Issue April 2016 - Reason (2024)

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Reason is the monthly print magazine of "free minds and free markets." It covers politics, culture, and ideas through aprovocative mix of news, analysis, commentary, and reviews. Reason provides a refreshing alternative to right-wing and left-wing opinion magazines by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice in all areas of human activity.

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in this issue

DepartmentsHow Congress Helped Sink Rand Paul’s CampaignFOUR DAYS BEFORE Rand Paul dropped out of the presidential race, I watched a frustrated reason subscriber ask Sen. Jeff Flake (R–Ariz.) to explain something about the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. Why, Bryan Elliott wanted to know, had a unified GOP Congress colluded with President Barack Obama in late 2015 to produce a last-minute omnibus spending package that put the country on pace to run up trillion-dollar annual budget deficits by 2022, three years earlier than the Congressional Budget Office had previously predicted? “What did you get in return for busting the sequester and putting us on that kind of deficit [trajectory]?”Flake, who voted against both the December omnibus and the October two-year budget deal that removed the Budget Control Act caps on federal spending (colloquially known as “the sequester”),…6 min

DepartmentsContributorsAEON SKOBLE, 51, is a professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State University. His work, though, is very practical: “I mainly work on ethics and political philosophy, so it’s grounded in the lived world and isn’t the stargazing of popular stereotype.” In this issue, he reviews Hayek’s Modern Family, a new book that applies the Austrian Nobel laureate’s ideas to the evolving institution that is the family (“Libertarian Family Values,” page 52). Skoble is the author of Deleting the State: An Argument about Government (Open Court) and co-editor of the best-selling The Simpsons and Philosophy (Open Court).Since Staff Editor ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN joined REASON in 2015, she has made a name for herself reporting on sex policy, gender issues, and the criminal justice system. But health and nutrition, which she’s written…1 min

Departments15 years ago in reason“Concern about ‘hate crimes’ is resuscitating the Chicago police department’s long-dormant Red Squad, an intelligence unit that specialized in infiltrating, harassing, and gathering intelligence on political groups....Police will again be able to amass databases on groups whom they think might commit terrorist acts and hate crimes.”—Charles Paul Freund, “Hate Squad”“How has Bush—who was elected under the most dubious circ*mstances in American electoral history, who is acknowledged by his own supporters as one of the weakest thinkers to hold the presidency, and who made at least one Cabinet appointment (that of Attorney General John Ashcroft) seemingly designed mostly to provoke controversy—done it so far? Largely by playing the role of the anti-Clinton when it comes to personal style.”—Nick Gillespie, “Bush the Lesser”“Title IX sought to give women equal access to educational…1 min

DepartmentsCitingsDefying a ban; free-range win; faith overruled; a family reunited; work killer; cop killers; jobs gamble; small town, big deal; is it ‘natural’Cop exploiterOfficer BustedRobby SoaveA D.C.-AREA police detective whose job was to investigate Internet sex crimes against children committed suicide in December moments before cops could arrest him—on charges of sexually exploiting kids.That was just one of the lurid ironies of the law enforcement career of David Edward Abbott, who worked for the region’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Abbott had been the lead investigator in a 2014 sexting case in which a 17-year-old was accused of sending pictures of his naked body to his 15-year-old girlfriend. In order to prove the photos were authentic, authorities sought and obtained a warrant to drive the teen to a hospital,…13 min

DepartmentsQuotes“The rhetoric got way ahead of the policy making.”—former Obama administration State Department official Michael Posner, on Obama’s willingness, despite claims he makes in speeches, to work with oppressive foreign governments when it suits his national security goals, Politico, January/February 2016“I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73....it never goes away.”—tweet from Juanita Broaddrick, a former nursing home administrator who in 1999 accused the then-president of raping her in 1978, January 6“The enforcement strategy that the administration has articulated is not going to change.”—White House press secretary Josh Earnest, asked in a press briefing whether raids against illegal immigrants in the United States will continue, January 8“To me, the core of criminal justice is the…1 min

DepartmentsBrickbatsDes Moines, Iowa, police officer Brady Pratt unintentionally fired his service weapon inside the city airport. Officials say he was practicing his “quick draw” at the time.Officials at Kentucky’s W.R. Castle Elementary School censored a student performance of A Charlie Brown Christmas by deleting the scene in which Linus quotes from the Bible. But at the point where that scene normally occurs, several audience members recited the lines. Principal Jeff Cochran said he was disappointed with their actions.Independence, Louisiana, police officer Laquinton Banks has been charged with felony theft, malfeasance in office, and hate crimes. Banks allegedly targeted Hispanic motorists, stopping them and asking for their wallets to check their licenses. When he returned the wallets, their cash was frequently missing.The University of Louisville recently posted a job listing for…2 min

Issue April 2016 - Reason (2024)

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