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Welcome to
REASON Express, the weekly e-newsletter from REASON magazine. REASON
Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and draws
on the ideas and resources of the REASON editorial staff. For more
information on REASON, visit our Web site at www.reason.com.
Send your comments about REASON Express to Jeff A. Taylor (jtaylor@reason.com)
and REASON Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com).
REASON Express
March 27, 2001
Vol. 4 No. 13
1) From Hug Drug to Big House
2) Microsoft Does Something: Is it Illegal?
3) Dances With Cul-de-Sacs
4) Bang! You're Suspended
5) Quick Hits
- - X Marks the Spot - -
So much for the wiser, more compassionate War on Drugs. Pull out all the
old stories about crack and crank and drop in a new term for latest threat
to
America's youth.
Taking emergency action, the U.S. Sentencing Commission ramped up the
sentences for selling Ecstasy. So ravers beware, beginning May 1, the
punishment for importing or selling X will be more severe than for selling
powder cocaine.
The Justice Department lobbied for the increase, saying it'll help combat
the
popularity of the drug. It cites the familiar mantra of tough sentences
for manufacturers will choke off the supply, making it harder and more
expensive
for suburban kids to find the "hug drug."
And it is the notion that "good kids" use the drug that
stampeded Congress to
hold scary, this-is-your-brain-before-Congress hearings on MDMA, as
scientists
first knew X. Indeed the congressional stampede to do something is what
made
the Sentencing Commission make its emergency changes to Ecstasy penalties.
Commission members were afraid that Congress, left to its own devices,
would
do something even more drastic.
"If we don't follow that directive or satisfy Congress that we've
done it in a reasoned way, their remedy is a mandatory minimum,"
Diana Murphy, the
commission chair and a U.S. appellate judge said.
What a great way to make public policy: Hurry up and do something dumb
before
someone else does something even dumber.
Neuroscientists associated with the Federation of American Scientists note
that the dangers of the drug in no way approach those of cocaine, heroin,
or
even alcohol. As with any psychoactive chemical, chronic over-indulgence
gets
X users in trouble, but trouble seems to most often be manageable panic
attacks.
Hmm, panic. Maybe official Washington gobbles handfuls of MDMA when no one
is looking.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A33862-2001Mar20.html
*****************************************************
- - All Hail the Coming Storm - -
Microsoft itself may not know what its Hailstorm project really is, aside
from
really big vaporware. But hasn't stopped the anti-MS zealots from
surmising
that whatever Hailstorm is, it probably violates antitrust law.
Hailstorm seems to be nothing more than a follow-on to some old MS
identity
managing tools for users and Web sites, a promise to tie instant messaging
more closely to Windows, and a pledge that Hailstorm will work really well
with Microsoft's equally murky .NET initiative.
The central theme to all this is that Redmond wants to be able to do a lot
of
Web-based stuff, preferably sell users Web-resident stuff and features on
an a
la carte basis. This is a radically different business model for company
that
got rich stuffing feature after (undocumented) feature into its products.
It might work, it might not. (Anyone else remember BOB?)
But the mere appearance that Microsoft might be striding off in a new
direction has met with dire warnings.
"Suffice it to say, if Microsoft embarks on a course that essentially
replicates the [antitrust] violation that was found in this case, we would
consider it a very serious matter," said Tom Miller, the attorney
general in Iowa, which was among the states that sued Microsoft.
There seems to be a great deal of worry that MS will somehow take over the
instant messaging space now dominated by AOL. To that the correct answer
is:
So? For these always-on channels to have real staying power and value to
the
consumer, they will have to support open standards that allow all kinds of
third-party developers a chance to make money.
If instead, MS tried to run a closed shop, like--ahem--AOL now does, it is
unlikely to gain a foothold no matter how much tying and bundling Redmond
attempts. It'll be enough of a challenge for Microsoft to build something
that users can understand with less than 20 lingo-ridden Point Power
slides staring them in the face.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A28125-2001Mar19.html
***************************************
- - Building Pass - -
Everyone knows you shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house.
Now
the National Wildlife Federation is finding out you shouldn't lob land-use
diktats if your new headquarters is in the suburbs.
NWF's $17.4 million building in sprawling--yes, sprawling--Reston,
Virginia features a parking lot for 285 cars, not far from fast food
joints, but a
healthy walk from the nearest Metro rail station.
"Another office building isolated in another office campus is not
smart
growth, it's sprawl," Stewart Schwartz, director of the Coalition for
Smarter
Growth, said of the new building. "Most environmental groups locate
in
downtown areas, on purpose, to live the message, to literally walk the
walk."
