Reason Magazine - Contributors

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

In England, a blocked ditch sent water flooding through John and Margie Histed’s home. They spent eight months and £250,000 fixing the place. But more than a year after the flood, they still can’t go back in. They can’t unblock the ditch because nested inside they’ve found a great crested newt, which is protected under British and European Union law. No one can legally capture it, kill it, or disturb its habitat.

In Spalding County, Georgia, seventh-grader Darius Allen brought a BB gun onto a school bus. He showed it to friends Alfred Burns and Andre Bussey, who touched it. When school officials found out, they not only expelled Allen but suspended Burns and Bussey for a year and a half.

A U.S. Air National Guard plane was supposed to release a dummy bomb over a practice field in Kansas. Instead, the pilot dropped the 22-pound bomb on an apartment building in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Guard officials didn’t realize what had happened until Tulsa police called them the next day.

A financial consultant and a financial analyst decided to hold a business meeting at Starbucks. No problem. Except they were in Saudi Arabia. And the consultant was a woman. Saudi vice police arrested the woman, took her to jail, strip-searched her, and forced her to confess to being alone with a man.

Seven years ago, a British teenager was raped. She described her attacker as “black, large, and tall.” Police arrested Mark Minick—a white, thin, and short man—and kept him under house arrest for several months, because Britain’s national DNA database had linked him to a hair found on the girl while she was lying in a hospital bed. Minick worked at the hospital, moving beds.

Government health and safety regulations recently compelled the Carnon Downs theater group in Cornwall, United Kingdom, to register a gun with the police. It was a toy gun that produces a flag saying “Bang.” The same rules forced the theater group to register several plastic and wooden swords and keep them locked up when they aren’t being used.

New Jersey police arrested two people for protesting Gov. Jon Corzine’s plans to increase the use of tolls on state roads. A group of activists had gathered outside Middle Township High School, where Corzine was holding a town hall meeting, when a school administrator asked them to leave. One of the demonstrators replied that the group had a right to protest peacefully on public property. “It’s no public property; it’s board of education property,” the school official declared. Police then ordered the protesters to move at least a quarter mile and, when they refused, arrested two of them for trespassing.

Kate Badger of Wolverhampton, England, faces up to six months in jail and an unlimited fine. Her crime? Tossing an apple core from her car onto the pavement.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:02:00 EDT

Albany High School in Oregon suspended Jaime Salazar and Marco Castro for wearing crucifixes. School officials say crucifixes are gang symbols.

When officials at New Jersey’s Readington Middle School cut the lunch period to 30 minutes, students got upset. Some of them showed their displeasure by paying the $2 cost of their lunches in pennies. Twenty-nine kids received detention for their payments.

For 62 years, Betty Davies has swept the sidewalk outside her house in Wales. But a council worker recently told the 88-year-old woman to stop. The man informed her she could be taken to court and fined for breaking littering laws because she swept leaves into the street.

In West Virginia, the Monongalia County Commission upheld a 1,531 percent property tax increase levied on Jim Jones. Jones says the taxes skyrocketed after he rejected an offer from Chief Deputy Assessor Bill Perry to buy the property. Perry denies the claim, and Assessor Rodney Pyles says taxes went up because of a routine audit. But the owners of a neighboring piece of property also claim their taxes soared after they turned down an offer from Perry.

Steve Brook and Mandy Smith started to take a photo of their 11-month-old daughter on a swing in Oldham, England. A park warden rushed over and ordered them to stop, declaring that it was illegal to take pictures of children in the park. Town officials say the warden misinterpreted the policy.

City officials in Dibble, Oklahoma, cited Carol Mendenhall after a neighbor complained her goats were “doing it” in Mendenhall’s yard. Turns out there was a city law against animals’ mating in public, even on private property. After Mendenhall complained, the government dropped the citations and the city council repealed the law.

Denise George’s Amish neighbors’ religion doesn’t allow them to own automobiles, so she drives them to town every now and then. They give her gas money, and sometimes homemade goods and crafts. Many people would say she is just being neighborly. But not the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. It sent her a letter warning her that she is violating state laws against carrying passengers for compensation.

Mick Forsythe accidentally scratched Lorna Steele’s car while parking outside a tattoo parlor she runs in Newtown, Wales. A subsequent discussion got heated, and Forsythe called Steele an “English bitch.” Apparently, British law takes a dim view of calling someone English: A court found Forsythe guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behavior for his remarks.

Rogers, Arkansas, Police Chief Steve Helms has suspended Lt. David Mitchell for videotaping himself using a Taser on a cow, then attempting to Tase another cow but accidentally shocking himself and another man instead. Helms admits he and other high-ranking members of the department saw the video after it was completed two years ago but says that until an animal rights group found out about the tape he didn’t realize Mitchell’s actions may have violated police policy.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

One morning in January, in Medford, Massachusetts, an automated telephone system made some 2,100 calls telling parents, inaccurately, that their children were not in school.

Surveillance video shows Shreveport police officer Ryan Robinson looking around to make sure other officers aren’t watching before walking up behind Carnado Brown, who is talking on a cell phone outside a night club. Robinson then tases Brown. Robinson was suspended for 45 days, but there are no plans for a criminal investigation.

Two students at Pennsylvania’s Waynesburg Central High School were suspended for 10 days after they made an anti-drug commercial for a TV workshop. The students crushed candy and used it to represent cocaine. That violated a school policy that bans not only drugs but things that look like drugs. At least one student also was told to undergo drug counseling.

For the third time in 13 months, the state of Wisconsin has sent out letters in which the recipients’ Social Security numbers were visible from the outside of the envelope. In the latest incident, the state sent 1099-G tax forms to people who received a state income tax refund or other payment in 2007. Because of the way the forms were folded, Social Security numbers were visible in the windows of some of the envelopes. The state has offered to pay for one year of credit monitoring for all of the recipients.

European Union officials insist it’s not a criminal offense to sell goods in pounds and ounces. They should tell that to the people prosecuting 63-year-old Janet Devers, who runs a fruit and vegetable stand in East London. Police seized nonmetric scales from her stand in September, and just before Christmas, authorities informed her they were charging her with 13 counts of violating laws requiring British merchants to sell in metric units. She faces a fine of up to £5,000 on each charge.

