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Now Playing at Reason.tv: How The Week Is Redefining News Mags for the 21st Century

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Bill Falk is editor in chief of The Week, the magazine that promises to "tell you all you need to know about everything that matters." Six years old and boasting a growing circulation of 500,000 subscribers, The Week has redefined the news magazine for the 21st century by offering wide-ranging and witty takes on the topics of the day. For each issue, Falk and his staff sift through thousands of newspapers, magazines, websites, and other sources to produce a concise and comprehensive gazette of news, opinion, and attitude.

Although The Week is a non-partisan publication, Falk has no shortage of opinions about the state of the media-and particularly the troubles facing old-style, mass-circulation print behemoths such as Time and Newsweek. Such mags are "clearly in a bad place," he says. "It's unclear what their role is in this new media landscape....They're fishing around for what their role is going to be."

In this 10-minute interview conducted and filmed by reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and Dan Hayes, Falk explains why he thinks The Washington Post is the best newspaper in America, why content will always be king across all media platforms, and why it may not be a bad thing that politics is starting to look more and more like a reality TV show in which contestants get voted off the island.

Click below to view. To add this video to your site and more reason.tv, go here.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: How the WSJ editorial page gets made—Q&A with Robert Pollock

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Former reason intern Robert Pollock has been the editorial features page editor at The Wall Street Journal for more than a year. The Buffalo native sat down recently with reason.tv to talk about how he came to his libertarian beliefs; how the mainstream media is toeing the Journal's line on capital gains taxes; why The Washington Post is the Journal's toughest competition and why The New York Times' editorial pages have a "hectoring" tone; how the GOP turned its back on its small-government philosophy; why America needs more immigrants; and much more.

This 10-minute interview was conducted by reason.tv Editor Nick Gillespie and filmed by reason.tv's Dan Hayes.

Click below to view.

Hmmm. What Changed??

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:31:00 EDT

W magazine writes about Arianna Huffington:

It wasn't that long ago that Huffington was variously dismissed as a social climber, "intellectual lap dancer" and political opportunist

Next up: W reveals how it wasn't that long ago that David Brock was dismissed as a partisan hack!

Bonus Arianna-ana: 1) Time's classic mid-'90s Margaret Carlson piece, "Should the Huffingtons Be Stopped?" 2) Watch ex-hubbie Michael call B.S. on her post-facto opposition to Proposition 187. 3) Jacob Sullum tells you what you really need to know about La Huffington's 2003 anti-SUV ads.

War Is the Health of the Economy

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:28:00 EDT

Hyper-influential foreign policy intellectual establishmenteer Frederick Kagan has a long new piece in the National Review attacking, um, "hyper-sophisticates of the American foreign-policy and intellectual establishment." Or at least, the ones who aren't named Kagan.

One of his rebuttals to critics of the Kagans' War is sure to win over you FDR fanboys out there:

Modern economics has long understood that the notion of a one-for-one guns-versus-butter trade-off is simply wrong. A high proportion of money spent on defense goes back into the U.S. economy in the form of salaries paid to the more than 5 million Americans employed directly or indirectly by the Defense Department, and payments to the defense industry and the long and complex supply chains from which they draw their raw materials. Military spending has traditionally been a form of economic stimulus, and wars more commonly end recessions or depressions than start them.

Whole Kagger here; thanks to commenter Don for the link. And for something completely different, a reminder to check out Veronique de Rugy's cover story from reason's May issue. Excerpt:

How much money is $1 trillion? Enough to pay for the entire 1976 federal budget, adjusted for inflation. Enough to write a check for $37,500 to every Iraqi man, woman, and child. Enough to buy 169,492 Black Hawk helicopters, or 455 stealth bombers. Enough, in nominal terms, to pay for the entire federal government from 1789 to 1957. And it's 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.

To distract people from the real price tag of a two-front war, the president and Congress have used an unprecedented and fiscally irresponsible budgetary trick: a series of "emergency" supplemental spending bills totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. This scheme has allowed them not only to hide the costs of the conflicts but also to avoid painful budget choices while funneling billions of dollars in unvetted goodies to favored interest groups.

Capitalism No Longer in "Favor" After 15 Largely Uninterrupted Years of Growth and Job Creation

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:12:00 EDT

Expect to see a whole lot more like this, from the news pages of your morning paper:

Former senator Phil Gramm, with his aw-shucks Texas drawl, may at first blush have little in common with Carly Fiorina, the telegenic former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. But they share a bond: Both are leading economic advisers of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and both have reputations as the kind of aggressive capitalists that may be sliding from favor as the nation's economy edges toward recession.
Democratic opponents are already plotting attacks on two advocates of what Robert Reich, a former Clinton labor secretary, described as "dog eat dog capitalism," an economic philosophy that works well when the economy is on the upswing but may not play so well in a trough.

