Father who beat to death man he caught raping his five-year-old daughter will NOT face charges because of Texas state laws on deadly force

In Britain he would have been jailed for excessive use of force

A Texas father who discovered a man raping his five-year-old daughter and beat him to death with his bare hands will not be charged with homicide under state law.

A Lavaca County grand jury decided not to press charges against the 23-year-old father in the June 9th death of Jesus Mora Flores, 47, who was killed inside a remote shack after he was caught molesting the young girl.

Under Texas state law, deadly force is authorized and indeed, justified in order to stop an aggravated sexual assault and coupled with the fact that the harrowing 911 calls made by the father back claims he even tried to save the pedophile's life led to the grand jury's decision.

Lavaca County sheriff's deputies said that the father, whose name has not been released to protect the little girl's identity, sent her and her brother to feed the family's chickens.

The boy rushed back to tell his dad that someone had grabbed his sister and taken her to a small secluded shack and the father rushed towards his daughter's screams and arrived to find them both with their underwear off.

Flying into a rage, the father beat Flores unconscious, but attempted to call 911 for the rapist after he had made sure his daughter was safe.

Sheriff Micah Harmon had said in June that he was not willing to press charges against the father, rather the case would be presented to a grand jury.

At the time, Harmon said that the man was 'very remorseful' and didn't know at the time he had killed Flores.

'You have a right to defend your daughter,' Harmon told CNN at the time. 'The girl's father acted in defense of his third person. Once the investigation is completed we will submit it to the district attorney who then submits it to the grand jury, who will decide if they will indict him.'

V'Anne Huser, the father's attorney, sternly told reporters several times during a news conference at the Lavaca County courthouse that neither the father nor the family will ever give interviews.

'He's a peaceable soul,' Huser said. 'He had no intention to kill anybody that day.'

The attack happened on the family's ranch off a quiet, two-lane county road between the farming towns of Shiner and Yoakum.

Authorities say a witness saw Flores 'forcibly carrying' the girl into a secluded area and then scrambled to find the father.

Running toward his daughter's screams, investigators said, the father pulled Flores off his child and 'inflicted several blows to the man's head and neck area.'

Emergency crews found Flores' pants and underwear pulled down on his lifeless body by the time they responded to the 911 call.

The girl was taken to a hospital and examined, and authorities say forensic evidence and witness accounts corroborated the father's story that his daughter was being sexually molested.

Authorities said he expressed regret at the killing at the time, and no evidence so far has led them to doubt his story. The girl's grandfather agreed it had been an accident.

Residents of the small Lavaca County town were largely in support of the father, saying the victim deserved it.  Sonny Jaehne, a Shiner native, told the Victoria Advocate: 'He got what he deserved, big time.  Friend Mark Harabis reiterated this: 'I agree with him totally. I would probably do worse.

'The family will have to deal with that the rest of their lives, no matter what happens to the father. Even if they let him go, he and his child will have to deal with that the rest of their lives.'

SOURCE






Sold for £5 - your personal details: British Councils cash in on names and addresses, fuelling junk mail blitz

Town halls are raking in money by selling lists of voters’ names and addresses for as little as £5 a time to private companies.

Thousands of the registers have been sold over the past five years to pizza delivery shops, estate agents and direct marketing firms – adding to the avalanche of junk mail.

The electoral register is available for anybody to view in person. But by selling a database of the information, councils are allowing companies to send out thousands of unsolicited letters with a few clicks of a computer mouse.

Tens of millions who sign up to vote automatically have their names included on this ‘edited’ version of the register if they do not expressly opt out of having their information passed on.

Their details are then sold on hundreds of times a year and used to send out three billion personalised items of junk mail annually.

The scandal was exposed in a report by privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, which yesterday condemned the practice and called for it to be scrapped.  Its research revealed that more than 300 councils sold the register to 2,700 individuals and companies over the past five years. The councils involved made more than £250,000.

Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said while it was important that the electoral register was a public document which anyone could freely inspect, this should not mean councils could sell personal information to private companies for financial gain.

‘Registering to vote is a basic part of our democracy. It should not be a back door for our names and addresses to be sold to anyone and everyone,’ he said.

‘Many people don’t realise that the pizza shops and estate agents drowning their doorsteps with junk mail are able to do so because their local council is forced to sell the names of every voter who fails to tick the right box when they register to vote.

In many other countries the opt out is automatic and voters must opt in if they wish to be included on marketing lists.

Councils in the UK who have tried to introduce an automatic opt-out have faced legal action forcing them to change back – because the layout of the registration form is set by law.

As well as prompting a deluge of junk mail, there are widespread concerns that the sale of the register is damaging the electoral process.

Mr Pickles said: ‘The edited register is a pointless waste of council time, undermines trust in the electoral system and contributes to huge volumes of junk mail. It should be abolished.

‘An open democracy means councils should maintain a full version of the register that’s available to the public.  ‘But that should not mean gift-wrapping our names and addresses for estate agents, pizza shops and junk mail marketeers.’

His call was backed by elections watchdog the Electoral Commission, which also raised concerns about potential voters being turned off by the prospect of their personal details being sold.

Among those who bought the data from councils, according to research using Freedom of Information laws, were market research companies, motoring schools, insurance companies, solar panel salesmen, glaziers and credit unions.

Estate agents Foxtons bought lists from several councils. Most authorities charge between £70 and £100 but one council, Ryedale in North Yorkshire, sold its edited register for just £4.50.

Councils in affluent areas were the biggest sellers of the register.

Westminster, Elmbridge in Surrey and Kensington and Chelsea all sold the register to more than 50 buyers.

