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Reason's journalists and policy analysts are frequently cited by, and appear on, media outlets of all types. Please find a selection of those citations below.
Supreme Court Considers FCC Indecency Laws
USA Today
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether or not we still need the federal government and FCC to regulate the broadcast airwaves for things like nudity and explicit language. USA Today compiles opinion columns and editorials on the case:
Jacob Sullum, in Reason: "Fox and the other TV networks challenging the ban (on indecency) are urging the Supreme Court not only to uphold the 2nd Circuit's decision (reversing the ban) but to reconsider the 1978 ruling that approved content-based regulation of broadcasting on the grounds that the medium was 'uniquely pervasive' and 'uniquely accessible to children.' Now that nine out of 10 households are served by cable, satellite, or fiber-optic TV and children commonly watch video from non-broadcast sources, it is hard to make that argument with a straight face. Three decades ago, the court portrayed TV and radio signals as unwelcome visitors in people's homes. That description was never accurate. … It is even further from reality in today's entertainment market."
Reason's work the Supreme Court and censorship is here.
Who Is Ron Paul?
KALW Radio, San Francisco
Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch discusses Ron Paul with Katha Pollitt of The Nation and host Rose Aguilar and KALW's Your Call. The show says:
On today's Your Call, we’ll take a look at the increasingly popular GOP candidate, Ron Paul. Why is his message resonating with so many young people? What’s the draw for liberals? We’ll explore his ideology and ideas in depth.
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here.
Is Ron Paul Helping Mitt Romney?
The Week
Hold on. Paul could win this thing: It's easy to downplay the strength of Paul's performance , arguing that coming in as the runner-up "will be no more meaningful than was Pat Buchanan's actual win here in 1996," says Brian Doherty at Reason. But Paul isn't just meeting expectations, he's surpassing them. Paul has a clear set of ideas and the "widespread ability to inspire energetic and effective activism." Don't be surprised if Tea Party members or those who identify as "true conservatives" fall into line behind him as the field narrows, making Paul a severe threat to Romney's run at the nomination.
"Ron Paul: Amazing night, and the path to a two-man race"
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here.
Ron Paul and the GOP Presidential Race After New Hampshire
RT America
Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch appeared on Russia Today to discuss the Republican presidential race and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here.
Teachers Should be Paid Based on Their Effectiveness
The Huffington Post
At the Huffington Post, Jaime Hudgins writes:
Richwine and Biggs hint at performance pay in their Room for Debate commentary, and another commentator, Lisa Snell from the Reason Foundation, points out that the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, "calls for differentiating teacher compensation based on teacher effectiveness, the roles that teachers play, the difficulty of teaching assignments, and the length of the school year or school day." Of course, the development of criteria for determining which educators are deemed "effective," and which are best suited for leadership roles, is complicated. There is no single definition of what is, or makes, a great teacher.
The EPA's List of Most Wanted Fugitives
Greenwire
Environment & Energy's John McArdle writes:
To aid in the ongoing search, EPA added Wang to its online database of environmental fugitives three years ago.
Since it was created in 2008, EPA officials credit that list with helping nab a handful of eco-fugitives and informing the public about the agency's law enforcement work. But it has also increasingly become a rallying point for EPA critics who believe the agency has overstepped its original mission with its criminal enforcement efforts.
Adrian Moore, the vice president of policy at the free-market Reason Foundation, questioned last week whether Wang's deeds truly warranted a criminal charge and potential three-year prison sentence.
"That seems to me like a ticketable offense," Moore said in an interview.
Wang's case is a perfect example, he said, of the unbridled expansion of criminal law into areas of society that were once overseen by regulatory enforcement and civil law.
"Regulatory agencies like the idea of criminalization because it gives them more clout, it gives them more tools to use against offenders," Moore said. "It's a classic problem in government agencies, trying to do too many things."
Reason on the environment here.
The FCC's Broadcast TV Censorship Is Pointless in Age of Cable and the Internet
Chicago Sun Times
In his nationally syndicated column running in the Chicago Sun-Times, Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum writes:
My daughters, who range in age from 5 to 18, watch TV programs and movies on DVDs, on smartphones, streaming from Netflix through our Wii, on websites, on our DVR and on demand from AT&T U-verse. They do not know or care what “broadcast television” is, and they certainly do not perceive a categorical distinction between “over-the-air” channels and the rest.
But the Federal Communications Commission does, imposing a form of censorship on broadcast TV that would be clearly unconstitutional in any other context — for the children, of course. A case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday gives it a chance to renounce this obsolete doctrine.
Officially, the FCC punishes TV and radio stations for airing programs that “describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities” in a way that is “patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.” But no one knows what that means until the commission rules, and even then it is impossible to extract clear guidelines from the FCC.
