Wow. A retired firefighter. The irony and the tragedy.
Hope he sees a long prison term, as well as losing that pension.
Thrag
5369
From another article on the arrest:
His arrest is not connected to the death of Officer Brian Sicknick, who also was attacked with a fire extinguisher during the storming of the Capitol.
I still hope he gets a long prison sentence, as well as losing that pension.
My first boss in tech was a very intelligent, kindly older gentlemen. He provided me with invaluable mentorship as I started my tech career. One day, his sleeve was pulled up and I saw the camp tattoo on his arm. He’d been in one of the camps as a child. I’d learned and read about the Holocaust in school and after, but nothing drove it home like seeing that tattoo on that man’s arm.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was shaking my head and say, I truly don’t give a fuck about the Shaman diet.
From what Ken White talked about on ATPL yesterday, the list of potential crimes that guy with the fire extinguisher could be charged with ought to make him very, very, very afraid right now.
Well TSA being a government agency, would raise serious 1st amendment issues. Delta saying you people are assholes we don’t want you on our airline is perfectly fine.
Frankly the standards for the no-flight list need to be much higher than have been. For US citizens I think you should be convicted of serious crime before being place on it.
Nesrie
5377
It’s kind of strange you think the two are not related.
Matt_W
5378
Lol. The TSC’s No Fly List contains like 50,000 names. There’s no due process or redress for having your name on it. The ACLU has filed suit multiple times.
Menzo
5379
You can’t even ask if your name is on the list. The TSA’s stance is that you can find out if you’re on the list when you book a flight and are then denied passage when you go to the airport.
OK, that’s kind of wild. It’s an overused term, but Kafka-esque seems appropriate.
Menzo
5381
By the way, if you have the same name as someone on the no-fly list, you’re fucked. There is no way to prove that you are not that person.
Check out the “notable cases” section of the wikipedia page.
Here’s are just two maddening examples:
- Asif Iqbal, a management consultant and legal resident of the United States born in Pakistan, plans to sue the U.S. government because he is regularly detained when he tries to fly. He has the same name as a former Guantanamo detainee.[35][36] Iqbal’s work requires a lot of travel, and, even though the Guantanamo detainee has been released, his name remains on the No Fly List, and Iqbal the software consultant experiences frequent, unpredictable delays and missed flights.[37] He is pushing for a photo ID and birthdate matching system, in addition to the current system of checking names.[38]
- Robert J. Johnson, a surgeon and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, was told in 2006 that he was on the list, although he had had no problem in flying the month before. Johnson was running as a Democrat against U.S. Representative John McHugh, a Republican. Johnson wondered whether he was on the list because of his opposition to the Iraq War. He stated, “This could just be a government screw-up, but I don’t know, and they won’t tell me.”[39] Later, a 60 Minutes report brought together 12 men named Robert Johnson, all of whom had experienced problems in airports with being pulled aside and interrogated. The report suggested that the individual whose name was intended to be on the list was most likely the Robert Johnson who had been convicted of plotting to bomb a movie theater and a Hindu temple in Toronto.[9]
I understand that the No-Fly list is seriously fucked up. I’m on the side of the ACLU and their suits.
magnet
5384
He’s not going to lose his pension, because he already retired. Pension forfeiture applies to crimes that are related to official duties (and in Pennsylvania it only applies to theft of public money, forgery, bribery, abusing students, witness tampering, and a few other non-violent crimes).
Sadly, I don’t think that forcing rich/right-wing/white/whatever people in to the grinder of the judicial system will cause people to suddenly realize that the system is inhumane and broken and needs fixing. I think people will just move them from the “they’re like me” category in their brain to the “well, they’re in prison so they deserve it” category (with the poor/black/brown/etc people) and that’s that.
If it wasn’t so serious, you can imagine FBI agents dealing with stuff like this absolutely laughing out loud.
It’s like that episode of the Wire, when Herk goes off on how they’re going to need to change drug laws to give white guys a fighting chance.
