REASON magazine = AWESOME

If any of you guys would like a completely unobstructed view of my (rather unpopular, in some of my social circles) libertarian political views, than look no further than Reason magazine. I finally got a subscription after all these years, and am loving it.

Bear with me on yet another unpaid plug ... Reason is really just what the title implies -- intelligent, myth-busting, thought-provoking, and non-dogmatic. Articles in recent issues have argued some stances that I already held and thought were kind of "lefty" -- i.e. that guest worker programs/amnesty of some sort for immigrants are good (http://www.reason.com/news/show/123474.html; http://www.reason.com/news/show/123912.html), that the war in Iraq is bullshit (http://www.reason.com/news/show/123195.html), and that "sex trafficking" activists are using sloppy data for their overblown "statistics" (I'd link here, but it's only in the print edition AFAIK).

Of course, libertarians (like myself) resent the stereotype that we are "pot-smoking Republicans." Though of course there is some truth in that (like any stereotype), so I may be revealing myself a little too much here by admitting that I am just jumping up and down at this article in the new issue, "The Golden Age: How Americans learned to stop worrying and love workplace drug testing". ("When organizations like the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace attempt to quantify the impact of drugs in the workplace, they consider only their negative effects. But what about the surreptitious line of coke in the bathroom that helps a salesman meet his monthly quota, or the afternoon pot break out by the dumpsters that keeps a dishwasher sane?") Even more horrifying in the "drug-free workplace" policies is how it's bleeding over into criminal offense territory ("In Indiana, simply owning a Whizzinator ... can lead to a 180-day jail term and a $1,000 fine ... In 2004, a South Carolina man got six months in a state prison simply for selling his clean urine over the Internet.")

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!?!? I can see a possible criminal offense if you are trying to get around a LE/probation drug test (which was probably ordered as part of some bullshit "marijuana less than 1 ounce" arrest in the first place), but getting around some ridiculous PRIVATE SECTOR test?

Even if you DON'T smoke pot (and I rarely do anymore), how can you believe that any employer that makes you take random drug tests -- i.e. treats you like a CHILD -- respects you as a hard-working adult? I had a job like this once. At a newspaper no less. What a crock. It's not like I was driving a fucking forklift. So you're working on something, on DEADLINE, and here comes the boss with the pee-pee paper. "You've gotta go right now to the lab." Oh, sorry boss, I thought that I was hired because of my writing and reporting skills. Silly me, you are primarily interested in the chemical makeup of my bodily fluids.

(p.s. the Whizzinator synthetic urine works ... why else would they be making it illegal???)

(p.p.s. re. "pot-smoking Republicans" -- I'm NOT a Republican -- I'm pro-choice, anti-war on drugs, pro-amnesty/guest worker programs, pro-porn, and I don't believe in Creationism. But I DO like Capitalism [in the Clark Howard sense -- we DO need a "cop on the beat."] And funny enough, I agree with Reason, too, on Ayn Rand -- we like parts of her philosophy, but also see how rigid and dogmatic her ideas can be if taken to their Anarcho-Capitalist extremes, not to mention the annoying Objectivist "RandBots").