Month: August 2014

In a
decision handed down last week and published today, a federal
judge rules that California’s 10-day waiting period for gun
purchases is unconstitutional as applied to people who already own
firearms and have passed a background check. The law was challenged
by Jeff Silvester and Brandon Combs, California gun owners who
would like to buy new firearms without having to wait 10 days
between paying for them and picking them up. U.S. District Judge
Anthony Ishii agreed with them that the requirement imposes an
unjustified burden on their Second Amendment rights.

Ishii rejects the state’s argument that California’s waiting
period qualifies as a longstanding, widely accepted gun regulation
of the sort that the Supreme Court has
deemed “presumptively lawful.” He says there is no evidence
that any jurisdiction imposed such a requirement in 1791, when the
Second Amendment was adopted; in 1868, when 14th Amendment made the
Second Amendment binding on the states; or at any point in between.
Even today, waiting periods are unusual: California is one of just
three states that (along with the District of Columbia) impose a
waiting period on all gun purchases. Another seven states have
waiting periods for certain gun purchases.

California argued that its waiting period 1) allows time for a
background check, 2) discourages impulsive acts of violence, and 3)
facilitates investigation of straw purchases. In practice, Ishii
observes, a background check takes “anywhere from 1 minute to 10
days,” and once it is completed, the first justification for a
waiting period no longer applies. “For those who already own a
firearm and are known to be trustworthy due to the licenses that
they hold and a history of responsible gun ownership,” he says,
“there is no justification for imposing the full 10-day waiting
period.” Ishii also questions the relevance of the second
justification as applied to current gun owners, since they already
have the means to act on their violent impulses.

Regarding the third justification, Ishii writes, “There is no
evidence that the legislature implemented the waiting period laws
in order to give law enforcement the opportunity to investigate
straw purchases.” He also notes that such investigations are
usually not completed within 10 days. In any case, he says,
“applying the full 10-day waiting period to all transactions for
purposes of investigating a straw purchase, in the absence of any
reason to suspect that a straw purchase is in fact occurring, is
too overbroad.” 

Applying “intermediate scrutiny,” Ishii concludes that
California has not demonstrated a “reasonable fit” between a 10-day
waiting period, as applied to current gun owners, and its asserted
goals. To satisfy that test, “the regulation must not be
substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government’s
interest.” Ishii emphasizes that he is not passing judgment on the
constitutionality of the waiting period as applied to people who do
not already own guns, an issue the plaintiffs did not raise.

[via
Eugene Volokh]

Barack Obama’s presidency was supposed to usher
an era of post-racial healing in America. But the racial unrest
following the shooting of Michael Brown shows that, if anything,
the opposite has happened.

The police officer may have been justified in shooting Brown, an
unarmed teenager, six times at close range, notes Reason Foundation
Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia—or maybe he wasn’t. But communities
can overlook an unjustified killing if it isn’t reflective of a
larger trend—just as they can overreact to a justified killing if
it is.

And there is certainly a trend of black targeting both in
Ferguson and America. Yet President Obama could muster nothing but
the most anodyne statements, showing that the cause of racial
justice might need someone other than a mealy mouthed, black
Democrat who is sweet on Big Government.

View this article.

• In North Carolina today,
  promising to “fix what is wrong” with the government’s treatment of
  veterans, President Obama
  announced 19 policy changes on issues ranging from suicide
  prevention to mortgage applications. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who
  is up for re-election,
  criticized the prez, saying, he “has not yet done enough to
  earn the lasting trust of our veterans and implement real and
  permanent reforms at the VA.”
• “I do not believe that our expanded military operations against
  ISIL are covered under existing authorizations from Congress,” says
  Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). There’s a
  bipartisan push to stop executive action in Iraq.
• Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) called the abuse of power charges
  against him unconstitutional and asked the judge to dismiss them.
  In tangential news, Mexico has dismissed as
  “absurd” Perry’s claim that Islamic fundamentalists could enter
  the U.S. through Mexico.
• Florida, Arizona, and Vermont head to the polls today for their
  
  gubernatorial primaries while Oklahoma has a runoff. Ohio
  doesn’t vote today, but Ed FitzGerald’s (D) campaign
  has imploded, essentially guaranteeing incumbent John Kasich
  (R) retains his throne.
• As Ukraine and Russia met today for peace talks, Russian
  regular soldiers were
  discovered and captured inside Ukraine. “Wait a minute. This
  isn’t where I parked my tank,” one said with feigned surprise.
• Israel and Palestine have agreed to a
  long-term ceasefire. Are you holding your breath?
• The National Republican Senatorial Campaign put out an
  
  arcade-style computer game. Your character is an elephant, you
  jump on the heads of “taxers,” and then you wonder if this is
  really the GOP’s best bid to prove that it’s “with it.”