The commission has decreed, for instance, that “f---” is indecent when uttered by celebrities during live award shows — whether exuberantly (Bono), angrily (Cher) or jokingly (Paris Hilton) — and by blues musicians in a PBS documentary, but not by fictional soldiers in “Saving Private Ryan,” where the expletives were, in the FCC’s view, artistically justified.
The FCC insists on no “bulls---” in a cop show but may allow it in “a bona fide news interview,” although it emphasizes “there is no outright news exemption from our indecency rules.” The commission can be surprisingly tolerant of a “d---head” or an “ass,” even when he is “pissed off.” As the America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) observes, such judgments are “simply a matter of taste, and the commissioners’ efforts to rationalize their taste merely emphasize the arbitrary nature of the enterprise.”
Reason's work on censorship is here.
Seriously, Libertarians Are Ecstatic About the Paul Candidacy
Politico
Politico's "Huddle" writes:
--Seriously, libertarians are ecstatic about the Paul candidacy. Check out this giddy report from Reason magazine’s Brian Doherty: “The vibe in the room where Paul gave his speech and many, many hundreds of his campaign volunteers celebrated for many hours after the candidate left the building was pure exhausted, proud joy, combined with resolution for the necessary next steps. These folk are both earnest and joyful, serious and witty, pleased and proud but by no means ready to rest on laurels. They all did their days or weeks of months of door-knocking, phone calling, poll watching, sign waving, and often very dedicated one on one discussion about how and why liberty was the right thing for America, to every New Hampshirite who would listen. … [E]very single one of the youth volunteers I spoke to, whether the ones put up by the campaign in hotels or sleeping on Free Staters floors, said they were quite confident they'd be moving on to work for Ron Paul's victory in South Carolina, in Nevada, in Maine, in Massachusetts, in New York, in Florida.” http://bit.ly/x6tDna
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here.
Reviewing the Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson
Boing Boing
At Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin writes:
The current print issue of Reason has a wonderful, thoughtful piece by Mike Godwin about the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs. I know it's hard to imagine there's anything new to say about this hyper-covered book about a hyper-covered popular figure, but: Godwin shows that yes, there is.
Gas Taxes, Tolls, and Paying for Roads
News-Press (MO)
St. Joseph (MO) News-Press Columnist Ken Newton writes:
These days, if you believe a Reason-Rupe public opinion survey taken in December, at least 58 percent of Americans would prefer paying for new highways or highway lanes through tolls rather than tax increases. At least 55 percent favor governments taking private concerns as partners in building public infrastructure.
The gasoline taxes that go to the building and upkeep of public roads have the fundamental unfairness of many taxes. That is, taxes a person pays at a pump in St. Joseph will be used to build a bridge that person will never cross in Southeast Missouri.
In all corners of the state, motorists pay for roads they will never drive along. Call it a justice constructed from broad-based inequity.
The December Reason-Rupe transportation poll mentioned in the story is here.
Is California Going To Pull The Plug On Its High-Speed Rail Project?
The Wall Street Journal
In The Wall Street Journal, Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich write:
The claimed cost of airport expansion is bloated, too. Bullet train proponents assume a very small average plane size into the future, as if airlines wouldn't use larger planes—such as the latest generation single-aisle Boeing 737s or Airbus 321s—to meet demand. Even without high-speed rail, in other words, no new runways or gates would have to be built beyond what will be needed anyway, and the assumed billions of dollars required to expand airports is just another unsubstantiated claim by rail promoters.
These absurdities aren't surprising. A study we prepared for the Reason Foundation in 2008—"The California High-Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report"—showed that high-speed rail proponents had overstated costs for alternative highway and airport capacities by a factor of more than 60.
There is more that is wrong with the California high-speed rail project. The Alice-in-Wonderland plan is based on greatly exaggerated ridership projections, hallucinatory promises of billions in private investment pouring into the system, and the expectation that the now-canceled federal high-speed rail program will magically provide many billions more.
Reason Foundation's Due Diligence Report by Cox and Vranich on the California high-speed rail plan.
US Government's Debt Is as Big as the Economy
Freedom Watch, Fox Business Network
Reason Foundation Vice President Julian Morris discusses the federal government's debt, which at $15 trillion now exceeds GDP. He also talks about breaking up the big banks, and the limits of federal power on Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch on Fox Business Network.
In 2011, 40 Percent of Americans Said They Were Political Independents, Highest Number Ever
The Alyona Show, RT America
Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch appeared on RT's The Alyona Show to talk about new Gallup numbers showing the percentage of self-identified independents reaching an all-time high of 40 percent in 2011.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Is Recovering, But Civil Discourse Hasn't
National Public Radio
At NPR.org, Linton Weeks writes:
When a gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others at a shopping center near Tucson exactly a year ago — killing six people and injuring Giffords and many others — some people were quick to blame the episode on the overheated political climate...
