“This is no longer just a set of weird ideas that individuals scattered across the country believe in,” explains Reason’s Brian Doherty, “this is a movement now.”

Doherty‘s new book, Ron Paul’s rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired, charts the rise of the 76-year-old Texas congressman and GOP presidential hopeful to national prominence. Why does the unassuming politician and obstetrician command such a huge following among young voters? “After a lifetime of feeling lied to by every politician they see,” says Doherty, “here’s a guy that they know who is speaking the truth as he sees it.”

A week ago, Doherty spoke with Reason about Ron Paul’s central but largely unacknowledged role in creating the Tea Part movement. Watch that here.

Source: Reason.

Whole Foods will open its first location in Park Slope, Brooklyn next year, following an eight-year battle with community activists, preservationists, and some leaky subterranean oil tanks.

Opponents of the project are concerned the upscale grocer will destroy the bucolic landscape, chase away the thriving manufacturing industry, and forever conceal the historic backyard of one of Brooklyn’s most treasured landmarks. Seriously.

A few blocks away sits the legendary Park Slope Food Co-op, which routinely tackles issues of national—and international—importance, such as conflict in the Middle East, natural gas drilling, and our “post hyper-capitalist” future.

What do threatened co-op shoppers and neighborhood activists have to say about the new Whole Foods?

Reason.tv correspondent Kennedy investigates.

Written and produced by Jim Epstein.

Why choice is winning – and helping poor kids learn.

“We have a simple problem in this country” when it comes to education, says Robert C. Enlow, president of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. “And that’s a monopoly. It’s not the people in the system. It’s the system itself.”

How bad is the problem? Consider this: Since 1970, direct per-pupil spending on K-12 public schools has more than doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars while educational outcomes for graduation high school seniors have remained flat at best.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) introduced the concept of school vouchers in a 1955 essay and, with his wife Rose (1910-2009), created the foundation that bears their name in 1996. Based in Indianapolis, the Friedman Foundation promotes “universal school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America.”

Despite resistance from teachers unions, legislators, parents at well-funded and high-performing schools, and other entrenched interests, school choice is booming in the United States, with the Wall Street Journal dubbing 2011,”the year of school choice.”

Last year, eight new programs were created and 11 existing ones were strengthened or expanded, meaning that students and parents in a total of 12 states plus the District of Columbia could participate in choice programs that have access to some $1 billion in funds. Charter schools – publicly funded schools of choice that receive a fraction of the per-pupil spending given to traditional schools in exchange for greater curricular freedom – didn’t exist until 1996. Now, over 2 million students are enrolled in charter schools, which claim more than 10 percent of school enrollments in over 100 cities. Nearly 2 million children are home schooled and innovative new choice programs including virtual schools, blended learning, and education savings accounts (which allow parents to spend education dollars on multiple providers) are becoming an everyday reality.

“Milton Friedman was right,” says Enlow, discussing who is using the new opportunities. “A universal [school choice] program would benefit the poor tremendously, the middle class somewhat, and the rich hardly at all.” But Enlow also stresses that while the revolution in K-12 education is growing, it’s far from a fait accompli: “We need to amp up the calls for reform across the country.”

Reason sat down with Enlow in January at the start of National School Choice Week in New Orleans.
Reason Foundation’s education policy work is online here. Reason.com’s education coverage is here. Reason.tv’s education videos are here.

Source: Reason.

Norman Smith seemed to be making progress in his liver cancer recovery at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, Calif. He had some of the best doctors in the world, he was on a transplant list and he had completed a successful clinical trial that had his doctors dubbing him a “miracle man.”

Then, his cancer returned and two months before he was would have received a transplant, he was de-listed for smoking marijuana prescribed by his oncologist at Cedars-Sinai. Now, if he doesn’t receive a transplant, he will die.

“It’s only my life that I’m fighting for,” says Smith. “What do I have to hide? I have nothing to hide.”

Smith’s situation represents one of the first battles being fought over the place of medical marijuana in medicine and it has left him in limbo.

Cedars-Sinai declined interview requests but referred Reason TV to Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker with UCLA’s transplant program, which holds a similar position to Cedars-Sinai on medical marijuana.

“Marijuana is considered substance abuse,” says Stewart. “The legality of it is really not an issue.”

Stewart and Cedars-Sinai did say that transplant patients who consume marijuana put themselves at potential risk of infection from a mold found in cannabis called aspergillus.

But not everyone sees the mold as a potential threat.

“The truth is that Norman lives in Los Angeles and there are laboratories that he can take his medicine to and make sure that it doesn’t have contaminants,” says Stephanie Sherer of Americans for Safe Access, which works to break down political and legal barriers to medical cannabis.

Further, a 2009 study from the American Journal on Transplantation that looked at potential liver transplant candidates said that there wasn’t a significant difference between marijuana users from marijuana non-users.

Sherer points out that Smith isn’t alone, his problems are the reality for many patients caught in-between managing their pain and receiving a transplant.

“In our database at our office, we know of over two dozen patients that are going through this and unfortunately half of them have passed away because they did not receive these transplants,” says Smith.

Source: Reason.