I shudder to imagine what will happen to capitalism's wobbly reputation when unemployment creeps above 5.0%.

For an actually literate take on McCain's economic team, I'll again recommend the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson.

What Kind of American Will They Ask Next?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:00:00 EDT

The OC Weekly's Gustavo Arellano, one of my favorite writers, is hanging up his nationally syndicated alt-weekly column "Ask a Mexican" after years of explaining to baffled and/or angry gringos why brown folk wear pants to the beach, sell oranges on freeway off-ramps, and hate on the Guatemalans. From his assimilationist adios:

[L]ike Mr. Dooley, Olle I Skratthult and The Katzenjammer Kids before me, this column's time has come: It's no longer necessary to explain Mexicans to Americans because Mexicans are Americans. Gracias for all the fights, the propositions of sexytime explosion, and the slugged-back tequila shots after book signings, but there's a little ranchito in Zacatecas waiting for me and a barefoot muchacha ready to cook me dinner. Vaya con Dios, America, and always remember: Order the enchilada-and-taco combo TO GO.

The punchline, though, goes to my vigilant anti-Reconquista pals at the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, whose subject header on its e-mail alarm was: "Gus Arellano Claims Mexicans ARE Americans and Then Retires!"

There Is Nothing Left to Lose

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:15:00 EDT

Dave Grohl has launched a presidential campaign in the pages of Harp magazine. If elected, the Foo Fighter promises to legalize pot, pardon Foxy Brown, "make war against the law," and give the country "a good, smoky barbecue -- family style, at least once a week, winter months included. Every Sunday....It could be Tuesday, I don't want to say."

Overpowered by his oratory, Harp then folded.

Obama Speech -- the View From Elaine's

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:03:00 EDT

I happened to catch Barack Obama's big race speech yesterday morn in the odd environs of the Columbia University Journalism School, where I watched it with some of my fellow judges at the National Magazine Awards. The collective verdict of the nation's glossiest editors? Somewhere in the loamy middle between fan-fucking-tabulous and history-changing, once-every-half-century OMG. People were excusing themselves to call their wives ... did you watch that? Though the award judging is legendarily secretive, I can exclusively confirm to Hit & Run readers that one person told me that the room was so quiet where he was watching it that even Jacob Weisberg stopped using his Blackberry.

Hopping into an elevator together, a bunch of us agreed that it was a pretty terrific speech*. "But," said one, "we're not exactly the Real America."

This brings up an intriguing point -- Obama essentially punted the ball back into America's court yesterday, which is interesting on its own, but all the more so because his Republican opponent will probably not use any kind of code-word race-baiting in this campaign, and in fact will likely condemn his own allies if they do so. That could leave both the dirty political work and the cleansing national conversations to happen outside the realm of high-level presidential campaigning. (It will also probably lead to two candidates bashing the free speech of 527 groups, and competing with one another to see who would ban them quickest.) All else being equal (which it never is), I prefer my vicious and/or clarifying racial arguments taking place from the ground up, not stoked cynically from the top down.

* I thought The Speech was captivating and -- yes! -- audacious, up until the point he started committing the stump-fallacy of "once we solve X, then we can unleash Y." Especially when moving beyond Culture War race tensions would unite us ... uh, against corporations? And in favor of a throw-more-money-at-it approach to the lousy public school system? There's a time and place to empty your gumbo pot of campaign promises; a world-historical race speech doesn't seem to me to be one of them. Though maybe that's just because I disagree with many of his ideas.

"Two-Timing John McCain's Sizzling Secret Sex Life"!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:20:00 EST

From the Department of I-paid-the-$3.29-so-you-don't-have-to, I just shelled out precious fiat currency to see what new dirt The Globe has on Sen. McFrontrunner's sexy-time activities. Answer? Bugger-all.

McCain dated strippers and heiresses! Ditched his first wife after she'd been disfigured in a car wreck, and replaced her with a young hottie with a fat bank account! Admitted "the blame was entirely mine"! All these and more you can find ... in McCain's own books. Plus countless interviews he's given.

The best The Globe can do to advance the ball is this quote from "a political insider":

As a young pilot in the early '60s, the house he rented was notorious as a place for raucous sex parties.

OH NOEZ! And then there's this:

Still, one Internet poster rips the presidential candidate, saying, "McCain cheated on his first wife, why wouldn't he cheat on his second?"

