An appellate panel found the judge’s hostility toward federal prosecutors and refusal to impose a sentence longer than 18 months for a man convicted of supporting terrorists warranted removing him from the case. A man walks in front of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in 2015. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman, File) (CN) — Finding a Houston federal judge who called Justice Department prosecutors “blue-suited thugs” and compared the government to the Islamic State in refusing to impose a longer sentence on a man convicted of supporting the terrorist group, a Fifth Circuit panel on Thursday scrapped the sentence and ordered the case be reassigned to another judge.