But the federation says that their hands were tied. They had to build
somewhere close to their employees. Most of the 249 employees live in the
Virginia suburbs and the majority of them drive to work. Besides, other
options closer in were too expensive.
Ah, so the insurance company that builds in the burbs doesn't do it for
bottom-line reasons, but so employee SUVs can drive further and clip more
fawns and baby seals on the way to work? NWF really didn't want to clear
the trees from the seven-acre property, but Wal-Mart execs line up to
drive the 'dozers?
The federation's smart-growth maven John Kostyack went on to drop these
pearls on The Washington Post:
"It is in a suburban office park, and there is no way of getting
around that. But you want to have people living near where they work, and
when I look at it that way, the site makes a great deal of sense.
Sprawl is not a black-and-white issue. Sure, a case can be made that
building
in a downtown looks more like smart growth, but that's not a good
analysis.
There are complex factors that come into play."
No kidding.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A33929-2001Mar20.html
Sam Staley asks what's so bad about suburbs at
http://reason.com/0102/cr.ss.room.html
*****************************************************
- - Threat Assessment - -
When two New Jersey second-graders playing cops and robbers with a paper
gun are charged with making terrorist threats, something is obviously way
off the rails. The larger question is whether public servants can get much
dumber.
"Although the paper handgun posed no immediate threat to the students
in the
class, the words spoken certainly and appropriately were recognized by
school
officials and police as warning signs to cause concern," Irvington
Police
Chief Steven Palamara said.
Nothing like those paper guns that pose interim threats. And since when is
concern a crime? Can you be arrested if the IRS is "concerned"
you might not
file your taxes?
From Denver comes evidence that the zero-tolerance madness continues to
work its perverse magic. Almost a quarter of all Denver kids in middle
school were
suspended at least once last year.
"Nobody likes to suspend a kid. But compared to other metropolitan
districts,
I don't see us being out of line," assistant superintendent Wayne
Eckerling
said.
Which is the problem. A policy that is sending kids home at these rates is
cannot have the desired effect. It is like the cold warriors who, in an
effort
to keep things secret, effectively made everything secret. As a result, no
one
could keep tabs on the truly dangerous stuff.
So it is with suspending 25 percent of a school and calling 8-year-olds
terrorists. It literally makes it impossible to focus on the truly
troubled kids--not to mention abuses the trust kids and their parents put
in the state every time the school bell rings.
http://www.charlotte.com/topnews/pub/
papergun.htm
http://www.denverpost.com/news/new
s0322a.htm
*****************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"I see alcoholics and crack addicts every time I go to work. I do not
see people whose lives have been ruined by [Ecstasy,]" New York
University psychiatrist Julie Holland, on what she sees in Bellevue
Hospital's psychiatric emergency room.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A27954-2001Mar19.html
- - Quote of the Week, Long Form Division - -
"I listened to senator after senator doing their Colonel Kurtz act,
writhing and moaning on the Senate floor about having to raise money; how
they need to shower after making fund-raising phone calls; how all they do
all day every day is raise money, raise money, raise money. Oh, the
horror. I have a suggestion for any Senator who finds this too difficult:
Don't run again. You'll never have to raise another dime. And you can give
up your
taxpayer-supported staff, your taxpayer supported office space, your
taxpayer
supported office equipment, your taxpayer supported postage and supplies;
and your taxpayer supported overseas travel. You can also give up being
fawned over by lobbyists, give up being swooned over by constituents, and
give up being ego-boosted by television talk show bookers. You can drive
your own car, book your own travel, balance your own checkbook, and
actually work five days a week. United States Senators take the business
of being a senator very,
very seriously. If they thought they could get away with it, they would
wear togas," Rich Galen on the campaign finance reform debate.
http://www.mullings.com
- - Biker Violence - -
An off-duty Maryland firefighter fired three shots into a man who broke
into
his house in the middle of the afternoon. The intruder rode his bike up to
the
house using a nearby bike path.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A46415-2001Mar22.html
- - Naked Ambition - -
Rob Black, president of porn tape studio Extreme Associates, thinks he
wants
to run for mayor of Los Angeles. Bill Clinton is his political hero, and
Black
wants LA to be more like Las Vegas.
http://www.newtimesla.com/issues/2001
-03-22/faultlines.html
- - Smoke Out - -
Alfred Muller, mayor of Friendship Heights, Maryland and an usher at
Washington National Cathedral for more than three decades, pleaded guilty
to
sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in the restroom of the cathedral on a
Sunday afternoon. Muller was the subject of a People magazine story for
his attempts to ban outdoor smoking on public property in his town. His
picture in the mag was used to ID him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A51089-2001Mar23.html
##################################
REASON NEWS
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