That all you got, tabs? I remember back when the supermarket gossip rags at least delivered some goddamned gossip.

Life Meets Art

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:10:00 EST

For you fans of The Wire:

The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a multipart series about Philadelphia's homeless, inspired by the gruesome death of a homeless man. This is delicious because the Inquirer's editor is none other than Bill Marimow, former Sun managing editor, nemesis of David Simon, and Simon's supposed model for managing editor Thomas Klebanow on The Wire. Klebanow, of course, is supervising the Sun's special homeless investigation, inspired by the gruesome deaths of homeless men.

The joke on the show, of course, is that the homeless series is nothing more than cheap Pulitzer bait, one habit of contemporary journalism that caused Simon to leave the field.

Why Smoking Is Worse Than Terrorism

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:27:00 EST

This ad was produced for the New Zealand chapter of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) by Doyle Dane Bernbach. As Copyranter notes, the idea is not even original: An anti-smoking ad published in a Dubai newspaper on the 2007 anniversary of 9/11 used the same tasteless concept. The copy in the ASH ad reads:

Terrorism-related deaths since 2001: 11,337 • Tobacco-related deaths since 2001: 30,000,000

This juxtaposition should not be dismissed as mere provocation. For "public health" true believers, the fact that smokers who get lung cancer or emphysema are not murdered but instead die as a result of voluntarily assumed risks does not mean the government has less of a duty to prevent their deaths. As public health theorist Dan Beauchamp puts it, "The historic dream of public health that preventable death and disability ought to be minimized is a dream of social justice," and realizing it means rejecting "the ultimately arbitrary distinction between voluntary and involuntary hazards" as well as "the radical individualism inherent in the market model."

Properly speaking, the collectivist calculus of public health should take into account years of life lost, and the people who died in the the 9/11 attacks were, on average, younger than people who die from smoking-related diseases. But since the latter group is so much larger, it accounts for many more total years of life lost. By this logic, smoking is a much bigger outrage than terrorism, and governments should spend much more money and effort to prevent it than they do to prevent terrorism. Although I am sympathetic to the argument that our government devotes too many resources to stopping low-probability terrorist attacks, I tend to think any amount of taxpayer money spent on saving people from themselves is too much. But that's because I am still subject to what Beauchamp disapprovingly describes as "the powerful sway market-justice holds over our imagination, granting fundamental freedom to all individuals to be left alone."

[via Wonkette]

A Few Thoughts on Buckley

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:42:00 EST

The guy got some things wrong, but he got a lot right (in both senses of the word).

Buckley leaves an enormous legacy, but to the detriment everyone, the right left Buckley years ago. Where Buckley stood athwart the tide of history and beat it back with wit, sophistication, and argument, we today get best-selling Regnery screeds from lowest-common-denominator clowns like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, and Glenn Beck. Where Buckley mistrusted government and aimed to slow the world down, he's been usurped on the right by the likes of William Kristol and David Brooks, men who want to use government to remake the world in their own image. Where Buckley flourished in cosmopolitan Manhattan and took delight in life's finer things, modern conservatism has grown disdainful of the marketplace of culture, commerce, and ideas abundant in urban areas (witness the last election, where many on the right weirdly smeared John Kerry as a "latte-sipper"—real Americans apparently drink Maxwell House). In fact, today's Bush/neocon-right is often contemptuous of commerce itself, sometimes calling the voluntary, unchecked exchange of goods, labor, and services—a pure free market—"ugly" and "crude."

The 15-year GOP ascent to power from 1980 to 1994 gave rise to rightist thinkers more inclined toward activist government, just one that was active promoting conservatism. With Republicans at the helm of the federal government, limiting government's scope and reach no longer seemed like such a good idea. So old right thinkers like Buckley lost influence in favor of big government neocons like Kristol, who gave quarter to grand dreams like an imperial presidency, using the federal government to promote conservative values through intervention in areas like health care and the public schools, remapping the Middle East, and other ideas that require too great a belief in the competence and benevolence of bureaucrats and politicians for sensible rightists like Buckley.

I didn't agree with Buckley on everything, of course. But he represents a time when conservatives and libertarians shared quite a bit of common ground—indeed when both philosophies largely sprang from the same well of ideas and influences. I don't think that's the case anymore.

Rest in peace.

No Depression, RIP

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:49:00 EST

One of my favorite publications, the music mag No Depression, is about to close its doors. Initially devoted to "alternative country (whatever that is)," the magazine soon covered a whole spectrum of American roots music, defined as broadly as the editors' very catholic tastes allowed. Now it is a victim of industry turmoil. "In this evolving downloadable world," the editors write, "what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print....What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we'd love to tell you about."