Malaysian authorities have seized copies of Christian children’s books. Officials say the books contain depictions of prophets such as Abraham and Moses, and that such illustrations violate Islamic law.

The Ocoee, Florida, police department was supposed to take Anthony Johnson’s driver’s license. Instead, they took the license of Andrew Johnson. The two men not only have different first names but have different skin colors. Officials say Andrew Johnson will have to prove he isn’t Anthony before he can get his license back.

Boston attorney Simon Glik used his cell phone to record police in the Boston Common arresting a 16-year-old boy on drug charges. Police claim he distracted them, allowing the boy to temporarily escape. A charge against Glik of aiding the escape of a criminal suspect was dismissed, but he still faces charges of wiretapping and disturbing the peace.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl planned to spend a few days in New York shopping and sightseeing, but she was arrested upon arrival at JFK International Airport. It seems Lillendahl overstayed a U.S. visa more than 10 years ago. Upon her arrest, Lillendahl says, she was interrogated at the airport for two days and denied food and drink. Her feet and hands were chained, she was removed to a jail in New Jersey, she was interrogated some more, and finally she was deported to Iceland.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered all female civil servants to wear Islamic head scarves. He also has declared women to be the root of all crime committed in Chechnya because they have sex with men.

A seventh-grader in Parker, Colorado, is facing disciplinary action for making a list of people he doesn’t like. “We determined there apparently was no threat or intent to harm anyone,” said a spokeswoman for the school system. Still, officials at Sagewood Middle School sent a letter home to parents about the list, notified the parents of children on the list, and plan to discipline the boy who wrote it.

Officials at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suspended 70 students for five days for protesting a new rule mandating that they tuck their shirts into their pants. Officials say the protesters broke a school rule against “encouraging other students to violate school rules or regulations.”

In response to a lawsuit filed by the French booksellers union, France’s highest court has ruled that Amazon.com may no longer offer free delivery of books in that country. The price of books is highly regulated in France, and booksellers may not discount books more than 5 percent off the publisher’s suggested price.

The Tennessee Department of Revenue has started posting agents to watch cigarette sales in stores in surrounding states, all of which have lower cigarette taxes. Tennessee law bans people from bringing more than two cartons of smokes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes. Revenuers look for anyone with Tennessee tags buying cigarettes and call ahead to officers in the Volunteer State, who can arrest the miscreants after they cross back into the state. If they have three cartons or more, officials can seize their cars.

The crew of a British Ministry of Defense helicopter broke low-flying rules to spy on a sunbathing au pair. The downdraft from the chopper caused some £250,000 in damages to the Sussex mansion it was flying over. The ministry says it should not be held liable for the damages because the pilot did not know he needed permission to fly that low.

Police in Bangladesh arrested cartoonist Arifur Rahman and seized copies of a newspaper supplement containing one of his cartoons. The cartoon made wordplay on the name Muhammad, and many Muslims said it insulted their religion.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:15:00 EST

Florida’s Golden Gate High School suspended student Austin Perkins for wearing a jacket and tie to school. School officials say he’d been warned that those clothes violated the school dress code.

The British government unveiled plans to issue fines on the spot to any teenagers who are not working, in school, or in a job training program. Children’s Secretary Ed Balls reportedly called the move “the biggest educational reform in the last 50 years.”

Police in Manchester, England, charged a 12-year-old boy with assault. His crime: throwing a cocktail sausage at an old man.

Discovery Canyon Campus Elementary School in Colorado Springs has banned tag. Assistant Principal Cindy Fesgen says students were complaining about being chased.

Deputies from the Crow Wing County, Minnesota, Sheriff’s Department showed up at Jennifer Stiernagel’s home one morning. Someone driving a silver Camry had robbed a bank earlier that day in nearby Garrison, and the cops noticed a silver Camry parked in Stiernagel’s driveway. As she talked to one deputy in her front yard and her 2-year-old son watched from the deck, she saw another deputy walking up to her dogs, a basset hound and a terrier-Labrador mix. The hound began to bark. The Labrador began to growl. So the deputy shot and killed the Lab.

Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at around 8,000 percent. In response, President Robert Mugabe has banned increases in wages, prices, rents, and service charges. Anyone caught raising prices or salaries without government approval faces fines, up to six months in jail, or both.

Denise Berndsen lives in West Allis, Wisconsin, but it was a SWAT team from Milwaukee that knocked in the door to her apartment. After handcuffing everyone, including her 74-year-old father, pointing guns at them, and breaking furniture, the cops figured out the man they were looking for had been evicted about six weeks earlier. “They said, ‘We’re sorry. I guess you’re just one more of his victims,’ ” Berndsen told the press. “I said, no, we’re your victims.”

The coming of winter doesn’t mean that Islamic police in Iran will end their crackdown on “immodest” clothing. “Tight trousers tucked inside long boots while wearing short overcoats are against Islamic codes,” Tehran’s police chief announced. He also warned women that wearing a hat instead of a scarf is un-Islamic.

Marvin Lopez went to the Orange County, Florida, courthouse to pay a traffic ticket. That’s where he was arrested on an outstanding warrant for DUI and reckless driving. Lopez told authorities they had the wrong guy, and one jailer even remarked that he looked nothing like the person police wanted. But the sheriff’s office never compared his fingerprints to those of the other Marvin Lopez, and Lopez spent 37 days in jail until a prosecutor realized during a pre-trial hearing that police had the wrong man.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:01:00 EST

When officers Thomas Elliassen and Michael Danese caught a 14-year-old boy tossing eggs at cars on Staten Island last Halloween, they did what any cops would do. They took him to a swampy area, made him strip to his shorts and socks, and left him there.

Most people just chuckle when David Pratt wears a T-shirt that reads, “Don’t piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies.” But the cops in Peterborough, England, decided the shirt could incite violence and threatened him with an £80 fine if they saw him wearing it again.