Writing in the Libertarian magazine Reason, David Harsanyi once asked, "Have we transformed into so brittle a citizenry that we are unable to handle a raucous debate over the future of the country? If things were quiet, subdued and 'civil' in America today ... it only would be proof that democracy isn't working."
And the late Christopher Hitchens reportedly said that civility is overrated.
Reason's full coverage of the Giffords shooting here and Matt Welch on political rhetoric here.
Tolls,Gas Taxes and Polls in Texas
Austin American-Statesman
In the Austin American-Statesman, transportation writer Ben Wear writes:
So, given the choice of a way to pay for more roads, would you go for higher gas taxes or more toll roads?
Texas politicians have been telling us for the past decade that the public prefers toll roads, though the considerable hullabaloo in Central Texas in the middle of last decade when toll road proposals began to sprout like crabgrass here seemed to indicate otherwise. Given that, an increase in the state's long-frozen 20-cents-a-gallon gas tax has gotten zero traction in the Legislature.
An early December national poll from the Reason Foundation would seem to justify that legislative choice.
Rick Santorum Isn’t a Reagan Conservative
The Daily Caller
In Daily Caller, Jack Hunter writes:
In an interview with Reason magazine in 1975, Ronald Reagan said:
If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism … The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Says Santorum: “I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”
Reason's Manuel Klausner interview with Ronald Reagan in 1975.
2012 Brings 40,000 New Laws Across the U.S.
Freedom Watch, Fox Business Network
Reason magazine Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward and Judge Andrew Napolitano discuss the 40,000 new laws being implemented at the city, state and federal level in 2012.
Reason's work on the "Nanny State."
States and the Health Care Bill
Politico
Politico's "Political Pulse" writes:
Reason’s Peter Suderman says the denials of the Kansas and Oklahoma MLR waiver requests prove that HHS isn’t really that interested in state flexibility. http://bit.ly/wkusjv
Understanding Different Strains of Libertarianism and Rep. Ron Paul
Mother Jones
Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson writes:
Congressman Ron Paul's third-place finish in Tuesday's Iowa Republican Caucus was a remarkably strong showing for a candidate who has so little in common with mainstream Republicans. Perhaps the nation's most politically unique congressman, Paul shares policy stances with conservatives, liberals, and libertarians, while differing markedly from all of them...
Libertarianism might be a simple ideology, an aversion to big government in all its forms, but don't tell that to libertarians: "Like any movement of any size," says Nick Gillespie, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, "it is an endless operation of trying to figure out more and more ways in which people who agree on 99.9 percent of everything can really hate each other's guts."
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here and archive on libertarianism is here.
What Are Mainstream Views on Defense Spending and Foreign Policy Today?
Omaha World-Herald
In his syndicated column, Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum writes:
"I don't think Ron Paul represents the mainstream," says Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich, another of the Texas congressman's opponents in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, uses stronger terms, declaring, "Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American."
As the results in Iowa suggest, the "mainstream" to which Romney and Gingrich refer is not defined by voters; it is the range of opinion deemed acceptable by leaders of the two major political parties. The mainstream has brought us a national debt the size of the national economy, a bloated yet overextended military that has strayed far from its mission of defending the country, and a lawless executive branch that usurps legislative powers and violates civil liberties.
If that is what the mainstream represents, it is no place for decent Americans who support smaller government. Romney and Gingrich may think they are discrediting Paul, but they are actually recommending him as the only candidate who breaks decisively with the status quo.
Full column at the Omaha World-Leader here.
Taxpayer-backed Loans Bring Big Trouble in Denver
Denver Post
In a column for the Denver Post, Reason Foundation's Harris Kenny writes:
Solar panel-maker Solyndra has been in the headlines because it received $528 million worth of taxpayer-backed federal loans and then went bankrupt. But Denver residents don't need to look at failed Solyndra to see the trouble that government loans can bring. Sadly, there are some prime examples closer to home.
Last month, The Denver Post reported ["Tattered sales twist finances," Dec. 9 news story] that roughly 15 percent, or around $20 million, of the loans in the Denver Office of Economic Development's $127 million portfolio are currently in arrears or in default.
One of these loans, known as the Lowenstein Project, illustrates how local officials have been gambling with taxpayer money on dubious urban renewal initiatives. The Lowenstein Theatre, located across from Denver's East High School on East Colfax, had been essentially vacant for 20 years. In 2006, former Office of Economic Development (OED) Director John Huggins proposed the Lowenstein Project, which would target the area for a $14 million redevelopment effort to build a movie theater, bookstore, music store and restaurants.
