Maybe it's because Miami is such an international place; maybe it's because we've just got so much damn crime — but whatever the reason, the Magic City's juiciest stories always seem to wind up playing out in federal court, and that's where the Herald's Jay Weaver comes in. Weaver has covered the tribunales full time for about four years. Over the past year, he has guided South Floridians through the complexities of former Panamanian general Manuel Noriega's battles with extradition, the wave of rampant Medicare fraud, and, of course, the trial of alleged terrorist José Padilla. Soft-spoken, friendly, unfailingly gracious in person — no small feat at the Herald, where a fair number of writers have the personality of poison ivy — he's also a hell of a good reporter. When seven Miamians were arrested and charged, among other things, with conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower nearly two years ago, Weaver put his nose to the ground. Months before the trial began, he unraveled for readers what is probably the most haphazard and absurd case brought by the Bush administration since ... well, since the last absurd case in the war on terror. When defendant Lyglenson Lemorin was acquitted, and then hauled off to a deportation center anyway, Weaver visited the man's wife and wrote about the Haitian-American family's struggle to remain intact — in terse, pointed language, as always. "Lyglenson Lemorin, acquitted of terrorism charges last week in federal court in Miami," he wrote, "is still a guilty man in the eyes of the U.S. government."