In Portage County, Ohio, assistant public defender Brian Jones told Judge John Plough he wasn’t ready to take a case to trial. So the judge ordered deputies to take the lawyer into custody. According to the public defender’s office, Jones had been assigned the case only a day or so before.

Bob Du Broy, vice president of a Christian music station in Ottawa, wants to start another station devoted to spoken-word Christian programming. There’s just one problem: Canadian broadcast regulations require him to devote 71 minutes of airtime each day to other faiths, for “balance.” Still, he’s lucky: Canada banned religious programming completely until the early 1990s.

When Ibrahim Mohammad Lawal’s neighbor became ill, he took the 63-year-old woman to the local hospital. In most countries, that sort of thing is considered a good deed. Unfortunately, Lawal was in Saudi Arabia. He was seized on charges of being alone with a woman not related to him and held in jail for 50 days.

Code enforcement officials in Maidenhead, England, have ordered the staff of the Greyhound to close the pub’s windows. When people smoke outside, the authorities explained, the smoke could drift into the pub, causing it to be in violation of laws banning smoking indoors.

Amber Dauge ran out of the house to meet her school bus while still making a sandwich. Realizing she was holding a butter knife, she put it in her bag and later in her locker at South Carolina’s Goose Creek High School. Weeks later, the butter knife fell out of her locker, prompting laughter from other students. But a teacher who saw the knife wasn’t laughing. Dauge was expelled under the school’s zero tolerance for weapons policy.

In August, Patrick Walsh of Manchester, England, woke to find a burglar in his flat. He and the man exchanged words, and the robber smashed out a window and climbed onto the ledge of the fourth-floor apartment, then fell to the ground, suffering massive head injuries that killed him. Police arrested Walsh on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.

In August, Iranian police arrested some 230 people at a “Satanic” rock concert. They claim also to have seized 150 bottles of alcohol, 800 obscene CDs, and “inappropriate” clothing the concert organizers gave to women as gifts.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:48:00 EST

Britain’s National Health Service has told Olive Beal it will take 18 months to get her the hearing aid she needs. Beal is 108.

Fifty years ago, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” was not obscene. To celebrate that anniversary a Pacifica radio station in New York posted a reading of the poem online. Why not broadcast the reading? Because the station fears the Federal Communications Commission would fine it $325,000 for each curse word in the poem, which could cost millions.

The Chinese media praised Jiang Yanyong when he broke government secrecy to reveal the true extent of Beijing’s 2003 outbreak of SARS. But in 2004, when the military surgeon wrote to Chinese leaders asking them to reassess the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, he was placed under house arrest for several months. Now the government has barred him from visiting the U.S. to receive a human rights award.

Michael Martin is only 7, but he’s old enough to have been mistaken for a terrorist three times when he tried to board a plane. Apparently, his name is on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list. Martin’s mother says she has been able to sort things out each time, after airline officials see how young her son is. This will probably get harder as he gets older.

Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, Illinois, has banned students from hugging inside the building. Officials say children were creating bottlenecks in the hallways. While they haven’t banned it yet, school authorities say they frown on students’ high-fiving each other too.

Firefighters in Braintree, Massachusetts, needed practice, so they drove to a vacant house, cut holes in the roof and the walls, and busted out the windows. They had planned to practice on a home slated for demolition. Instead, they accidentally hit a house a few blocks away that was being renovated by the owner.

Florida’s Oswego High School suspended two students and forced about 50 others to turn their shirts inside out after they all wore anti–drunk driving T-shirts to school. The shirts, inspired by an alcohol-related crash that killed five local teenagers, read “Seniors .08” on the front and “Don’t Blow It” on the back. “I think it could be interpreted as promoting drinking,” explained Principal Mike Wayne.

Police in Tampa, Florida, arrested Donnie James White for violating the state’s flag desecration law after several witnesses saw him dragging and stomping an American flag. White spent four days in jail before the state attorney’s office dropped the charges against him, saying the state law is unconstitutional.

In Sampson County, North Carolina, officials at Hobbton High School refused to let students wear clothing with images of the American flag to mark the anniversary of 9/11. It violated their ban on wearing the flags of any country on school property.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:48:00 EST

Roosevelt Sims was experiencing diabetic shock, but an Amtrak crew thought he was drunk. They put him off the train in the middle of a national forest in Arizona, two miles from the nearest road. He was found several days later, dehydrated and disoriented, about two miles from where the train left him. Amtrak officials say the workers were just following the company’s policy.

David Burch can’t get the grass to grow at his new home in White Cloud, Michigan. He planted some grass seeds, and when they didn’t grow a judge jailed him for violating city ordinances requiring a green yard. Burch spent one weekend in jail, and the judge threatened him with another.

Daniel Horne was on his way home from a night out with friends in Wales when their car broke down. They decided to walk to the nearest town for help, but someone thought they were dumping the car and called the police. The police cruiser responding to the call jumped the curb, knocking Horne down and crushing his foot beneath one of the wheels. After finding out the group had committed no crime, the police allowed Horne to be driven to a local hospital. Then a cop gave Horne an £80 fine for denting the police car.

They might not have the Taliban licked, but Afghanistan’s rulers already have set their eyes on another target: smokers. The regime has banned smoking in schools, hospitals, and government offices, and officials say they plan to expand the ban to restaurants and hotels.

School officials in Orange County, Florida, recently refused to release students to parents waiting outside until 9 p.m. Thunderstorms were blanketing the area, and the school system has a policy of refusing to allow children to go outside until at least 30 minutes after the last lightning flash or thunderclap.

After Francisco Linares built a home in Rolling Hills Estates, California, he asked the city to repair a nearby fence. City officials told him it was on his property and was therefore his responsibility. So he fixed it. Officials then changed their minds and said the fence was indeed on city property. They also declared that he had built a retaining wall higher than permitted, among other code violations. He now faces potential jail time.

Revathi Massosai, a Malaysian woman, was born to Muslim converts but was raised by a Hindu grandmother and married a Hindu man. So she decided to change her religious registration from Muslim to Hindu. When she went to court to do this, the authorities seized her and took her to an Islamic rehabilitation center where she was held for six months. The “rehabilitation” consisted of forcing her to say Muslim prayers, wear a head scarf, and eat beef.

