Stand Your Ground Laws

Stand Your Ground laws and Castle Doctrine laws exist in 22 States.  Stand Your Ground laws implement a legal framework that allows the use of deadly force without a duty to retreat if a person reasonably fears for his or her life or safety.  Castle Doctrine laws allow the use of deadly force if your home is invaded;  these laws assume that home invasion implicitly threatens bodily harm or death to the home's occupants. Supporters cite that these laws make their residents safer or at least make the residents safer that avail themselves of firearm protection.  

Recently I became aware of a study done by two Texas A&M economists (See Link) suggesting the opposite.  That is, they suggested that incorporation of Castle Doctrine laws actually increased the number of homicides in the states in question.  I reviewed the paper and had to concede that much of their published work seemed to support their conclusions although the uptick in homicide rates did not seem too significant. After that, and with an open mind, I reviewed the data from the FBI UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting) database myself.

My conclusion is that the authors of the paper were wrong, while homicides increased slightly in the first year following implementation, overall, the homicide rate declined after that.  Also, since correlation does not imply causality, Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground can neither be shown to neither decrease nor increase the homicide rates 2-3 years after implementation.

Obamacare again

I just read an article (see link) in the LA Times, a paper with some liberal bias, that suggests serious inroads into enrollment in the ACA (Affordable Care Act) or Obamacare as we move towards the deadline of 31 March.  Their analyst is suggesting between 3.65 and 4.73 million people have enrolled on the ACA website as of the beginning of March with about 75% having paid their first month premium.  This latter means that they are real enrollees, not just shoppers who left their carts and never signed up.  While a 25% reduction in the number of enrolled is significant, the total could be as high as 3.5 million with a month to go making the new (and flexible) goals of the administration within reach by the end of March.  Also, according to the article, the percentage of uninsured has dropped to 15.9% by the beginning of the month vs. 20% to start off.  Whether a 4% change in uninsured justifies the law's incorporation, it still represents a lot of people (and votes!) benefiting from this law (4% of 300 million is 12 million people and perhaps as many as 9 million votes depending upon demographics) 

Dianne Feinstein spied on by CIA, Maybe she gets it Now (updated 11:40 MST)

So today's news had a story that Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered a scathing speech decrying the CIA's alleged spying upon staff members' computers during a probe of some Bush era investigations.  Strange that she was not so incensed about the overall NSA spying fiasco that collects data of every single telephone call and every single email that average citizens send and is only, supposedly, restrained by the Star Chamber er secret FISA court.  She is happy with that process because her committee thinks it has oversight.  Even with her oversight, there is insufficient daylight on the NSA spying for most people's tastes.  

Climate Change Common Ground

Global warming should not be a great controversy.  The controversy is amplified when political operatives take sides and publishers start discriminating against dissenting opinion.  This is especially bad for scientific publications and did happen a few years back.  Non-scientific publications need to be more open to dissenting thought as well.  Recently the Washington Post initially refused to publish Charles Krauthammer’s column in which he simply put forth that global warming was not settled science.  They did publish the column in an op-ed forum.  The political climate change advocates jumped all over this.  The left is 100% committed to the idea that manmade CO₂ causes climate change and that it is bad.  The far right is resistant because they oppose the left (not a good reason) and because the proposed “solutions” are either draconian or silly (carbon exchange credits, etc.).  Since I advocate that carbon exchange credits are silly, you may conclude that I am more right than left. 

Russia and the Ukraine

So far, the Administration is focused on sanctions to make Russia change course in the Crimea and elsewhere.  While Putin is a backward-looking leader who may yearn for the old Soviet Union, there are real reasons for Russian concern.  The Russian Black Sea fleet is headquartered in the Crimea and there is certainly a Russian need to protect their security interests.  In the eastern portions of the Ukraine, there are Russian speakers and loyalists who might fear discrimination by the European-leaning government headquartered in Kiev.