So, you are defending the woman using the “ignorance of the law” as an excuse strategy? Interesting. I’ve never seen that work before.
A line in my last post should read “Before you guys get your panties in a knot …” of course. :smack:
As for putting my self (or even myself) in her position, I understand the urge to make that joke. In a tense situation you would like to lighten things up. But I have this thing called intelligence, where I weigh the consequences of my actions. And if I am wrong, then I expect to be called on it. (Slight hijack: This is why on the rare occasions I have been caught speeding I have been polite to the officer involved who is, after all, only doing his job.)
What she did wasn’t simply mistaken or ignorant (both of which are excusable) but stupid, and I have a very very low stupidity threshold.
So she was supposed to memorize the entire US Code before coming over?
On the rare occasions I get pulled over I usually tell people in my car to stash doobies and m-80s as the cop walks up. Clearly I’m claiming to have bombs and drugs in my car.
She repetably said it beacuse she thought the guard was telling her to repeat it. Would you rather she willfully disobayed the guard?
if the court is just the punishment will be less then a week.
Man you guys just don’t get it. You really don’t. Are you really that stupid, or just yanking my chain?
For those of you who still insist that the girl did nothing seriously wrong, I suggest that you never go near airports, train stations or even behind the wheel of a car. Because it is obvious you do not have the sense of perspective necessary to operate as a normal functioning member of society. I wouldn’t want to be around you because how would I ever know if you were about to make a “joke” that could have potentially serious consequences? After all, according to your arguments, if it’s just a joke and no one gets seriously hurt, it’s all OK, right?
Case in point. A few years back I want participating in a bicycle rally. Now understand these rallies occur on public roads where we bicyclists have to share the road with cars. This means I stay on the far right side of the road to allow cars to easily pass me. Anyway, by about mile 40 the field was fairly well spaced out and I was pretty much on my own. A car comes up from behind and then suddenly screeches its tires and veers directly at me. With only a split second to react, I go off into a ditch. Just before I go down and cartwheel a few times, I can see in my peripheral vision that the car pulled back onto the road and its occupants were laughing hysterically. You see, they were only joking. They had never meant to actually hit me. They apparently thought the fact that I thought they were going to hit me was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
It didn’t make my cuts and bruises hurt any less.
In this case yes, on this board yes (AMNHL of course). It seems to me she unaware of what the law was. There our some middle eastern countries where having a Christian Bible is a very grave crime. Say you went there with a Bible and didn’t know it was a crime. Would you deserve the punishment?
In my mind no. I think some allowance for ignorance should be granted forien guests.
See, this is what we call “irony.” You tell me I don’t get it for calling for a minor punishment, and then you compare what she did to yelling fire in a crowded theater, or pretending to run someone off the road.
Follow your metaphor through, please. In the crowded theater example, you mention people getting crushed to death. In the bicycle example, you mentioned your cuts and bruises.
Since you’re claiming these crimes are bad precisely because they hurt people, please point out the hurt done by this girl.
Those people that ran you off the road? I’d love to see jail time for them. Do you agree that they deserve more jail time than this girl deserves? After all, they actually hurt someone, and it was predictable ahead of time that they’d hurt someone.
She didn’t hurt anyone, and it was extremely unlikely that she WOULD hurt anyone. What she did was dumb, and it inconvenienced people, and she should get dinged for doing that. But she didn’t hurt anyone.
Get it now?
(By the way, I’m not on Netscape’s side of this argument: I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse, and I do think it should receive just enough punishment to deter folks from committing a similar offense)
Daniel
Are you playing Devil’s Advocate here or do you really believe what you’re saying? In EVERY SINGLE AIRPORT in the United States, there are signs posted by the check-in desk and by the security checkpoint stating something to the effect of “Comments about bombs and guns will be taken seriously and will be prosecuted the fullest extent of the law”. There is no memorization required. The signs are all at eye level, they’re all very large, and they are generally put in places where you almost have to avoid them in order to make you look at them.
What she did is absolutely indefensible. And yet, here you are defending her, the champion of the downtrodden and colossally stupid. Good on you, pal. :rolleyes:
So clearly you got hurt then? I know what you meant to say though.
I think there is difference between a ironic joke (the British do seem to love their irony) and makeing someone think they were about to be run over.
Devil’s advocate to a degree, however I do think the possible punishment is way too harsh.
That’s besides the point. Am I threatening to endager lives and property with my bible? Am I delaying planefuls of people from safely entering or exiting the country? Regardless, it is up to me to know what the laws of my destination are. If I make a right turn on red in NYC, do I deserve teh ticket? Damn right I do. Right turns on red are perfectly legal here in PA, but not in NYC. I may not be happy about the ticket, but that’s not the question. I deserve the ticket. I have potentially endangered lives and well-being of the pedestrians in the crosswalk who assumed I knew it was illegal to turn right on red, just like this lady potentially endangered and disrupted hundreds of people with a poorly timed joke.