Police in Pasadena, California, have charged 14 strippers with excessive nudity.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:26:00 EDT

There’s no sign telling you not to take a photograph of the building at 3701 North Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia. But if you do, expect to be stopped by a police officer, have your personal information recorded, and be told to delete the photo. That’s what happened to Keith McCammon, who later found out the building houses the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The government apparently has a list of buildings it won’t allow people to photograph. But citing security concerns, it refuses to release the list or warn people in advance that they can’t photograph the buildings.

Warren Blackwell spent three years in a British prison after being falsely accused of rape. After an appeals court freed him, he expected to get some compensation for being wrongly imprisoned. Instead, he got a bill for nearly £7,000 for “board and lodging.”

For 35 years, students at Colorado’s Middle Park High School have raised money for a two-day field trip of hiking and rafting. This year, when they got to their access point on the upper Colorado River, they were met by Parks and Recreation Department officer Andrew Maddox. Maddox said that they were violating a state law requiring commercial river outfitters to have a state license. He stopped the expedition and cited one of the teacher chaperones.

Maria Carrasquillo went to the Kissimmee, Florida, police department to get fingerprinted, a requirement for employment as a licensed practical nurse. Instead, police arrested her on an outstanding drug warrant. She spent nine days in jail before police checked her identity and found that the warrant was for another woman with the same name.

In Stafford, England, Morgan Smith’s parents decided to throw him a pirate-themed party for his sixth birthday. When they ran a Jolly Roger up their home’s flagpole, a neighbor complained to the Stafford Borough Council. Council officials feared the skull and crossbones might be “unneighbourly” and said the couple should have applied for permission, including a study of the impact the flag would have on the neighborhood, before flying it.

By a 148-to-5 vote, Iran’s parliament approved a bill that would provide for the death penalty for pornographic performers, directors, producers, and photographers. There’s no real porn industry in Iran; the bill was a reaction to one homemade video allegedly showing a popular Iranian actress having sex with a man.

Jill Coccaro pulled down the front of her painter’s jumpsuit to cool off during an art show. A police officer, who apparently didn’t know it has been legal for a woman to expose her breasts in public in New York City since 1992, told her to cover up. When Coccaro tried to explain the law to him, he busted her for indecent exposure. She spent 12 hours in custody, where she says she was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:17:00 EDT

In London, England, the Ealing Council is spending $285,000 a year for plainclothes police officers to hunt down people who put their trash out too early.

Starting July 1, anyone wishing to buy beer in a Tennessee convenience store or supermarket has to show photo ID. In an effort to stamp out underage drinking, lawmakers have required that everyone—no matter how gray, bald, or wrinkled—must prove they are over 21. They say it will get clerks into the habit of routinely asking for ID.

One afternoon in Tangerang, an Indonesian state that has adopted Islamic law, a woman named Lilis was waiting for a taxi on her way home from work. That was enough for the Islamic police to stop her. When they couldn’t reach her husband, they charged her with prostitution.

Evan Herzoff videotaped some Denver police officers as they were arresting someone else. A cop asked for Herzoff’s ID. He produced his ID and asked Officer Jeffrey Morgan for his business card. “Let’s take you to jail instead,” Morgan responded. Police handcuffed Herzoff and took him to a cell, where he spent the night. A charge of trespass against Herzoff was later dismissed, and the city paid him $8,500 to settle a lawsuit.

Officials from Malaysia’s Islamic Religious Department raided the home of truck driver Magendran Sababathy and seized his wife Najeera Farvinli Mohamed Jalali. Magendran is a Hindu and his wife a Muslim. They were married in a Hindu ceremony. But under Malaysia’s Islamic law, anyone who marries a Muslim must convert to Islam and no Muslim may convert to another religion. Islamic authorities declared the marriage invalid and took the woman to a “rehabilitation center” to strengthen her faith.

U.S. Navy veteran David Miller has been hospitalized three times in the last two years for kidney stones in Iowa City’s Veterans Medical Center. Miller, an Orthodox Jew, says the hospital would not serve him kosher food and refused to contact a rabbi who could bring him food he could eat. But that doesn’t mean they neglected his religious views entirely: He says that hospital staff and chaplains repeatedly proselytized him in an attempt to get him to convert to Christianity. Some of these attempts, he reports, occurred while he was experiencing severe chest pain and was hooked up to a heart monitor.

Mamand Mamandy was visiting family in Iran when a police car happened to drive by a barbeque they were holding. The cops spotted Mamandy drinking beer, arrested him, and took him to a police station, where he received 130 lashes.

When staff at a Hasland, England, post office heard a noise from a package they were handling, they called the police. The police, in turn, closed off the area for an hour and a half while they blew up the parcel. The package turned out to contain chocolate and a vibrator.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:57:00 EDT

It took Brian Seaton nine months and cost him £10,000 to clear his name after police in Leicestershire, England, charged him with possessing a knife in public without good reason. Seaton had accidentally left a Swiss army knife in his luggage, and it was discovered when he arrived at the airport for a trip to Spain. The knife was a retirement gift from Seaton’s employer of more than 20 years: the Leicestershire Police Department.

An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Richard Gere. The actor kissed Indian actress Shilpa Shetty on the cheek at a New Delhi event to raise AIDS awareness. A judge called the kiss, which outraged Hindu nationalists, an obscene act in public. If convicted, Gere faces up to three months in jail.

An unnamed Indiana man spent 17 months behind bars for stealing a soda. It seems that jail officials, his lawyer, and the judge in his case all thought he’d been released a year earlier. Only after a new warden took over and ordered a review of all the prisoners’ files did anyone discover he was still in jail.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was possessed by a demon. Or so says literature distributed at Enloe High School, a public school in Raleigh, North Carolina. When a representative from a Christian ministry spoke to a class there, he handed out material that included a pamphlet called “Do Not Marry a Muslim Man,” which warns against marrying a Muslim for his “dark good looks, education, financial means, and the interest he shows in you.”

Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities banned the weekly TV talk show Sensasi after a guest, actress Rosnah Mat Aris, addressed gossip linking her to a younger man. The actress noted that Muhammad’s first wife was older than him. Broadcast regulators accused Rosnah of offending community values.

Georgette Prince was coming out of an Akron, Ohio, convenience store when a man pushed her back into the store, pointed a gun at her, and told her to get on the ground. When she did, he pulled her hands behind her and handcuffed her. Outside, another man pointed a gun at her 12-year-old son, Davonte, ordered the boy out of the vehicle he was sitting in, and forced him to the ground. The armed men were part of a SWAT team that was raiding the store as part of a shoplifting investigation. SWAT team members and other members of the sheriff’s office say their treatment of Prince and her son was “according to the book.”

Ahzar Zaidi of Roswell, Georgia, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for having too many cars. A city ordinance bars homeowners from having more than four autos visible from the street. Zaidi has four cars. But when his children come home from college, the number of cars at his home goes up to six.

Before you shake your moneymaker in New York City, make sure the bar you’re in is licensed for that sort of thing. The state Supreme Court has upheld a city ordinance banning social dancing in bars, restaurants, and any club that doesn’t have a cabaret license.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:58:00 EDT

Parking officials in Bern, Switzerland, have received complaints that men are using extra-large parking spaces reserved for women. Legally, they can’t prevent men from taking the spaces, but parking officials hope to deter men by painting the spaces pink and adding flowers.

When London police refused even to send an officer to investigate a burglary at his home, Otto Chan put up posters offering a reward for anyone who returned his things. When police saw the posters, they threatened to arrest Chan for trying to buy stolen goods.

In Wales the Gwynedd County Council has informed Jeanette Gordon-Crawley and her husband, Gordon, that they are under investigation for smoking in their own home. A council official says a neighbor complained she could smell the smoke. “We can’t see how smoke from our house could possibly get into the house next door,” Gordon-Crawley said. A council spokesperson told a local newspaper, “We are duty-bound to investigate.”

When Kate Burgess and her boyfriend were returning from Mexico to Canada, they had a layover at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. Burgess had put her bags on the conveyor belt and was starting to walk through the security checkpoint when an alarm sounded; a Transportation Security Administration worker said, “That’s it, call police,” and other TSA personnel surrounded her. Only after she started to have a severe asthma attack did a supervisor tell her it was an April Fool’s Day joke.

Six female students at Tennessee’s Sequatchie High School have been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. School officials say they found a list of 300 names, mostly fellow students and faculty members but also including Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and the Energizer Bunny. And the students posted some material on MySpace that included the word kill. Authorities put the two together and charged the girls.

Matthew LaClair recorded David Paszkiewicz, his American history teacher at New Jersey’s Kearny High School, telling students they belonged in hell if they did not accept Jesus as their savior. After the recordings were broadcast on TV news, Kearny School District officials took swift action. The district president said teachers would receive instruction on the separation of church and state —and the school board banned students from recording classes without the instructor’s permission.

A Florida court has found Tracy A. Thomas guilty of harboring ducks. Thomas says she leaves her garage door open so her cats can get in and out. But the judge found she was allowing ducks to come into the garage; he also told her she could be prosecuted for breaking a city law against allowing cats to roam freely. Thomas faces a fine of up to $500, but the judge says he will waive the fee if she keeps her garage door closed.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:04:00 EDT

Early one morning in Newport, England, a speed camera snapped a photo of Tom Matthews’ 12-year-old cab. He later received a notice informing him he’d exceeded the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit—by about 390 miles per hour. “I drive an old Cavalier—not a jumbo jet,” Matthews told the London Sun. “According to this, I’ve broken the land speed record.”

Yvette Bavier made it through the first 60 years of her life without getting into trouble with the law. That record ended on a recent lunch break. She was tossing birdseed to sparrows when two New York City police officers stopped her. She says it took them 20 minutes to figure out what to charge her with, but she eventually received a ticket for littering. A police spokesman says the officers were responding to a complaint that someone was endangering pigeons by feeding them raw rice.

England’s Rugby Borough Council has ordered David Bavington to remove a one-inch-wide wind chime from his back garden or face legal action. In response to a complaint that the wind chime tinkles too loudly when the wind blows, the council determined the chime to be a “statutory nuisance.”

The coaches of many women’s basketball teams believe that practicing against men makes women better competitors. But the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics says such practices violate the spirit of Title IX, the federal law that mandates equality for school athletics. The committee recommends that the NCAA ban all male practice players from women’s sports.

Teresa Langbord found what appeared to be 10 rare 1933 “double eagle” gold coins in a safe deposit box belonging to her late father. She and her family turned them over to the U.S. Mint for authentication. The mint has refused to give them back, claiming the coins must have been stolen because they were never circulated.

In Utah a 13-year-old girl has been declared both victim and offender for the same sex act. The girl became pregnant after she and her 12-year-old boyfriend engaged in consensual sex. Both were found guilty of violating a state law prohibiting sex with anyone under 14.

British police have almost 3 million DNA profiles on file, covering about 6 percent of the U.K.’s population. But that’s not enough for Dave Johnston, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Homicide and Serious Crimes unit. He wants samples taken from all babies. “We have 300,000 unsolved cases where we have taken a profile at a crime scene but have not yet matched it,” he said. Johnston did not say how many babies he suspects may have committed those crimes.

Authorities in China’s Fumin County have painted a barren mountainside green, and no one seems to know why. The Xinhua news agency reports the effort cost more than 470,000 yuan, which local villagers noted could have paid for grass and trees to be planted on the mountain.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:20:00 EDT

Durrell Jones woke one morning in his Sarasota, Florida, home to find sheriff’s deputies standing over him and his 4-year-old son, pointing guns at them. The deputies were looking for a man wanted for a shooting, and they believed he was at 2548 25th Street. But the house they had broken into was at 2552 25th Street. Once they figured out their mistake, they went to the right house and arrested the man they were looking for. But 20 minutes later, more deputies stormed in. It seems another suspect in the shooting was named Darryl McNeal. Since both names started with a D, they apparently thought Durrell might be their man.