It's a shame. There's a lot of wonderful music writing online, but there is a particular pleasure in perusing a magazine that covers a wide breadth of topics that somehow, in the editors' hands, all feel like they're part of a whole. Every issue I read both taught me new things and deepened my appreciation for the things I already knew. The No Depression website will continue -- appropriately, since the magazine itself emerged from a discussion group on AOL -- but it looks like the site won't include nearly as much content as the journal that birthed it.

I wrote around a half-dozen articles for ND over the last 10 years, mostly record reviews. It didn't pay very well, but that wasn't the point -- I wrote for it because I liked to see my writing there. (Well, that and the free subscription.) Any magazine whose definition of country music was eclectic enough to let me expound on the Kinks, the Pogues, and the 1970s Florida funk scene is fine by me. I miss it already.

NYT Asks: "Could Greed Be Good?"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:45:00 EST

ABC's John Stossel is probably the most widely-recognized, most be-mustached libertarian out there. He sneaks all kinds of Econ 101 and pro-freedom lessons into his 20/20 segments and special. The Ur-episode is the one in which he asks, with faux shock, after examining the benefits of capitalism: "Could greed be good?"

John Stossel - Greed (Part 3of3)
by InTheClassroom

It seems that The New York Times is asking itself the same question.

In light a dismal fiscal future, the Times has brought in new board members, "two exceptional individuals," in the words of Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., one from Wal-Mart and one from Chevron. The New York Sun takes a look at the few choice words from the editorial board on Wal-Mart in the past:

One, Dawn Lepore, served as a director of Wal-Mart from 2001 to 2004. While Ms. Lepore was serving as a Wal-Mart director, the Times was denouncing Wal-Mart for a series of supposed sins. A November 15, 2003, editorial thundered, "This Wal-Martization of the work force, to which other low-cost, low-pay stores also contribute, threatens to push many Americans into poverty. The first step in countering it is to enforce the law. The government must act more vigorously, and more quickly, when Wal-Mart uses illegal tactics to block union organizing. And Wal-Mart must be made to pay if it exploits undocumented workers." It went on, "Wal-Mart likes to wrap itself in American values. It should be reminded that one of those is paying workers enough to give their families a decent life."

An April 11, 2004, editorial, also written while Ms. Lepore was serving on the Wal-Mart board, warned, "the entry of such an especially tight-fisted employer in a community compels competitors to whittle at their own labor costs. That translates into lost jobs and smaller paychecks for everyone."

Say it with me (and John Stossel) now: Could greed be good?

Via American Thinker

Cross-posted at reason.tv

Fear of a Gray Planet

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:46:00 EST

Megan McArdle has a perspicacious piece in the new Atlantic on the likely economic and cultural effects of the aging of America's population. You ought to read it in full, but for a potted summary: likely slowdown in macro economic growth statistics as more Americans' needs shift from goods (where productivity growth is strong) to services (where it isn't).

She gently debunks the somewhat common fear of a huge stock market crash as the aging Boomers start selling off the stocks they've socked their savings in for decades. But she does think that double digit yearly stock market index growth is very unlikely down the line.

The implicit advice to the young? Go into geriatric medicine. Implicit advice to America? We'll need more immigrant service workers. (Paging Kerry Howley.) Implicit rebuke to aging Americans? You maybe shoulda thought about having more kids. (Paging Bryan Caplan.) And expect to see more graying heads in service occupations, as many Boomers didn't save enough to sustain them through their increasing golden years, and they'll have to keep working past standard "retirement" age, and Social Security won't sustain them. Nor will it bankrupt the Republic, in her reading--though Medicare just might.

Read the whole thing. It ends with a pleasing "life will go on, and still be sweet" tone, despite the possibly scary-sounding economic and cultural shifts she discusses.

Failing Upward

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:48:00 EST

It's a D.C. tradition.

Huffington Post is reporting that your next regular columnist for the New York Times will be…William Kristol.

A pretty uninspiring choice. It means the Times op-ed page will be well-represented by big government liberals (Krugman, Herbert), big government moderates (Friedman, Kristof), and big government conservatives (Brooks, Kristol). I do believe that just about covers the full range of acceptable political opinion, doesn't it?

Also makes you wonder just how many times one man can be wrong before people will not merely stop taking him seriously, but stop giving him bigger and broader platforms from which to trumpet his perpetual wrongness.

End of the Neocon Century?

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:42:00 EST

Neocon powerhouses and war die-hards Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol both dropped from Time magazine. The standard Bushite American right need not fear they've been routed from the former Luce empire's boundaries though--Ramesh Ponnuru will likely be replacing them.