When I was about 13, I was in a small airport with my family. We were sitting in some chairs at a gate, watching people go through security screening.
A woman in weird clothes with a giant beehive hairdo came through, and I watched one of the guards run his wand over her hair! Laughing, I turned to my mom and said, “Ha ha, they think the beehive lady has a bomb in her hair!”
My mother gave me a sharp elbow to the ribs. The lesson: you just don’t say the word “bomb” in an airport. There are even signs in airports warning people of this rule!
The rule is there for a good reason. Sounds silly on the surface, but it’s a rule for our protection and for the protection of the security personnel. It’s pretty straightforward.
Tossing her in the clink is a waste of taxpayer resources, though. Make her pay a giant fine and send her on her way.
The middle eastern govrments mentioned earlier Consider the Bible a potential disruption to their country.
Please explain how her joke endangered anyone’s life.
netscape: Dude, I’m starting to think you aren’t entirely serious.
Daniel: First, let me apologize if I called you stupid. I certainly do not believe you are stupid. I am simply honestly puzzled by what you are saying.
Let me see if I understand you. You are saying that because no one was hurt, she should get off light. OK, there are two problems with this. First, while no one was physically hurt, this does not mean no harm was done. Let us say, hypothetically, that BigMegaLargeCorp files a false report with the SEC that causes a stock market crash. They then make an announcement that it was just a joke. Should they go unpunished because no one was physically hurt? Similarly, what this girl did caused significant disruption to a large international airport. Airports are very expensive places to run so I can see the immediate monetary damage done by this girl to run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the second point is even more damning. What she did was throw a monkey wrench into airport security. This security system should be alert in looking for actual threats. If their time is wasted following a false lead, then this means that is time that could have been better spent. In addition, if she is not punished severely then this could lead to a rash of other dumbass teenagers pulling the same stunt, tying up even more security resources. If this “joke” subsequently becomes a regular occurrence, and punishment continues to be inconsequential, then it becomes very easy for terrorists to stage an attack using unwitting teenagers pulling this “joke” as a diversion for their real activities. So you see, it is not so much the immediate harm that she did that is at issue, it is the very high stakes of the game that call for the harsh punishment.
However, I do not entirely disagree with you. Certainly, the fact that no one was actually harmed should alleviate the sentence somewhat, and I believe it will. If she gets a 10-15 year sentence, that would be too much. But about six months in jail (say a 2 year sentence, with probation after six months served) would be more in order. The jail time must be sufficient enough deterrent to make anyone thinking about it say “whoa, that’s harsh”.
Are there signs all over the place warning me that posession of a Bible is a felony and will be punished to the fullest extent of the law? Has anyone ever boarded a plane or bus through my Bible and hijacked it, blew it up, or used it as a weapon to kill thousands of innocent people?
I am in line behind you. I overhear you make “a joke” about having a bomb. I panic. I get several people in a panic, who each get several more in a panic. In the frenzied rush to get themselves away from the area where the “threat” originated, pushing and shoving ensues. People fall down and are injured. The stress of the situation causes someone to have a heart attack. Trained security personnel who ordinarily could have assisted the heart attack victim are busy detaining you and searching your belongings.
Granted, the above example is unlikely, but it is possible.
A fifteen-year sentence is ridiculously out-of-proportion to the offense.
However, the offense is illegal and stupid and highly disruptive, and it must be punished. Not so much to prevent this particular idiot from repeating it, which I’d assert is unlikely in the extreme, but as an example to others.
So I say she submits to public flogging.
An overnight stay for pre-flogging processing, then an hour on the post, then another overnight stay for medical observation. And done. With a clip on the news channels. Joking: Gone.
My tongue is somewhat in cheek here, obviously. But as I think about it, what if the statute said, “If you joke at the security desk, you get five years in jail or public flogging, your choice.” Who would choose flogging?
You mean besides masochists? 
Why three bombs? I can see claiming to have one bomb, but why would you say you had three?
Weird.
I actually do believe that she only repeated it because she was scared and thought they had asked her to literally repeat what she had just said. The mind does funny things when it realizes it is suddenly in big trouble, and strangely enough repeating her bomb claim was probably her attempt at falling in line.
As for the punishment, I can understand why the max is so high - it is to scare people into not doing this. That doesn’t mean she’ll actually get anything near that.
Hopefully she’ll get a month at most (if my guess is correct that she only repeated herself becaue she suddenly realized that she was in big trouble and just did exactly what she was told).
She should do, at a minimum, a half hour or so of community service (in Miami) for every person-minute of inconvenience she caused, if she caused flights to be delayed for example.
Miami International Airport served 2647907 passengers in January 2003. That’s 85416 per day. If the average person stay two hours at the airport, there were 7118 people at the airport. If the flights were delayed 15 minutes, that’s 106770 person-minutes. That equals 182 years of community service.
:dubious:
Criminal infractions like this are what stockades are for. A day or two of public humiliation would teach her a lesson.