When a movement to offer free hugs to strangers on the street started in Australia, people around the world embraced the concept. But in Beijing, police briefly detained and questioned four huggers.

Darling Velez waited years to become a Spanish citizen. But after finally accepting the Colombian woman’s application, the government reversed itself. Spanish law forbids the government to register names that do not clearly indicate gender or might provoke ridicule. Registry officials suggested Darling change her first name to that of a saint, but she wants to keep the name she has had for 33 years.

Margaret Lieder meant to dial 411 for information. She accidentally dialed 911, but she promptly hung up when she realized she’d made a mistake. A dispatcher called her back to say that police were on the way. When the North Vancouver, Canada, officers got there, Lieder tried to explain the mistake. Despite not having a warrant, they insisted on searching the house. Lieder refused, but the officers refused to take no for an answer; five officers broke down the door and arrested Lieder and her partner, Larry Pierce, for obstruction of justice. Pierce says that officers threw him to the floor, twisting his arm behind his back, and that one jumped on him and put a knee into his ribs, breaking two of them.

Denver authorities gave Cynthia Roberson 24 hours to remove the snow from the sidewalk in front of her home or face a $150 fine. Roberson is 60 years old and disabled. But what really galled her is that she had already paid someone to remove the snow. City snow plows that cleared the street had piled more snow in front of her home.

Forget staging Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Denver. Judge Michael A. Martinez of Colorado’s 2nd Judicial District has refused to exempt theatrical companies from a statewide smoking ban. Performers can’t even light up herbal cigarettes.

The government of Kenya has barred the sale of secondhand underwear, socks, and bras. Government officials say the move will stop the spread of skin diseases. Doctors say the clothes just need to be properly laundered.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:42:00 EST

• Four eighth-grade girls in Marion, Indiana, were suspended from school for five days. They say it’s because they all wore matching outfits one day, and school officials thought that if they were dressed alike they must be in a gang. Principal Michael Shaffer told local media the girls were suspended for violating school rules, but he refused to say what rules they broke.

• A German court has fined Juergen Kamm more than $4,000 for selling anti-Nazi merchandise. Kamm put crossed-out Nazi symbols on buttons, stickers, and T-shirts and sold them to opponents of the far right. But German law forbids any reproduction of Nazi symbols unless it’s done for educational purposes.

• In October temperatures dropped to near freezing in DeKalb County, Georgia, but local school officials refused to turn on the heat. They say it’s school policy not to turn the heat on until October 30. And once the heat is on, it stays on at all schools even if the weather warms up again.

• The Indonesian edition of Playboy contains no nudity. In fact, it’s reportedly tamer than some other magazines that are sold in the country. But its editor, Erwin Arnada, faces up to 32 months in prison on charges of publishing indecent material for running photographs of women in their underwear. Some of the women reportedly had partially exposed breasts.

• Angela Hickling of Derbyshire, England, says she looked for but could not find a ball her neighbor’s son allegedly kicked into her garden. That apparently didn’t satisfy the neighbor. The next day an officer from the Derbyshire Constabulary showed up at her door, said he was investigating the theft of the ball, and insisted he had photographic proof it was in her garden. He looked around the house but didn’t find anything. So he arrested her and took her to the local police station, where she was questioned for 90 minutes. The police also took her fingerprints and a DNA sample. Police later dropped the charges, but they say Hickling will have to file a formal written request before they’ll remove her DNA from their database.

• Kallen Ford and a friend were playing hacky sack outside Colorado’s Boulder County Courthouse when a police officer approached. The cop took their sack and issued Ford a $250 fine for “releasing projectiles on the mall.”

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has banned trucks from selling beer on the street. “I want the National Guard to stop the beer trucks and take them to the nearest command post. No more trucks,” he said in a televised speech. When his call was met with silence, Chavez assured the audience that he was not going to ban drinking alcohol.

• Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov has prohibited state employees from having gold teeth. Gold and silver crowns are considered a sign of affluence in Central Asia, and some reports indicate up to half of all current government workers will have to resign or have their gold teeth replaced. Rakhmonov says the move will improve the country’s image abroad.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:55:00 EST

• Police in Treovis, England, have warned Gordon MacKillop that he could be charged under the Protection From Harassment Act. MacKillop, they claim, placed “a garden gnome with intent to cause harassment.” MacKillop says he put the gnome, which is dressed like a police officer, in his yard to deter criminals. But a neighbor, former police officer John McLean, says the gnome is in “an annoying position.”

• Also in Great Britain, government officials say hospitals are too efficient. At least six of the nation’s health trusts have forced hospitals to create minimum waiting times for patients to receive treatment. Officials say the hospitals have “gotten ahead” of what the National Health Service can afford.

• In Saudi Arabia, the provincial government of Makkah has banned the sale of cats and dogs. According to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, people were taking their pets out into public and upsetting families with small children.

• Three NYPD officers have pleaded not guilty to breaking into a Brooklyn massage parlor, ripping out a surveillance camera, and stealing a videotape. They apparently were trying to destroy evidence that a previous prostitution bust at the massage parlor was based on lies by one of the officers. But a backup security system caught their break-in, and part of the massage parlor’s security system was reportedly found in the desk of Lt. Stephen Wong. Wong is the vice integrity control officer for the unit, responsible for keeping officers honest.

• A court found Pitchfork Records owner Michael Cohen not guilty of selling a bootleg CD, but he still can’t get around 600 CDs seized by police back. In asking for the albums, Cohen agreed that some of them were bootlegs and selling them would be illegal. He says he wants them back for his personal collection, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that even possessing such CDs is illegal. If the ruling stands, the CDs will be destroyed.

• Merchtem, Belgium, has banned the use of French in schools. Parents and children may speak only Dutch on school grounds. Merchtem lies in an area where Dutch has traditionally been the main language, but the number of French speakers is increasing.

• Security guards at the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Air Academy High School handcuffed and detained three cheerleaders before a football game. Guards had allegedly spotted the three putting paper over the first five letters of a sign reading “Douglassville Valley Elementary School.” The girls were released to their parents; no charges were filed.

