Welcome to Reason Express, the weekly e-newsletter from Reason magazine.
Reason Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and
draws on the ideas and resources of the Reason editorial staff. For more
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REASON Express
February 28, 2000
Vol. 3 No. 9



1) The Drug War: All FARCed Up
2) Postal Service Fixes a Problem
3) Microsoft Maneuvers
4) The Secret Web Site Regs
5) Quick Hits


- - District of Colombia - -

Better late than never. The Clinton administration's plan to send $1.3 billion
in military aid to Colombia has some in Congress asking questions. Not the
least of which is how the U.S. stays out of a civil war, seeing as leftist
rebels control the land that is home to Colombia's drug production.

"Who goes in if this thing blows up? Tell me this is not Vietnam again,"
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) asked at a
hearing on the aid.

Gen. Charles Wilhelm, the man responsible for U.S. operations in Colombia and
a Vietnam veteran, reassured Stevens by saying, "I do not feel a quagmire
sucking at my boots."

But Wilhelm has also engaged in the very kind of rhetorical--and one must
assume, operational--sleight of hand that haunted American involvement in
Southeast Asia.

"The assistance that we provide the Colombian security forces is limited to
the counterdrug function. We're not involved in the insurgency," Wilhelm told
an interviewer.

Wait. Those guerillas the Colombian government now fights are supposed to be
the same ones who are making money off the drug trade, by some accounts enough
to equip themselves better than the government's forces. How can those
possibly be two separate conflicts?

The leftist guerillas, known by their Spanish acronym FARC, sure don't think
they are separate. They are on record as viewing the aid package as a
declaration of war.

Toss in the fact that bloody right-wing paramilitary squads also appear to
protect and benefit from the drug trade, yet seem to escape Colombian and U.S.
attention, and you have the makings of if not a quagmire, a really sticky
situation.

http://cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0002/27/impc.00.html
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/25/110l-022500-idx.html
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/colombia000223.html

In the April issue of REASON, Timothy Pratt reports from on the ground in
Colombia that the drug war is no easy win at
http://reason.com/0004/fe.tp.the.html




 - - Senseless - -

How bad would you have to mess up to be relieved to know that the U.S. Postal
Service will be there to pick up the pieces? A huge gaffe by the Census Bureau
will be covered by the Postal Service, temporarily elevating the postal
monopoly to the ranks of flexible problem-solvers.

The problem is 120 million misaddressed letters sent out to every American
household. The letters herald the impending arrival of census questionnaires
and instruct recipients on the importance of filling out the forms.

The bureau has never sent out such letters before, which will also explain how
people can ask for census forms written in Spanish, Chinese, Korean,
Vietnamese, or Tagalog.

A contractor's mistake added an extra digit to the beginning of each street
address. The Postal Service is confident it can still deliver the letters to
the correct addresses.

Officials at the Census Bureau noted that they are receiving the kind of
attention that no private mailer ever could.


http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/26/121l-022600-idx.html



 - - Breaking Up Is Hard to Do - -

It is down to the last inning of the great Microsoft game, and the players are
getting jumpy. First, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson confirms suspicions that
he is out of his depth by comparing Microsoft to Standard Oil, the first
victim of antitrust hysteria.

Then the Harvard law professor who has been advising Jackson on the case goes
public with doubts about the wisdom of trying to break up Microsoft, as the
Justice Department increasing seems to favor.

Lawrence Lessig told reporters after a National Press Club speech that, "I'm
skeptical about breakup. It doesn't seem logical to me, but it does to the
government."

"There are a lot of things that distinguish a telephone company and an oil
company from a software company," Lessig added, referring to the breakups of
AT&T and Standard Oil.

Lessig later tried to back away from his comments, saying they were not
newsworthy. What this suggests is that what Lessig thought were informal,
not-for-print remarks made it into print, which is different from not being
newsworthy.

As much discussion as possible about the wisdom of a Microsoft breakup is
needed. Especially as the government seems enamored of a surgery--an
ill-defined "business" and "consumer" bifurcation--that will benefit no one
except Microsoft's direct competitors.

Even though this case has from the beginning been strangely silent on specific
instances of consumer harm, an arbitrary, label-driven outcome would be
positively anti-consumer and perverse indeed.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/24/200l-022400-idx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0_4_1557581_00.html



- - See Change - -

For stubborn refusal to change there's nothing quite like applying regulations
drafted in secret to the most open system of communication the world has ever
known. Yet that is precisely what has gone on with regard to new federal
regulations on the look and feel of all government and some private Web sites.

These access regs, ostensibly aimed at helping the handicapped access Web
sites, will not be made public until right before they take effect. The 1998
Workforce Investment Act intended for the new regs to be published for public
comment by February 7. Yet that deadline came and passed without word from the
Justice Department, the agency charged with reporting the new regs.

Only in the past few days has Justice said that the regs will be published "in
the next few weeks," which at least implies a public comment period. The new
design dictates will be made final some time in August.

http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/02/2000-02-24-11.asp

Adam Clayton Powell III asked if your Web site is accessible enough for the
Feds at
http://www.reason.com/9907/fe.ap.is.html




QUICK HITS

- - Quote of the Week - -

"Oh my God. My God. I have no idea what you're talking about. I can't believe
this. I don't think we should be in the business of searching for work. No
way," assistant Army secretary Joseph Westphal, the civilian and nominal head
of the Army Corps of Engineers, on the Program Growth Initiative undertaken by
military commanders of the corps which sought to increase the agency's civil
works budget from $4 billion to $6.2 billion by 2005.


http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/24/245l-022400-idx.html


- - What Do I Have to Do to Put You in This Car Today? - -

Car dealers' power in state legislatures appears to have saved them from
direct factory-to-consumer sales, but not from Net players seeking to take a
chunk of their business.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/28/111l-022800-idx.html


- - Whistle Blown - -

Federal prosecutors mysteriously tried to pull files from the hard drive once
used by former federal prosecutor Bill Johnston, who resigned in disgust over
the handling of investigations into the Waco massacre. Justice officials tried
to blame the search on a subpoena from the House Government Reform Committee.
But the committee didn't ask for the drive search and now wants to know who
did.

http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/39960_WACO25.html


- - Net Vote - -

Arizona Democrats got approval last week to hold the first vote-by-Net contest
in the state's presidential primary in March. The Justice Department voiced no
objection to the plan.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth442.htm


- - Echelon to the Rescue - -

European fears of the Echelon eavesdropping system go off the deep end to
concoct tales of industrial espionage on behalf of U.S. firms. Maybe it was
the Freemasons or the Knights Templar, too.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/24/158l-022400-idx.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/373837.asp
http://www.lineone.net/express/00/02/23/news/n2920windows-d.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000223/09/int-eu-espionage


- - For Whom the Bells Toll - -

A concrete case of a Bell squeezing customers toward its high-speed offerings
in the absence of other options.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/27/174l-022700-idx.html



REASON NEWS

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