The edited register was introduced in 2002 – amid concerns over the full version being put on sale. Since then around a quarter of all voters have opted out of appearing on the list.

But millions more may not be aware what is happening to their information as a result of registering.

Critics say it is easy to miss the opt-out box and often forms don’t make it clear what the implications are of allowing your information to be put on the edited register.

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: ‘The Electoral Commission does not support the commercial sale of any details provided for the purposes of electoral registration and we are concerned that it may act as a deterrent to some people registering to vote.

‘Voters should be aware that if they do not want their details to be included in the edited register which is available for general sale, then they can tick the “opt out” box on their registration form.’

A DCLG spokesman added: 'It is completely unacceptable for councils to be profiting in this way.  'Junk Mail is a menace and councils should be looking at ways to make sensible savings and not taking advantage of voters.'

Meanwhile council workers who have been caught illegally selling on personal information stored by town halls are escaping with a ‘slap on wrist’.

Data protection laws have been used to bring prosecutions in some 700 cases of data being obtained illegally from public and private bodies over five years.

In one case, council worker Paul Hedges, 42, emailed names and addresses of 2,471 records to his personal account, with the intention of using them for a fitness firm he was setting up. He was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £1,376 costs.

SOURCE






Disassociation not always disrespect

Many conflicts in society could be eliminated simply by respecting everyone’s right of association — the right to not have anyone imposed upon you.

It is about the most fundamental human right there is, and one of the most often violated.

Discrimination isn’t automatically a bad thing. I assume you discriminate among the things you eat. A shiny, red apple might be preferred  over a ripe banana, and the banana might be chosen before an orange.  Everyone has their own criteria and preferences.

This is the reasoning behind the signs in some businesses, which say “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” That right doesn’t need to be “reserved;” it is always there.

Bakery owners who don’t wish to make cakes for gay weddings should never be forced to do so.

Other potential customers could then decide whether or not to give their money to the business based upon this information.

Business owners could place “No Guns” signs on their door — so long as they are not incorporated, therefore not in partnership with government and required to operate within limits put in place by the Constitution — to keep away honest people with guns.

(No one seriously believes such a sign will stop those who wish to rob or murder, do they?)

And those who prefer to do business with companies that don’t demand they be defenseless in the face of violent attack can choose to spend their money with shops that actually care more about their customers’ safety than about making a dangerous political statement.

If there is a person in town whom you don’t like, for any reason or no reason at all, no one should force you to be around that person. You are free to leave the park if they show up, or to cross the street to avoid them. No one should force you to buy from them or sell to them. Just don’t complain when the shoe is on the other foot.

If a person refuses to associate with someone because of their skin color, sexual orientation, gender, political beliefs, religious ideology, appearance, odor, spoken language, or any reason at all, they are simply asserting their basic human right.

If you disagree with their reason, you are free to speak your mind and refuse to associate with them in return.

Why a business owner would willingly choose to alienate a percentage of his potential customers bewilders me, unless he believes that by doing so he will please even more people who will then flock to spend their money with him. It is possible it could happen.

SOURCE




After 200 years, the British census is axed: Critics accuse Government of ending ten-yearly headcount to try and hide truth about immigration

Ministers are to risk a major row over immigration by scrapping the ten-yearly National Census after more than 200 years.

An announcement axing the survey is expected this month, together with moves to find cheaper ways of counting the population.

But the Government faces accusations of trying to hide the truth about immigration.

The future of the census has been in question since the disastrous 2001 survey led to bureaucratic chaos and a final population figure at least a million short of the reality.

The Office for National Statistics has been exploring replacements based on ‘administrative data’, which could include NHS and tax and benefit records and the electoral roll.

However, officials also want to use the vast databases run by private sector organisations to supplement publicly-held information.

The ONS has canvassed the idea of tapping into information held by internet search engines such as Google and the databases of corporations such as Tesco and the energy supply giants.

The results of the consultation will be made public later this month. Sir Andrew Green of the Migrationwatch UK think-tank warned that the proposals ‘need to be examined very closely’.

‘There must be no question of burying the truth about the scale of immigration,’ he said.

Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Sheffield University, called the idea ‘stupid’.  In an article for the journal Radical Statistics, he said the 2011 census had confounded analysts who believed that the ONS had been over-estimating the population because it has been better at counting immigrants than emigrants.

‘The 2011 census told us that the opposite had in fact occurred,’ said Professor Dorling. ‘ONS had been under-estimating the population and there were far more people living in the UK than they thought.’

'The 2011 census showed us that the population of the UK was rising, still slowly, but faster than the ONS had thought, and faster than almost anywhere else in Europe.

‘Without knowing that fact we could not speculate in a sensible way as to why that might be happening.’

The 2011 census showed that there were 56.1million people in England and Wales, 3.7million up in a decade, and half a million more than official estimates.

The ONS acknowledged that almost all the half-million were eastern European immigrants who were not detected by regular Government surveys.

The first census was taken in 1801 amid fears that a rising population would bring starvation and revolution. It has been held every ten years since – apart from 1941 – but has become a costly exercise. The 2011 headcount cost £500million.

Professor Dorling said that a reason for scrapping the census could be to stop embarrassing social studies, such as those finding that the poor are becoming increasingly less healthy than the well off.

‘One of the reasons you might choose not to have a census is if you wanted the kinds of studies that relied on census data not to be undertaken,’ he said.

He said it was wrong to replace the census with inadequate surveys, saying ‘the politically devious way to cut something is to cut it, but claim that it is continuing.’

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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