• Scottish police investigated and a prosecutor cautioned soccer player Artur Boruc for allegedly making the sign of the cross during a game between the Celtics, Boruc’s team, and the Rangers. The gesture reportedly angered a section of the Rangers’ fans.

The Era of Big Government Never Ended

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:58:00 EST

The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 422 pages $19.95

It has been just 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell. It has also been 17 years since the socialist economist Robert Heilbroner proclaimed that “the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.…Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.” And it has been only a little more than a decade since Bill Clinton declared “the era of big government is over.” Classical liberalism—the liberalism, that is, of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the word denoted individual rights, free trade, rule of law, and, above all, private property—seemed, even to its critics, to have triumphed intellectually. It was expected to triumph politically as well.

It hasn’t quite turned out that way. No, classical liberalism doesn’t face the grand theoretical challenges posed by a rival ideology like Marxism. Rather, the threat to personal freedom and property rights—in the United States, at least—advances under several banners: public health, the environment, national security, and plain old pork-barrel politics.

The Challenge of Liberty—edited by the economists Robert Higgs and Carl Close of the Independent Institute—attempts to examine just how well liberalism is dealing with these challenges and to provide some answers to them. Libertarian heavyweights such as Thomas Szasz and James Buchanan tackle subjects ranging from the role of ideology in national defense to group loyalty. The essays, originally published in The Independent Review during the last decade, always prove edifying, though some of the more policy-oriented contributions may seem less urgent than they did when first published. But on the whole, the volume leaves you with the impression that liberal intellectuals have only begun to recognize the challenges to liberty in this era.

The book’s first essay—“The Soul of Classical Liberalism,” by Nobel laureate economist James Buchanan—asks what may be the key question: Did the collapse of socialism and the election of politicians who mouthed small-government rhetoric lull libertarians into believing there is greater support for their agenda than there actually is? Buchanan believes it did.

“Classical liberals who do have an appreciation of the soul of the whole two-century enterprise quite literally went to sleep during the decade of the 1980s, especially after the death of socialism both in idea and in practice,” he writes. “The nanny-state, paternalist rent-seeking regimes in which we now live emerged from the vacuum in political philosophy.” He goes on to chide classical liberals for acting as if the big battles have been won, and for not spending enough time presenting a coherent and attractive vision of what a liberal society is and why it’s worth struggling for.

The essay can best be read as an elaboration on a point made almost 60 years ago by another Nobel laureate economist, F.A. Hayek, in his 1949 essay “The Intellectuals and Socialism.” Wrote Hayek: “We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism…which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.…Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide.”

Buchanan doesn’t advocate a withdrawal from the world of policy debate. (Nor, for that matter, did Hayek.) Rather, he argues that people who engage in those debates must make their arguments within the framework of an integrating philosophy, not on ad hoc utilitarian grounds. Classical liberals oppose price and wage controls, for example, but the libertarian economist’s task “is not that of demonstrating specifically to the citizenry that coercively imposed price and wage controls cause damages that exceed any possible benefits,” Buchanan writes. “Of course, such specific demonstration is strictly within recognized competence. But a distinction must be made between exemplary use of the analysis and its use merely as a contribution to the ongoing political argument.”

For the liberal, liberty is the paramount political value. But as the French libertarian Anthony de Jasay points out in “Liberalism, Loose or Strict,” it isn’t the only value in play. Among others, there are security, order, and equality. Sometimes, De Jasay argues, these values seemingly can be gained only by curtailing freedom. And in the day-to-day realm of politics, these competing values tend to eat away at liberty. Two centuries of “regulation, taxation and public services,” De Jasay says, have crowded out nongovernmental institutions that promote social cooperation and left individuals and societies in the West less capable of sustaining a free society. “The best that strict liberalism can do is to combat this state intrusion step by step at the margin, where some private ground may yet be preserved and where some ground may even be regained,” he concludes.

Of course, in the United States at least, the last two centuries have seen more than just increased regulation and taxation. We’ve also see the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow laws, an increase in protections for free speech, and an end to harsh restrictions on the freedom of women. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, we don’t have any metrics to weigh the losses of freedom against the gains.

I’m more sympathetic to the views of George Mason University economist Daniel B. Klein, whose contribution shows how the values of liberty, personal responsibility, and individual dignity are intertwined. Interfering with one, he argues, tends to reduce all three. “Paternalism demeans its subjects and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he writes.

As Klein shows, liberty really isn’t in conflict with these other two important values. He cites an essay by a long-term smoker in the magazine Excursions, in which the author endorses a large increase in cigarette taxes because it will give him greater resolve to quit smoking, as an example of how lack of responsibility and dignity can lead to pressure to reduce liberty. “Rather than searching as an adult to come to terms with his habit, [he] glibly asks that he (and all other smokers) be treated as a helpless child,” Klein writes.

Klein adds that restrictions on liberty can, in turn, further undermine respect for responsibility and dignity. “Paternalist prohibitions and restrictions flatly tell the individual: ‘You are not competent to choose fully; we must circumscribe your choice,’” he writes.

Unfortunately, when other liberal thinkers have grappled with the relationship between liberty and other political values, they have sometimes come away from their attempts with a weaker commitment to liberty. In “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classical Liberalism?,” Charles Rowley, another economist at George Mason, looks at why the philosophers John Gray and Robert Nozick moved away from their earlier libertarianism. His piece is carefully nuanced, as one would expect from a discussion of two complex thinkers, but his conclusion is clear. “In my view,” he writes, “the retreat from classical liberalism on the part of both Nozick and Gray is completely explained by their shift, in a troubled world, from a preoccupation with preserving liberty to [a preoccupation with] preserving order, that is from a commitment to the philosophy of Locke to [a commitment to] that of Hobbes.”

Once preserving order becomes the top political priority, Rowley continues, “the dike is opened for those who would invade individual rights to do so under the guise of avoiding anarchy. One only has to review the reactions in all branches of government to the tragedy of Oklahoma City to see how quickly opportunities to trample on liberties are seized upon by those who perceive economic or political gain.”