McCain: Losing His Job in the New York Times?

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:37:00 EST

Sure, he's racking up endorsements hither and yon (sweeping yon authoritatively, according to some polls), but the New York Times is holding something that could hurt (though, as David Weigel spelled out the other day, it's hard to hurt the essentially dead).

Drudge has the pre-skinny:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz has been waging a ferocious behind the scenes battle with the NEW YORK TIMES, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, and has hired DC power lawyer Bob Bennett to mount a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist! McCain has personally pleaded with NY TIMES editor Bill Keller not to publish the high-impact report involving key telecom legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee.... The paper's Jim Rutenberg has been leading the investigation and is described as beyond frustrated with McCain's aggressive and angry efforts to stop any and all publication. The drama involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation. The woman in question has retained counsel and strongly denies receiving any special treatment from McCain. Rutenberg, along with reporter David Kirkpatrick, has been developing the story for the last 6 weeks. Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday, sources reveal, but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election.

If this is true, can anyone out there in journalism-ethics land explain to me how Keller deserves anything other than a kick out the door for this attitude?

For all the real story and analysis about McCain you can't find in the New York Times, read Matt Welch's new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick.

....As Others See Us

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:27:00 EST

Mother Jones, in examining the strange phenomenon of Ron Paul, provides a timeline of libertarian thought.

Occasionally apt, often tendentious (especially with its obsessive belief that libertarianism is some sort of philosophy of corporate power and Pinochetism), but usually interesting to see the modern left try to grapple with the strange beast of libertarianism.

For the full picture of libertarianism unfolding in time, and for the true deep roots of Ron Paul, see my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

Where's Carey McWilliams When You Need Him?

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:16:00 EST

You may have already seen this Nation story about libertarians and the Ron Paul campaign. I just want to highlight one sentence in it:

When Lindsey says that Paul "comes from a different part of the libertarian universe than I do," he's referring to the libertarian version of the Trotsky/Lenin split, which opened up in the early 1980s and continues to echo through libertarianism today.

The Trotsky/Lenin split? Yes, we all have our little brain farts, but come on. When you can't even count on The Nation to get this stuff straight, you know Marxism is dead.

The Drug War: An Awful Failure, and Damn Those Greedy Corporations!

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:15:00 EST

The new Rolling Stone (Led Zeppelin cover--they're back, by the way, praise Odin) has a mega-story by Ben Wallace-Wells tracing the past couple of decades of failed strategies in the war on drugs. It's a story perhaps overly focused on big picture stuff and the Drug Czar's office and less on the day-to-day tragedies the war causes for Americans guilty of harming no one else's life or property. Still, it has been praised by such tough-minded drug reporting experts as Jack Shafer at Slate and is certainly on the whole a quality piece of longform journalism.

However, a couple of bits struck me as tonally obnoxious. It of course has to praise Clinton in comparison to Republican presidents though little about his drug record or decisions deserve it. Also, since in Rolling Stone style it has to take the managerial-liberal rather than libertarian stance on this matter--not something as silly as actual drug liberty, but lots and lots of programs to manage the horrible problem of drug use with treatment and not jail--it takes this little stab at those nutsos who actually think it's no one else's business what we choose to eat:

The real radicals of the War on Drugs are not the legalization advocates, earnestly preaching from the fringes, but the bureaucrats -the cops and judges and federal agents who are forced into a growing acceptance that rendering a popular commodity illegal, and punishing those who sell it and use it, has simply overwhelmed the capacity of government.

It's certainly apt to be true that any eventual collapse in the war on drugs will come not from people coming to any proper ethical conclusions about locking people up for their recreational choices but from realization of the practical impossibility of it all, but still, that "preaching from the fringes" language is a little needlessly insulting to those who were, after all, smart enough to know how this would all turn out ahead of time.

Earlier in the article is some proof of something I've long believed: if ardent drug warriors want to get American left-progressives fully on their side in cracking down on drugs by any means necessary, the ironic first step required is: legalize drugs. The left-progressives will want to crack down on them soon enough as soon as there are recognizable greedy corporate interests on the side of selling the stuff.

