Great Defense
Last year an MIT student went into the Logan Airport with what looked like a bomb. Her legal defense is claiming:
“People make these objects part of their identity. It’s a part of their personal expression,” he said. “They are legitimate forms of First Amendment expression.”
To which this clever blogger, Blogonaut, responds with:
Blogonaut would add that a 9mm round from an airport police handgun might be a legitimate “free speech” reply to a person with a battery-powered rectangular device on their chest with flashing lights and apparent plastic explosive in their hands.
February 1st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
attention whore
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 am
Well this girl definitely had her Bad Idea Jeans on at the time, but summary execution is, shall we say, not really an ideal fit to the crime.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html
And is Blogonaut Bull Connor’s web site, or what?
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
From ARticle:
“Update 7: Christy from Instructables.com says (1125am PT),
I talked to Star briefly — she’s out on bail, is just fine, and thinks the whole thing is crazy.
Of course, they’ve impounded her sweatshirt, so she’s got to do something else for Career Day.”
I think her new career day project should be an easily disguised small object that can double as a shank. Since her career is probably going to be “inmate” for a while.
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
From the description it sounds like the thing she was wearing didn’t look anything like a bomb… I’m not sure we want to allow the police to shoot anyone that has something they think looks like a bomb, given that they aparently can’t distinguish between bombs and sightly unusual clothing. It just gives state agents a whole hell of a lot of discretionary power.
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
On the whole I support our right to bare arms…. That makes me completely unable to see why it would be bad for someone to bring something like a bomb into an airport.
February 2nd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
How was she to know.
There aren’t any “No Bombs or bomb like materials” signs on the entrance door and all of the “No Weapons” signs have little pictures of hand guns!
Maybe it is time for the government to come up with a new sticker for public buildings, especially since all of those “no guns/weapons” signs work so well in high schools and malls.
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
On the whole I am against gun free zones….