Somewhere in Hell there is a special place being set aside for this pile of shit judge.

[url]http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,55061,00.html[/url]
Federal Judge Throws Out Charge in Shoe Bomb Case
The charge — attempting to wreck a mass transportation vehicle — was filed under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

U.S. District Judge William Young said that although an airplane was engaged in mass transportation it is not a vehicle as defined by the new law.

Read the rest by following the link.

How is this guy a pile of shit judge?  I guess I don't get where you're coming from.  Should the prosecutor have charged him with murder, rape, burglary, and kidnapping, too?  Just because he's a bad guy doesn't mean we should charge him with things he didn't do.  The law as I read it seems pretty vague.  It was originally written for railroads only, which is obvious from the fact that it is in a chapter of the U.S. Code that is titled "Railroads".  Everything else in this chapter is about railroads only, but for this one section they have expanded it to include ferries and other "mass transportation".  I don't think they did a very good job of writing the law, and I think the judge is right to throw out it out in this case.

The language they use implies that they are talking about land and sea transportation, too.  I assume he was charged under Title 18, Section 1993(a)(2) of the U.S. Code, which reads as follows:

"Whoever willfully -- places or causes to be placed any biological agent or toxin for use as a weapon, destructive substance, or destructive device in, upon, or near a mass transportation vehicle or ferry, without previously obtaining the permission of the mass transportation provider, and with intent to endanger the safety of any passenger or employee of the mass transportation provider, or with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, if such act is committed..."

And the definition of "mass transportation", from Section 1993(c)(5):

"the term `mass transportation' has the meaning given to that term in section 5302(a)(7) of title 49, United States Code, except that the term shall include schoolbus, charter, and sightseeing transportation"

If you go to Title 49, Section 5302(a)(7), you read the following:

"The term ''mass transportation'' means transportation by a conveyance that provides regular and continuing general or special transportation to the public, but does not include school bus, charter, or sightseeing transportation."

That makes it sound like it would include airplanes, which might be what Congress intended, but almost everything else in the chapter implies that it doesn't.  When they talk about mass transportation facilities, they only mention things like bus terminals and railyards and don't talk about airports.  When they talk about disabling a mass transportation vehicle, they talk about wrecking or derailing it, not crashing it.  Several places they talk about "bus, rail, or other."  Is the judge supposed to assume that "other" means airplane?  Congress should have been clear if they wanted to apply this to airplanes since nothing else in the surrounding sections applies to airplanes.

He still has eight charges against him.  It's not like he's going to go free.  

I would reluctantly agree with the judge.  Allowing liberal interpretations of the law has introduced such meaningless phrases as "penumbras and emanations" as regards the so-called right to privacy.

It is also fueling the challenge to the AW ban in CA where if the AG had his way you would simply know an AW when you saw it, sort of like porno.

Hard to fall in love with bad law, sorry.

Somehow I think he would have come to a different conclusion if
he or a family member was aboard the flight.

Yeah, he would've recused himself because of the personal involvement.


DoubleFeed's right, we should be dumping on the politicians who wrote and passed the law, not the judge who has to deal with it.

Main Entry: ve·hi·cle  
Pronunciation: 'vE-&-k&l also 'vE-"hi-k&l
Function: noun
Etymology: French véhicule, from Latin vehiculum carriage, conveyance, from vehere to carry -- more at WAY
Date: 1612
1 a : an inert medium (as a syrup) in which a medicinally active agent is administered b : any of various media acting usually as solvents, carriers, or binders for active ingredients or pigments
[b]2 : an agent of transmission : CARRIER[/b]
3 : a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed
[b]4 : a means of carrying or transporting something : CONVEYANCE: as a : MOTOR VEHICLE b : a piece of mechanized equipment [/b]

Happy, happy, joy, joy....

Gotta love to hate politicans/lawyers....

I don't understand.  Why would that change the definition of vehicle that that particular law uses?z

Apparently when TalonJ is on trial for a crime he didn't commit, he wants the judge to be a family member of the victim.

Are they going to charge him with anything else??? attempted murder of a large group of people??? Terrorism?

From an [url=http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2002/011602transcriptreid.htm]Ashcroft press conference[/url]:

"After hearing evidence that Reid received training from al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the grand jury has charged him with the following crimes:

One count of the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

One count of attempted homicide of U.S. nationals overseas.

One count of placing an explosive device on an aircraft.

One count of attempted murder of passengers on an aircraft.

Two counts of interfering with a flight crew.

One count of willfully attempting to set fire to and destroy an aircraft.

One count of using a destructive device during a crime of violence.

And finally, the indictment charges Reid with one count of an new anti-terrorism offense created with the passage of the USA Patriot Act: attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle."

It's only the last count that was dropped.

While I was looking at the Ashcroft transcript (from January 16th BTW), I read the following paragraph:

"As was the case with the charges filed against John Walker Lindh yesterday, our ability to prosecute terrorists has been greatly enhanced by the USA Patriot Act. And I want to take this opportunity once again to thank the Congress for providing us with the necessary tools that we need to protect the safety and security of American citizens."

What a crock of BS!  We didn't need the Patriot Act.  Terrorism was already against the law, in this case it was against seven laws already on the books.