See Wallace-Wells' weird shift when he lament mid-article about how the war on drugs really was going to stamp out the meth epidemic, until the greedy pharmaceutical interests who make money off pumping ephedrine and pseudoephedrine into the blood and brain of innocents and their army of wolfish lobbyists stymied the brave and brilliant drug warriors:

Gene Haislip, who served for years as one of the DEA's top-ranking administrators, believes there was a moment when meth could have been shut down, long before it spiraled into a nationwide epidemic. Haislip, who spent nearly two decades leading a small group at the agency dedicated to chemical control, is his own kind of legend; he is still known around the DEA as the man who beat quaaludes.....
Haislip was known around the DEA as precise-minded and verbal.......Assembling a coalition of legislators, Haislip convinced them that the small, growing population of speed freaks in Northern California was enough of a concern that Congress should pass a law to regulate the drug's precursor chemicals, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, legal drugs that were used in cold medicine and produced in fewer than a dozen factories in the world......
All that was left was to convince the Reagan administration. One day in late 1986, Haislip went to meet with top officials in the Indian Treaty Room..... Haislip noticed several men in suits sitting quietly in the back of the room. They were lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry, but Haislip didn't pay them much attention. "I wasn't concerned with them," he recalls.
When Haislip launched into his presentation, an official from the Commerce Department cut him off. "Look, you're way ahead of us," the official said. "We don't have anything to suggest or add." Haislip left the meeting thinking he had won: The bill he proposed was submitted to Congress, requiring companies to keep records on the import and sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.
But what Haislip didn't know was that the men in suits had already gone to work to rig the bill in their favor. "Quite frankly," Allan Rexinger, one of the lobbyists present at the meeting later told reporters, "we appealed to a higher authority." The pharmaceutical industry needed pseudoephedrine to make profitable cold medications. The result, to Haislip's dismay, was a new law that monitored sales of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in bulk powder but created an exemption for selling the chemicals in tablet form - a loophole that protected the pharmaceutical industry's profits.

Jacob Sullum on more recent crackdown attempts on ephedrine, and after you read the Stone article read his magisterial book Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use that takes the proper position on drugs: not the state's business.

Notes on Unnoticed Notices

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:08:00 EST

New York Times legal columnist Adam Liptak notes the inanity of legal "notices" that notify no one:

"The publication requirement always struck me as a pointless waste of money," said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford who in divorce cases has represented poor women forced to buy ads to notify their missing husbands that they had been sued.
"It was particularly ludicrous for our clients, who were below the poverty threshold and had partners who would never be looking at the designated publication," Professor Rhode said. "It was a form of what we used to refer to as ‘sewer service.' " (The term refers to the fraudulent practice of claiming to have served legal papers on someone while actually tossing them in the sewer or trash.)
There are only two solutions, she said: "Either make a meaningful attempt to find people where fundamental rights are at stake, or dispense with what is truly form over substance."

The main opponents of this proposal (and of transferring the notices to cyberspace so they can go unread there) are newspapers that want to keep the revenue from selling ads to people who are legally required to buy them.

Lewis Lapham: Nothing New Under the Sun

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:45:00 EST

Timothy Noah at Slate dreads former Harpers editor Lewis Lapham's new magazine Lapham's Quarterly, and sums up the message of Lapham's entire career as, essentially, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Oh, and Bush sucks.

Noah surveys decades of static Laphamisms with lovely and admirable cruel wit, ending with this Lapham mad lib:

Just fill in the blanks below.
The Bush administration's forbearance as Gen. Pervez Musharraf proclaims, like [vainglorious monarch], that [famous megalomaniacal statement] recasts [open Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to any random page, close eyes, plunge finger into text, and insert here a précis of incident described therein] as opera bouffe. The sham outrage teases forth memories of the contortions displayed by [famous Ottoman acrobat of the 15^th century] or the prevarications of [obscure three-fingered gangster of the 1930s] as the Katie Courics and Wolf Blitzers of their day distracted the starving masses with [celebratory ritual performed by an island-based indigenous people] and competitions to mimic the cry of the mighty [extinct animal from the Cretaceous period].

I took on the reflexive anti-capitalism of Lapham-era Harpers in this May 1998 reason feature. Why, the more things change....!

An Interview With Matt Taibbi

info@reason.com (Marty Beckerman) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:30:00 EST

As Rolling Stone’s chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. In one memorable scene, Taibbi dropped acid then interviewed the former chief of the Office of National Drug Policy—while wearing a Viking helmet.

The former editor of the eXile—an irreverent English-language newspaper and website in post-Soviet Moscow—and a contributor to the New York Press, Taibbi’s politics are all over the map. The son of NBC journalist Mike Taibbi, Taibbi says he "grew up around left-wing politics; I spent a lot of time at peace marches." He describes himself as "more of a libertarian than anything else," but favors heavy regulations of industry. He despises the religious right but wants Roe v. Wade overturned because he's a staunch federalist. He opposes the Iraq War, but doesn’t feel that homosexuals should have federal job protections. More than anything, the 37-year-old Taibbi believes that investing any emotion in the ideals of American democracy is “digging for hope in a shit mountain.”