Denver officials loved the idea and helped private companies buy the Lowenstein property by handing out tax increment financing (TIF) loans of $475,000 each to Charles Wooley; Denver-based real estate firm St. Charles Town Co.; Twist & Shout; and Neighborhood Flix Cinema and Café.
By 2008, Neighborhood Flix Cinema and Café was bankrupt, taking taxpayer money that had been loaned to the company down with it. Then, in February 2011, the Lowenstein Project developers defaulted on their $2.4 million TIF loan.
Reason Foundation on government reform here.
Supreme Court to Hear Property Rights, EPA Case
Freedom Watch, Fox Business Network
On Freedom Watch, Reason magazine Senior Editor Damon Root and Fox Business' Judge Andrew Napolitano discuss the Supreme Court's upcoming hearing on Environmental Protection Agency's use of "compliance orders" against private property rights and landowners.
Reason's work on the Supreme Court and property rights.
Ron Paul and Libertarians Bring Important Voice
Newsday
In Newsday, Cathy Young, a regular contributor to Reason magazine and RealClearPolitics, writes:
The strong presence of Ron Paul, the Republican congressman from Texas, in the GOP campaign -- and his respectable third-place finish in Iowa this week -- is bringing attention to the often-ignored libertarian strain in American politics. It is an outlook that challenges the dogmas of both left and right, and taps into an essential part of the national psyche.
Paul, who ran for president on the Libertarian ticket in 1988, espouses views that often put him at odds with fellow Republicans as well as Democrats. While he strongly opposes the welfare state and government intervention in the economy, he's an equally vocal critic of government infringements on individual rights in the name of national security or traditional morality. He has assailed the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. While not endorsing same-sex marriage, he has argued that all voluntary associations should be legally protected and that, ideally, the state should get out of the marriage business and leave it to religious congregations.
The fortunes of Paul's candidacy are complicated by his deeply troubling personal baggage of bigoted newsletters to which he lent his name two decades ago. Even without that, it's unlikely that he could win the Republican nomination -- let alone the White House. Yet the level of his support -- he raised $13 million in the last quarter of 2011 and placed first in several polls -- points to the enduring appeal of pro-liberty ideas. It is one of many such signs.
The tea party, which has changed America's political landscape in the last three years, coalesced around opposition to big government. Despite its linkage to political conservatism, it has focused on small government and constitutional freedoms, not traditionally conservative social issues.
Meanwhile, sales of "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand's 1955 novel in which entrepreneurs in a quasi-socialist future rebel against a parasitic state -- the closest there is to a libertarian classic -- have skyrocketed.
Libertarian sympathies have deep roots in America's individualist culture. In a recent poll in the Pew Global Attitudes Project, Americans tended to agree -- by an almost 2 to 1 ratio -- that freedom to pursue one's goals without state interference was more important than having the state guarantee that no one is in need.
Does that mean we have a libertarian majority?
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here and archive on libertarianism is here.
Rick Santorum Isn't Ronald Reagan
Bangor Daily News
In the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Matthew Gagnon, a Republican political strategist, writes:
But if Santorum is considered a conservative simply because he is not Mitt Romney, than the Goldwater-Reagan tradition of the party is truly dead.
In an interview with Reason Magazine in 1975, Ronald Reagan said, “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” To him, being a conservative was about a belief in limited government and individual freedom to pursue success.
The primary goal of conservatism should be to limit the government’s involvement in our lives, because people and local communities are better able to manage their own affairs than bureaucrats in Washington.
Reason's Manuel Klausner interview with Ronald Reagan in 1975.
Democrats and Independents Help Ron Paul In GOP Race
The Daily Caller
Christopher Bedford of The Daily Caller writes:
Of the independents, 44 percent came out for Paul, while 18 percent supported “Romney, who was the next-closest,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Brian Doherty, senior editor of libertarian magazine Reason, on the other hand, told TheDC that the benefits of this strategy have not yet been fully realized.
“I think the numbers clearly show that Paul is the GOP candidate in the best position to pick up Democratic and independent voters in the general election,” Doherty emailed from the ground in Iowa, saying that he has “heard enough” reports from Paul phone bankers that he is “confident Paul’s boost in an Obama-Paul match-up from non-GOP voters will be bigger than people now think.”
“Whether this will help sway [traditionally] GOP voters in Paul’s direction — not sure,” he continued, writing that, “sometimes it seems Republicans’ dedication to a bellicose foreign policy overwhelms strategy about beating Obama.”
Reason's Ron Paul coverage is here.
Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie's book: The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America.
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