their
offspring about such matters, surely a measure short of a total ban
could accomplish the goal he has in mind. How about taking a page
from the city’s regulations regarding
toy guns by restricting e-cigarettes to bright
fluorescent colors, so they can be readily distinguished from the
real thing? 

Some might question Gennaro’s premise that children should never
see adults doing something (or seeming to do something) that
children are not supposed to do. If kids must be shielded from the
sight of vaping because it looks like smoking, perhaps they also
should be shielded from the sight of drinking—not just of alcoholic
beverages but of any drink that resembles an alcoholic beverage.
After all, how does an innocent child know the difference between
O’Doul’s and Budweiser, or between a Coke that contains Jack
Daniels and one that does not?

Gennaro’s rationale for banning vaping in bars and restaurants
actually is similar to the motivation for banning smoking in bars
and restaurants. The official rationale for such laws is protecting
employees, and their popularity can be explained by the simple fact
that most people find tobacco smoke distasteful, whether or not
they actually worry about the long-term health consequences of
sitting in a smoky bar for 30 years. But from a “public health”
perspective, the real payoff, in terms of reducing morbidity and
mortality, is deterring smoking by making is less convenient and
less socially acceptable. Gennaro worries that e-cigarettes will
undermine that goal.

That seems rather implausible, since the main selling point of
e-cigarettes is that they eliminate tobacco, its combustion
products, and the health hazards associated with them. Although the
Times says vaping in public remains legal thanks to
“a loophole” in New York’s smoking ban, the truth is that vaping
remains legal precisely because vaping is not
smoking. By seeking to equate the two, control freaks like
Gennaro may achieve the opposite of their avowed aim, increasing
rather than reducing smoking-related illness. As Craig Weiss,
president of the e-cigarette company NJoy, tells the
Times, “If you make it just as inconvenient to use an
electronic cigarette as a tobacco cigarette, people are just
going to keep smoking their Marlboros.”

Yesterday Zenon Evans
noted that Chicago also is considering a ban on vaping.

…in the Washington Examiner today, by stopping his yammerings
against capitalism.

In a speech this week he went on yet another anti-capitalistic
rant, claiming that the “opinion” that “economic growth,
encouraged by the free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing
about greater justice and inclusiveness” has “never been confirmed
by the facts.”

This shows, notes Dalmia, that the Pope pays no attention to
Bono, which is a sign of good taste.

His judgement, however, is another matter. It seems the Pope
hasn’t put down his copy of Das Capital to actually look at the
world around him in quite a while. If he had, he’d not only notice
how it has raised living standards in countries where it has (sort
of) been tried (and these don’t include his native Argentina and
his new home, Italy). He’d also notice how these (semi)
capitalistic countries keep the Catholic Church and its charitable
mission going. She writes:

Capitalism puts more discretionary income in the pockets of
people to devote to charitable pursuits. It is hardly a coincidence
that America donates over $300 billion annually toward charitable
causes at home and abroad, the highest of any country on a per
capita basis.

The church itself is a big beneficiary of this capitalist
largesse, with its U.S. wing alone contributing 60 percent to its
overall global wealth. Some of this money comes from donations, but
a big chunk comes, actually, from directly partaking in capitalism:
The church is reportedly the largest landowner in Manhattan, the
financial center of the global capitalism system, whose income puts
undisclosed sums into its coffers.

So the new pope needs to be careful not to bite the hand that
feeds his institution and its work. Otherwise, neither he nor the
poor in whose name he is speaking will have much to be thankful
for.

Go
here for the whole thing.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[OK, granted, you could be reading this on
a phone or something.]

Here’s the lede from
my latest column at Time.com, which went live just
yesterday:

If there’s one thing even more uniquely American than choking
down mouthfuls of turkey no one wants, green bean
casserole no one admits to preparing, and pumpkin pie that no one
remembers buying on Thanksgiving, it’s going shopping all the time.
For god’s sake, George W. Bush counseled a nation still
reeling from the 9/11 attacks that when the going gets
tough, the tough go shopping. “Take your families and enjoy
life the way we want it to be enjoyed,” he said. Forget
baseball—shopping is the national pastime.

Given that, I’m genuinely
amazed at the pushback against plans by Walmart, Target,
and other major retailers to open their doors on a day that
everyone has off but no one has anything to do. Being disgusted by
the willingness of stores to open for business on, what, the
10th or 20th most solemn day of the year isn’t just
incomprehensible, it’s positively anti-American.

As Calvin Coolidge put it famously to a bunch of
newspaper editors back in 1925, “The chief business of the
American people is business.” Just as you can’t have Thanksgiving
without a meal that fully no one actually enjoys (and a guest list
that always seems only slightly less arbitrary, resentful, and
ill-mannered than the manimals in The Island of Dr.
Moreau), you can’t have a functioning free-market economy
without massive amounts of shopping. Every day is “Buy Nothing Day”
in North Korea and look where that’s got them.

Please check out the whole thing.

Please note that this column in no way is a call for mandatory
shopping or opening of stores on this or any other holiday. But it
is an argument for unfettering markets even on this hallowed day
(wait, is this Gettysburg sesquicentennial?).

[OK, granted, you could be reading this on
a phone or something.]

Here’s the lede from
my latest column at Time.com, which went live just
yesterday:

If there’s one thing even more uniquely American than choking
down mouthfuls of turkey no one wants, green bean
casserole no one admits to preparing, and pumpkin pie that no one
remembers buying on Thanksgiving, it’s going shopping all the time.
For god’s sake, George W. Bush counseled a nation still
reeling from the 9/11 attacks that when the going gets
tough, the tough go shopping. “Take your families and enjoy
life the way we want it to be enjoyed,” he said. Forget
baseball—shopping is the national pastime.

Given that, I’m genuinely
amazed at the pushback against plans by Walmart, Target,
and other major retailers to open their doors on a day that
everyone has off but no one has anything to do. Being disgusted by
the willingness of stores to open for business on, what, the
10th or 20th most solemn day of the year isn’t just
incomprehensible, it’s positively anti-American.

As Calvin Coolidge put it famously to a bunch of
newspaper editors back in 1925, “The chief business of the
American people is business.” Just as you can’t have Thanksgiving
without a meal that fully no one actually enjoys (and a guest list
that always seems only slightly less arbitrary, resentful, and
ill-mannered than the manimals in The Island of Dr.
Moreau), you can’t have a functioning free-market economy
without massive amounts of shopping. Every day is “Buy Nothing Day”
in North Korea and look where that’s got them.

Please check out the whole thing.

Please note that this column in no way is a call for mandatory
shopping or opening of stores on this or any other holiday. But it
is an argument for unfettering markets even on this hallowed day
(wait, is this Gettysburg sesquicentennial?).

Ramez Naam shares an excerpt from his novel,
Nexus, which takes a fictional look at governments’
desperate efforts to restrict the flow of information on the
Internet. The story dramatizes the futility of government attempts
to stop the spread of a new drug once the knowledge of how to make
it gets on the Internet. The drug in question allows human beings
to link their minds together.

View this article.