Archive for the ‘Legal’ Category

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is making it known that any business price gouging for essential services (medical, fuel, lodging, food, etc.) is subject to prosecution by the Texas Attorney General’s office. Average penalties are $20,000; however, if your price gouge against the elderly, expect the penalty to be in the $250,000 range.

The AG successfully prosecuted after Hurricane Rita and his office is currently taking calls of price gouging right now.

The Dallas County district attorney’s office use of preserved DNA evidence to help free innocent people will be the subject of a TV documentary.

Dallas County commissioners have approved a request from District Attorney Craig Watkins to allow filming, in his offices, for the Discovery Channel program.

The contract, approved Tuesday, will be with a company based in England — Touch Productions Ltd.

Watkins established the conviction integrity unit so prosecutors, aided by law students, can examine hundreds of old cases where convicted criminals have requested DNA testing.

Details were not immediately available on when the planned two-hour program will air.

This was posted on FoxNews:

Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive.

The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

“Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.”

The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.

Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere.

Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population.

“There’s no question there’s a variety of suggestions that people are in fact returning,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Remittances, which is the money immigrants send home to Mexico, have gone down dramatically over the past year. Again, probably part the economy, but also part enforcement, leading to fewer people being here.”

Advocates for immigrants are disturbed by the trend. Albert Ruiz, an organizer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, agrees that more undocumented immigrants are going home — but says families are being torn apart in the process.

If a father is deported, Ruiz says, his family members in America are forced either to fend for themselves or follow him to a country where they’ve never even lived.

“So the mother is saying we should return home with the breadwinner of the family to Mexico, and the children are saying, I don’t want to leave, I’m a U.S. citizen, I don’t know that country,” said Ruiz.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon plans to help returning nationals by providing food, medical care and temporary shelter if needed. But reports are already out in Mexico that the large number of illegal immigrants returning home could drive down wages and put pressure on social services — the same concerns many Americans have with illegals living and working in the U.S.

For those of us in the biking world, a frequent Sunday afternoon hangout was brutalized last night by a 29-year-old man who was arrested early Thursday after fleeing from police and crashing his car into the Dubliner Irish Pub on Greenville Avenue.

Michael D. Andersen was being held in the Dallas County Jail on charges of driving while intoxicated and evading arrest.

Shortly before 3 a.m., an officer saw Mr. Andersen’s black Nissan pickup hit a curb along the North Central Expressway service road, blowing out the right side tires, Dallas police say. When an officer attempted a traffic stop, the pickup sped away.

The pickup turned onto Goodwin Avenue, running several stop signs before turning again onto Greenville and crashing into the popular pub, damaging the interior.

Mr. Andersen has previously faced charges of DWI and marijuana possession.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, more than 52,000 people in the state who have submitted an application for a first-time concealed handgun license or renewal since the beginning of the year. This is an almost 5 percent increase over the first six months of 2007.

The crunch – which some say is spurred by concerns about rising crime, the state’s new castle law and uncertainty about future gun laws – has created a ballooning backlog of applications for the department and angered gun proponents.

On average, new applicants are waiting between 80 and 90 days for their licenses; renewals are taking about 70 to 80 days to process. By law, new applications should take no more than 60 days and renewals 45 days to process unless a required background check raises any flags.

The DPS is paying overtime and has hired an additional 11 temporary employees to help expedite processing. The department says it will be playing a game of catch-up for the foreseeable future.

Last September, many instructors noticed their classes filling once the state’s castle and traveling laws took effect last September.

The castle law authorizes residents to use deadly force to protect their property in some situations without requiring them to retreat first. The traveling law allows those without a license to ride with a gun in their vehicle.

Many students are saying that crime is in places that it wasn’t before and they feel it’s creeping closer to their doorsteps. Other applicants are afraid of anti-gun laws that could come on the heels of the upcoming presidential election.

While Republican candidate John McCain supports gun rights, Democratic candidate Barack Obama favors individuals’ right to bear arms but also a government’s right to regulate them.

But a Supreme Court decision last month that struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., could potentially loosen restrictions.

Gun safety advocates say the court’s decision shouldn’t be a free pass to rewrite gun laws.

Under current law, Texas allows private businesses to ban weapons, and guns are prohibited in certain places, such as government buildings and college campuses.

Gun advocates hope those with concealed-weapon licenses eventually will be given the right to carry their guns on campuses and to secure areas at their workplaces.

Additionally, a petition seeking to change the concealed-carry law to open-carry has picked up some steam in recent weeks, with almost 18,000 people having electronically signed it.

The corner convenience store might not be the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to cleaning up neighborhood blight.

But in poorer parts of Dallas, such shops are frequently plastered front to back with mini-billboards advertising everything from cigarettes to Frito pie.

To officials at Dallas City Hall, those signs advertise something else, too – the poverty of surrounding neighborhoods.

It drew little notice, but last week, the City Council enacted restrictions that target those signs, hoping to clean up the way convenience stores and other mom-and-pop shops look in neighborhoods around the city.

The ordinance limits how much of a building’s facade and windows can be covered with signs.

Specifically, windows and glass doors, many of which are completely covered today, must be 80 percent clear so patrons can see in and out of the store. And outside walls and facades that have served as little more than street-level billboards must have no more than 25 percent of their surface covered with signs.

Store owners rarely, if ever, pay for the signs that cover their stores.

They are provided by corporations such as Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper, who advertise their brands on the top half of a sign and whatever the store owner wants on the bottom half.

In part because they come at no cost to store owners, the signs proliferate.

Police have long expressed concern that they can’t see inside some of the businesses.

According to the ordinance, windows don’t have to be cleared for a year. After the grace period is up, code officers will be able to issue tickets for $200 to $2,000 for each violation.

The City Council’s new rules governing signs for Dallas business:

Dallas County has begun a traffic ticket roundup to collect revenue on more than 600,000 unpaid tickets. Some of the tickets are decades old, but they are limited to tickets written by Dallas County sheriff’s deputies and deputy constables.

During the roundup, the Dallas County sheriff’s office will be issuing warrants. The total amount of unpaid traffic tickets is more than $200 million. The revenue from the tickets will help make up the $34 million shortfall in the county’s budget.

If you have an unpaid traffic ticket that is less than twelve days old, you can now pay online with a credit card. Go to the Dallas County web site between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. any day of the week, read the instructions, make sure you have your citation in front of you, and click the big, red “Begin” button at the bottom of the page.

If you have an unpaid ticket that is more than twelve days old — as are the tickets targeted in this roundup — you must appear in court. It should say on the ticket which court to appear at so give them a call to schedule a time.

You can also call any of the many defense attorneys that will represent you at court. If the ticket has gone to warrant stage, it’s usually around $150 to retain their services — but they will the ones to schlep to court more than likely and not you!