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Earlier this summer, the Government
Accountability Office reported that, all told,
HealthCare.gov—Obamacare’s federally run insurance exchange
system—has
cost about $840 million, with more expenses on the way as an
army of tech contractors and the federal government continue to
work slowly toward completion. 

Now, thanks to the Office of the Inspector General (IG) at the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we have some more
detail on the costs and contracts associated with building the key
technological infrastructure for the law. 

According to the
report, which was released today,the total value of the 60
contracts associated with the build out of HealthCare.gov is about
$1.7 billion, with contract values ranging from as little as
$69,000 all the way up to about $200 million.

Those values could end up higher. In a footnote, the report
explains that these are expected values, and that they could be
more if “modifications” are made to the scope of work in the
contracts. 

Given the state of the federal government’s exchange, and the
delays and cost overruns it has seen so far, it seems likely that
the actual costs will end up being higher. Of the 60 contracts, 20
had already gone over budget by February of this year, according to
the IG report. Seven of those 20 were over budget by at least 100
percent.

The back end of the exchange, which handles critical financial
transactions between the government and the insurance industry, was
supposed to be complete last year, then delayed until January of
this year, then delayed further, and now isn’t expected to be
complete until sometime in 2015. 

The creepily named Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom is
thinking about approving an in vitro fertilization (IVF) technique
aimed at curing mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria are tiny
powerplants with their own small geneomes that float by the
hundreds in the cytoplasm of cells. One in 2,500 children are born
with diseases associated with broken mitochondria.

To prevent children from being born with these diseases,
fertility specialists are proposing to
implement two procedures: (1) maternal spindle transfer and (2)
pro-nuclear transfer. In maternal spindle transfer genes are taken
from nucleus the egg of the prospective mother whose mitochondria
are defective and installed into a donor egg with healthy
mitochondria from which nuclear genes have been removed. The
reconstituted egg is then fertilized. In pro-nuclear transfer
involves taking nuclear material from a fertilized egg before the
nuclei of the sperm and egg have fused and installing it into a
donated enucleated egg.

Treating mitochondrial diseases in embryos actually began in the
United States in 2001 when researchers at a fertility clinic in New
Jersey transfered cytoplasm containing healthy mitochondria from
donor eggs into the eggs of women whose mitochondria were
defective. Before the regulators at the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) outlawed it, nearly 20 children were born as a
result of the procedure. In this case, healthy donor mitochondria
were mixed with defective maternal mitochondria.

The Independent
reports that researchers are now checking 17 of the
now-teenaged children to see how they are faring. That’s fine, but
Independent is suggesting that if researchers find something wrong
that would impact the decision to go forward with the similar
technique in Britain. It shouldn’t. From The
Independnent:

The findings of the follow-up will be keenly scrutinised by
Britain’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority (HFEA), which is charged with making sure that
a similar technique called mitochondrial donation is safe.

“We do not know of any follow-up of children born as a result of
cytoplasmic transfer but we would certainly want to know the
results of such a follow-up,” said an HFEA spokesman.

As noted, the earlier cytoplasm transfer technique involved
mixing healthy and defective mitochondria; the new procedures do
not. Nevetheless, the results of the follow up study will surely be
of interest to people who want to avail themselves of these
techiques, but the decision to use these IVF techniques to prevent
mitochondrial diseases should be made by the would-be parents.
After all, they are the people who will reap the rewards and bear
the burdens of being parents.

Another body in the “war
zone” cops operate in.
Via KCTV in Kansas City:

Ottawa police were called about 7:50 p.m. on Saturday to
Orscheln Farm and Home at 2008 S. Princeton St. on a report of a
person reportedly armed with a gun.

Deputies with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office also
responded to the call.

When officers arrived, they made contact with the person, later
identified as Joseph Jennings, in the parking lot.

During the encounter, officers with the Ottawa Police Department
and Franklin County Sheriff’s Office were involved in a
shooting.

Jennings was treated at the scene for gunshot wounds and
transported to an Ottawa hospital where he later died.

“Why did it take them shooting him 16 times at least for them to
bring him down and go and take care of what they needed to take
care of?” Jennings’ aunt, Brandy Smith said.

Ottawa Police Chief Dennis Butler said officers did what they
were trained to do.

“They reacted based upon the training that they’ve been given
from the academy,” Butler said. “We were thankful that no officer
was injured from protecting themselves from risk of great bodily
harm.”

Jennings’ aunt insists
the 18-year-old was unarmed but might have made a movement cops
mistook as reaching for a gun. Jennings was suicidal and had just
left the hospital three hours earlier—she says she yelled at police
not to shoot and that they know the teen, who police dealt with the
day before. She says her husband tried to intervene to tackle
Jennings but cops wouldn’t let him.

Cops won’t comment while the Kansas Bureau of Investigation
investigates the shooting. The county attorney reportedly told
Jennings’ aunt they “certainly feel bad for your loss.”

The police chief claims cops were protecting themselves from
bodily harm, a condition under which he says it is legal for police
to use deadly force.