A Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit bound plane last Christmas Day, with a bomb hidden in his underpants, will now have a few more months to figure out how he’ll defend himself.  A federal judge set January 12 as the date for his next pretrial discovery.

24 year old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told a judge at his pretrial conference in federal court today, that he still wants to represent himself, and that he doesn’t want a court assigned “standby counsel”, Anthony Chambers, to have information about his case.  ”I don’t think its’ necessary” he said.

Judge Nancy Edmunds, who seems to be trying to save Abdulmutallab from himself, tried to explain that Chambers was simply there to help him and that he could only help if he had all the paperwork, access to evidence and other information needed.   ”I’m overriding you on this… you don’t have legal training in U.S. law… you don’t know the rules of evidence.   Mr. Chambers can assist you, but he can only do it if he has discovery in this case, so I’m ordering the government to provide him with discovery” Edmunds said.

Edmunds explained to the alleged wanna-be terrorist that he has a right to speedy trial but because he fired his taxpayer funded counsel, he would probably need more time to go over his case.  Edmunds asked if he waived his right to go to trial sooner, “Well yeah, that’s fine, now that you’ve given him 90 days to look at the material, its not a problem for me” Abdulmutallab replied.