His latest collection, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, has just been released by The Grove Press. In late October, Taibbi talked with Marty Beckerman.

reason: You’re often compared to Hunter Thompson and P.J. O’Rourke, who both previously occupied the Rolling Stone national affairs desk. Do you welcome those comparisons?

Matt Taibbi: I’m so sick of it. People throw that term around, gonzo journalism, but it’s synonymous with Hunter Thompson. He is gonzo journalism. The guy I really grew up admiring was H.L. Mencken.

reason: You've told one interviewer, “I’m never comfortable when people call me a lefty. If anyone were to ever ask, I’d say I'm probably more of a libertarian than anything else. I believe in capitalism, small government, etc.”

Taibbi: My political views shouldn’t be important. I’m more comfortable describing other people than talking about what I really think. I have different beliefs that are all over the place. I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned because I believe in the federalist model; I believe that states should be able to make their own drug laws. The more democracy you have, the more people can make decisions for their own communities, the more freedom people have.

reason: Right now there’s this weird overlap where Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has an increasing fan base among left-wingers. Is this a turning point in American politics?

Taibbi: People are steadily growing disenchanted with red state versus blue state—this really aggressive storyline where if you’re conservative you have to hate liberals, and if you’re liberal then you have to hate conservatives. For the first time on the campaign trail that I’ve seen, people are saying, “I haven’t spoken to my liberal brother in years but we’re actually talking now because we’re both disappointed in our respective parties, and we’re both getting behind Ron Paul." There’s more on-the-ground energy for Ron Paul than there is for the rest of the candidates combined.

reason: You wrote that Rudy Giuliani’s attack on Ron Paul over foreign policy during the first GOP presidential debate was “a Rovian masterstroke” by “a fascist ex-mayor itching to take his prostate pain out on the world.” Do you see Giuliani as the true heir to Bush?

Taibbi: Giuliani is the one who would continue this whole business. Even more than Bush, he believes this stuff, that we have to be actively interventionist abroad, and if he were to become president, he would continue the secrecy and using government power for questionable ends. This is a guy who is much more power-hungry—and is really turned on by the exercise of power—than the rest of the candidates, and he’s the one I would really worry about.

reason: Giuliani and Romney are the Republican frontrunners. Both governed as social liberals, even if they are now pretending to be social conservatives. Do you think the era of the religious right is over, or are they still powerful?

Taibbi: They don’t have an effective champion now in mainstream politics. It’s not going to be Fred Thompson. The Republican Party’s been pushed into a circumstance right now where they have to nominate a candidate who can win the general election. They see that they’re so vulnerable after seven years of Bush. It’s the same position that Democrats have been in for the last two elections, under enormous pressure to get someone with military credentials—Wesley Clark, John Kerry. Exactly the reverse thing is now happening with the Republicans. Once the Republicans reassert their control over Washington, you’ll start seeing those religious conservatives come back because that’s the base of their party.

reason: Religious conservatives are increasingly using victim rhetoric to say that there's a war against religion in secular society. At the same time, liberals are trying to appeal to religious voters by using theocon language. What do you think about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaking about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth?

Taibbi: The people in charge of putting together the messages of these parties are professionals. They sit around analyzing every single word that comes out of the mouths of these speakers. If they see a tactic that works for the other side, they’re going to try to implement it. The religious right casting themselves as victims, using the language of liberal victimhood, the people in the upper echelons of the religious hierarchy are doing that consciously. Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about how they give Muslims prayer mats in schools and special privileges but if a Christian wants to pray, he can’t. "We’re the only ones who’ve had our rights taken away." This whole language of victimhood has really seeped into the American political culture.

Democrats are trying to recapture some of their market share. It’s a cross-attacking of each other’s bases, like the Republicans going after Hispanics and the black vote. When I worked undercover as Bush campaign volunteer in 2004, we talked about how, if we could only take 10 percent of the black vote away from Democrats, we’d win every election for the rest of American history.

The Democrats are seeing where the Republicans are vulnerable, and they see that some religious conservatives feel betrayed that Republicans haven’t delivered on abortion, stem cell research, and that kind of thing. They’re going to appeal to that base, whereas they didn’t even try in 2000.

reason: Are you offended by Democrats implying things such as, “Jesus wants us to have universal health care”?