Rowley’s essay was first published in 1996. If it had been written in 2006, he could just as aptly have substituted “9/11” for “Oklahoma City.” Since 2001 the most prominent debates on the limits of liberty and the role of the state have come in the context of the War on Terror. Can the government detain U.S. citizens, captured on U.S. soil, indefinitely without pressing charges against them? Should the government be allowed to listen in on telephone calls to or from the United States without court approval?

Many Americans, including some who call themselves libertarians, have answered “yes” to such questions. Some have even fretted that the government isn’t doing enough to curtail liberties in the name of fighting terror. But there’s nary a mention of warrantless wiretaps or data mining or extraordinary renditions in the index of this book.

And with good reason. About three-quarters of the essays were originally published in 2001 or earlier. I realize there’s a certain amount of lag time in publishing a book. But it’s difficult to see how anyone could publish a volume on current challenges to liberty that almost completely ignores the continuing resurgence of the national security state.

For that reason, many of the more philosophical essays, such as Rowley’s or Buchanan’s, have a more urgent feel to them than the ones that focus on “present day” policy concerns—say, James R. Otteson’s discussion of “Freedom of Religion and Public Schooling,” which is a perfectly fine essay but of a type libertarians have been writing for decades. The challenge of liberty in the near future will be to show how those philosophical arguments about liberty and order, freedom and safety, bear on current debates regarding the powers assumed by the government in the War on Terror.

Contributing Editor Charles Oliver (oliverc2@yahoo.com) writes for a daily newspaper in Georgia.

Brickbats

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 04:40:00 EST

Several people swimming at Kanopolis Lake in Kansas got a bit of a surprise when a B-52 bomber dropped nine bombs into the water. Lt. Col. Jeff Jordan, commander of the Smoky Hill National Guard Range, told the Associated Press the plane dropped the bombs by mistake while on a training mission. Jordan insisted the bombs did not pose a threat to the public because they were filled with concrete, not explosives.

Police in West Midlands, England, say they received numerous complaints about anti-social behavior in one neighborhood. The behavior in question: children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.

Fifteen-year-old Mirage Rousseau of Manchester, New Hampshire, came home one afternoon to find two police officers in her bedroom without a warrant. The cops told Rousseau they were looking for a suspect in a counterfeiting case, and the door to the house was open, so they just came on in. Rousseau, who saw them enter her family’s house from a neighbor’s home, says that isn’t possible.

Thailand’s Culture Ministry has banned a line of condoms called Tom Dundee because officials say the name could encourage children to have sex earlier. Tom Dundee is the stage name of a popular Thai country singer. Dundee is also Thai for “good penetration.”

Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, admit they issued valid building permits for new houses that exceed local height limits. They say builders nonetheless must either lower the roofs or raise the ground around many—perhaps hundreds—of those houses. Only homes that are already occupied will be exempt.

Legislation expected to pass in Scotland would require shops selling swords, machetes, and other nondomestic knives to have a special license and to record all sales. The sale of swords—except to museums, historical re-enactors, fencers, and the like—will be banned.

Police in Preston, England, are asking local officials to ban “vertical drinking” in bars. Drinking while standing, they say, contributes to violence and other anti-social behavior.

For 31 years, Jean Groves has had a sign on her fence that reads “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.” She says even Jehovah’s Witnesses got a laugh out of it. But police in Hampshire, England, weren’t laughing when they told Groves to take the sign down. “The police said it was ‘distressing and offensive and inappropriate,’ ” she told the London Sun. Groves took the sign down but put it back up after the police left.

The Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has banned mobile taco stands. Commissioners say the move is aimed at boosting business in shopping centers. “I’m all for capitalism,” Commissioner Bert Nasuti explained. “But there’s a right way and a wrong way.”

NYPD Rude

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:15:00 EST

New York City police knocked down the door to Flexton Young's apartment, waking him, his wife and their children. Young says the police pulled belonging off shelves and out of drawers and tossed them to the floor. They slashed open the sofa and turned boxes upside down to empty them. Upstairs in the same apartment building, police were doing similar things to the apartment of the Pastrana family, where they pepper-sprayed the dog for good measure. Police say they had good information they would find drugs and guns in the apartment. They didn't. Young got a summons because they found half a joint in an ashtray. Police found nothing in the Pastrana apartment.

That's Cold

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 08:22:00 EST

Temperatures dropped to near freezing in late October in DeKalb County, Georgia, but local school officials refused to turn on the heat. They say it's school policy not to turn the heat on until Oct. 30. And once the heat is turned on, it stays on at all schools even if it warms up again. But they said principals were free to petition for the heat to be turned on.

Smoked Out

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:20:00 EST

Profits at Great Britain's largest bingo chain dropped by a fifth after Scotland banned smoking in public in March. So the Rank company is laying off 200 people at its bingo operations.

Guilty as Never Charged

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:50:00 EST

A new Ohio law allows judges to declare someone a sex offender even if that person has never been convicted of or even charged with a sex crime. For that matter, the person doesn't even have to have been found liable for any sex crime in a civil trial. And under new rules agreed to by the legislature, people declared sex offenders under this process will be placed on an Internet database and subject to all the restrictions placed on those who have been convicted of sex crimes. Lest you think the law is too onerous, it allows those declared sex offenders to have their names removed from the database…after six years.

Wait Until You Hear This

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:38:00 EST

In Great Britain, government officials say hospitals have gotten too productive. At least six of the nation's health trusts have forced hospitals to create minimum waiting times for patients to receive treatment. Officials say the hospitals have "gotten ahead" of what the National Health Service can afford.

Cheerleaders in Chains

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Security guards at the U.S. Air Force Academy's Air Academy High School handcuffed and detained three cheerleaders just before a football game. The three had allegedly been spotted by guards putting paper over the first five letters of a sign reading Douglassville Valley Elementary School. The girls were released to their parents and no charges filed.

Cats and Dogs Not Living Together

info@reason.com (Charles Oliver) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

In Saudi Arabia, the provincial government of Makkah has banned the sale of cats and dogs. The move came at the request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which claimed people are taking their pets out into public and upsetting families with small children.