http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110518/us_yblog_thelookout/loud-cell-phone-talker-removed-from-quiet-car-by-police

A woman who was escorted off an Amtrak train by police this weekend after she allegedly refused to stop talking loudly on her cell-phone has the Internet cheering her fate.

Civilians and quiet-car champions are supporting her ejection for violating policy at high volume during the 16-hour journey. It doesn't help her cause that she became belligerent when confronted about it by one of her fellow passengers.

KOMO News reports that Lakeysha Beard says she felt "disrespected" by the incident, though passengers said it was Beard who was being rude by refusing to stop yapping while sitting in one of the train's designated quiet cars. She had not stopped talking since the train pulled out of Oakland, California, 16 hours before it reached Salem, Oregon, when a passenger confronted her about the talking. That's when Beard got "aggressive," KATU reports, and conductors stopped the train so that police could remove her and charge her with disorderly conduct.

Amtrak created quiet cars in 2001 when a group of passengers who rode the Philadelphia to D.C. route every morning asked if they could reserve a car where cell-phone loudmouths weren't welcome. Ever since, the rare havens of quiet have become a battlefield between silence-loving rule-followers and rebellious cell-phone addicts. Gawker suggested, not without a dose of sincerity, that the cops who removed Beard from the train were heroes, and that Beard should be charged with "unspeakable crimes against humanity and sentenced to life on some distant planet where there are no reception bars, ever."

According to a very scientific reader poll at The Huffington Post, 77 percent of people were happy the woman was hauled off the train. And CNN personality Anderson Cooper blasted the woman on his "ridiculist" last night, asking "What could someone possibly talk about for 16 hours?" He even compared being stuck on the train with a person who would do such a thing to the "fifth circle of hell."

Score one for the good guys.

I was so happy to read that. I have always had good luck whenever riding in the quiet car on Acela but I wish people extended their courtesy in all sections of the train. A couple months ago, I sat near a woman (who coincidentally looked a lot like this lady ) glued to her cell while her little boy did the, "MOM! MOMMY! MA!..." thing NON-STOP and she never once stopped yapping to tell the poor boy to be quiet. Ignoring your child is your prerogative but the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer.

She has the audacity to say she was disrespected even as she showed contempt and utter disregard for everyone around her. First, someone should tell her disrespected is not actually a verb. Then, they should ban her from Amtrak until she loses the phone.