Taibbi: It’s all disgusting. You have to commit so many moral atrocities to be a Washington politician that any kind of religion you actually maintain after that experience has to be not entirely sincere. So when I see these guys invoking the name of God, it’s comical.

reason: You reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A lot of liberals say the government at all levels didn't do enough, but your chapter in Smells Like Dead Elephants suggests the government was way too active: preventing rescue workers from doing their jobs, not allowing civilians with boats—who were rescuing “dozens” more refugees than FEMA’s boats—to get to areas where people were stranded, “aiming guns at women in children.”

Taibbi: There was an enormous amount of hostility toward the government by the people left in New Orleans. The government sent in this massive force that treated everyone like they were criminals. The government’s response was so ineffective and so adversarial that it really drove people to distrust any program that they were offering. That kind of phenomenon in general is why more and more people are becoming disenchanted with the government and gravitating toward candidates like Ron Paul. They’re pissed off with a government that has become so distant from their actual concerns.

reason: In your Iraq chapter, you lay out how defense contractors are bilking the American people out of billions of dollars. Libertarians say that the military-industrial complex is a bastardized capitalism, but liberals say that it’s the result of an unregulated market. What’s your stance?

Taibbi: It’s not capitalism at all. It’s more like an authoritarian socialism. It’s forcibly extracting money from the customers and distributing the profits to companies that aren’t selected by market choice but government fiat. Critics call it the free market, but it’s not that at all. You can’t have a war that’s realistically market-based.

reason: You say Republicans are perverts because they never had any fun as kids, and also that “the American left has no sense of humor and no sense of fun at all.” What is it about politicos that make them passionate about the issues but no other areas of their lives?

Taibbi: Anyone who is willing to put up with as much shit as necessary to become a U.S. senator or president has to be a sociopath. That’s why you see all these crazy behaviors popping up with Sen. Larry Craig [R-Idaho] and [former Rep. Mark] Foley [of Florida]. These people have to drive their true selves so far beneath the surface to present this clean face to the world, and that’s why they end up indulging in these subterranean weirdnesses.

reason: Speaking of weirdness, why does so much of the institutional left—including many who believe that marijuana should be legal—have a vendetta against tobacco and fast food? They demand freedom of choice and then want to punish the enjoyment of Marlboros and McDonald's.

Taibbi: That part of the left drives me crazy. Americans no longer feel the need to be ideologically consistent on anything. If you believe adults should be free to do drugs or engage in any sexual behavior they want, you should also believe they’re free to smoke or eat shitty food or do anything they want. You can’t just pick and choose which absolute freedoms you want to endorse. On the right, people say they want to have prayer in schools for instance but they don’t want to have anyone doing drugs in other states. We no longer have that consistent political orientation with broad underlying themes like individual liberty, and that’s unfortunate.

If this was Sweden or Great Britain I might say something different, but that’s not what America is all about. America is about getting the government off your back, a reprieve from having your life interfered with, and we keep forgetting that.

Marty Beckerman is author of Generation S.L.U.T. and proprietor of martybeckerman.com. Send comments to letters@reason.com.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Wants to Know What Websites You've Visited

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:42:00 EDT

If, that is, you've ever read the Phoenix New Times online. The alternative weekly has run several articles over the years critical of the so-called "toughest sheriff in America." But when an investigative piece on a series of questionable Arpaio real estate transactions included the sheriff's home address (possibly violating state law), Arpaio launched an incredibly broad, wide-reaching investigation that looks an awfully lot like retaliation.

Last August, the grand jury investigating the case issued a sweeping, probably unconstitutional subpoena demanding that in addition to reporter notes, drafts or articles, and internal memos, the New Times also turn over:

A) which pages visitors access or visit on the Phoenix New Times website;
B) the total number of visitors to the Phoenix New Times website;
C) information obtained from 'cookies,' including, but not limited to, authentication, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users (site preferences, contents of electronic shopping carts, etc.);
D) the Internet Protocol address of anyone that accesses the Phoenix New Times website from January 1, 2004 to the present;
E) the domain name of anyone that has accessed the Phoenix New Times website from January 1, 2004 to the present;
F) the website a user visited prior to coming to the Phoenix New Times website;
G) the date and time of a visit by a user to the Phoenix New Times website;
H) the type of browser used by each visitor (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, etc.) to the Phoenix New Times website; and
I) the type of operating system used by each visitor to the Phoenix New Times website."

After the special prosecutor in the case attempted to arrange a possibly-illegal ex-parte meeting with the grand jury and the judge, the New Times decided to publish the contents of the grand jury subpeona (pdf), explaining at the time that doing so may well get the paper's editors arrested.

It did. Arpaio had the paper's executive editor and CEO arrested last night.

My favorite New Times article on Arpaio and his deputies here.