Code Pink activist laughed at Jeff Sessions, now faces a year in prison

I understand that is the position that the activists are taking.I found the following:
“Rule 15.
Audiences.-Persons admitted into the audience for open hearings of the committee shall conduct themselves with the dignity, decorum, courtesy and propriety traditionally observed by the Senate. Demonstrations of approval or disapproval of any statement or act by any member or witness are not allowed. Persons creating confusion or distractions or otherwise disrupting the orderly proceeding of the hearing shall be expelled from the hearing.”

2 Likes

Yes… Links to breitbart, heritage foundation, dailysignal, freebeacon, americans for tax reform… All wonderfully partisan “news” sources…

See, when you have a country of 300+ million people in the modern era and are the guarantor of the Free World, you need regulations. Regulation is, or can be, your friend [provided you don’t elect orange goblins to positions of absolute power]. Especially if you live next to a coal mine or on top of a fracking site. Or you don’t want your browsing history sold to third parties. We aren’t all farmers anymore, nor do we receive our mail weekly by pony express. Your libertarian utopia is actually something from the 1890s: and its actually a thinly-veiled corporatists utopia.

11 Likes

No need to ‘wonder;’ obvious subterranean bridge dweller is obvious.

9 Likes

Jurors don’t always understand the law. A jury might convict you for murder because you have a swastika tattooed on your face, but that doesn’t meant that swastika tattoos are murder. She was charged with the laugh, and that’s what she was convicted of. The reasons why a jury decides the way it does are legally regarded as a kind of black box that you aren’t supposed to look inside - when you examine why a jury convicted, it will often be unjust (such as being convicted for something you did after the thing you are being charged with).

Her actions while being escorted out were in the context of being escorted out - itself a disruption to the proceedings. Which is probably why she was charged with laughing and not with how she behaved while being escorted out. Arresting people for how they behaved while you were arresting them when they hadn’t done anything to warrant arrest in the first place may be a real thing that really happens, but it’s also transparently bullshit.

Either the laugh was illegal or the entire thing was the state coming down on someone for free (and possibly automatic) expression of their opinion of their government.

“Shall be expelled” - exactly. Not shall be brought up on charges. Removing people is almost always going to be disruptive to the proceedings, and so it’s something you only do when the option of letting them stay is even more disruptive. But you expect the part where you are having someone to be escorted out to be disruptive. I’ve been in rooms where protesters were escorted out and I’ve seen it on TV. I’ve never seen people carry on as if it weren’t happening, I’ve always seen everything come to a halt until the escorting out was complete.

It was the escorting out itself that brought the proceedings to a halt, not her actions during that time. That’s why they didn’t charge her with that, but instead confused the jury into convicting her on that basis.

15 Likes

14 Likes

It just amazes me that this makes it past people’s smell test. Some of the same people who were defending Coulter’s right to “free speech” (as interpreted as her right to be paid by a private entity to give a speech to a particular assembled group of people in a particular place) can say, “Well, Fairooz broke the rules so them’s the breaks.”

The first amendment grants freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom to petition governments to address grievances. The law always cares more about the specific than the general, so the most important part of the first amendment is that last part - the freedom to petition government.

Freedom of speech has been interpreted in America as meaning that governments can’t regulate election spending. It’s been interpreted as saying that Hobby Lobby didn’t have to pay a tax because they didn’t like what that tax was being spent on. Freedom of speech has been seen to trump the most fundamental powers of government.

The idea that the most specific part of the first amendment is overridden by the desperate importance of removing someone who laughed is absolutely unfathomable.

If you are defending the very broad principle that people ought to be able to speak their minds in the case of Coulter, and that the government has to give you whatever licence plate you want in the “ASSIMIL8” case, but you are not willing to defend the extremely narrow principle that he government ought not arrest people for expressing displeasure with the government in this case, then you simply don’t give two fucks about the first amendment (or the general human right to free expression for those of us outside the US), it’s just a thin veneer over a worship of power.

21 Likes

Slightly off topic, but does this have a name? Substituting actual argument for “google it”?
I think I’ll call this a “Google gallop”

Edited for context.

13 Likes

I think of it as LYGTFM.

8 Likes

What is it with the bootlicker class? Ignoring the finer points of the law cited in this case and the specifics of this woman’s actions, don’t you see a difference between:

  1. The law clearly states X, so it appears Y was in violation, and
  2. Take that, fucker! That’s what you get for stepping out of line!

Hold on to your hats, conservatives: I don’t want anyone to go to jail for nonviolently (and briefly!) disrupting a meeting, whether through a single scoffing laugh or by arguing with a cop for dragging them away. Kick out an unruly, disruptive person? That sounds reasonable. Fine them? Maybe. Depends. But this? This is nuts. Is this really the America you want to live in?

9 Likes

And then departing post haste!

13 Likes

A Senate hearing is akin to a court hearing. In a Court of Law an outburst like this a judge would have charged her with Contempt of Court.

It wasn’t who she was that got her in trouble, it was the lack of respect for the proceeding.

She laughed at a Senate HEARING. It wasn’t a speech, forum or panel. This is akin to being in a Court of Law. Try laughing during a court proceeding and see how quickly the judge reacts. Ever heard of Contempt of Court?

What would a secure border look like and how would it function?

7 Likes

The United States is NOT a democracy. It is a federal republic

It’s a constitutional republic, and a synonym for “republic” is “representative democracy.”

10 Likes

The same way any african-american gets jail time for daring to question authority in most any situation since there were african-americans.

We still gotta laugh tho. How’s the old saying go?

"First they came for those guys, hahaha and wow that was fucked up!

Then they came for the other ones and I thought sure as shit glad that ain’t me, Dayum hahaha!

Then they came for me and I was all, like, HAHAHA GUYS QUIT IT PHHTHH YER KILLIN ME I’M DYIN OVER HERES!"

5 Likes

The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

A republic is:

  • a sovereign state
  • whose ultimate power rests in its citizens entitled to vote
  • who (directly or indirectly) elect representatives to wield that power.

A democracy is:

  • a form of government, whose power rests equally in its citizens,
  • who (directly or indirectly) elect representatives to wield that power.

Absent qualification, not all citizens in a ‘republic’ are necessarily entitled to vote, and absent qualification, a ‘democracy’ is not necessarily sovereign.

As both, a “democratic republic” is ideally:

  • a sovereign state,
  • whose ultimate power rests in its citizens, equally entitled to vote,
  • who (directly or indirectly) elect representatives to wield that power.

So, since the U.S. is a sovereign state, the only thing that separates the two is the question of suffrage - is everyone entitled to vote?

Well, obviously they’re not, as non-citizens, minors, and, in some states, citizens with criminal records, are not allowed to vote. So, if you want to be pedantic, yes, you’re right, the U.S. is not a democracy.

However, given that the U.S. considers everyone born within its borders to be a citizen, and every citizen over the age of 18 (theoretically) is allowed to vote unless a criminal conviction causes them to forfeit that right, I’d say that it’s a distinction without a difference.

And, specifically in this case, since Ms. Fairooz presumably has the right to vote, I don’t see what that distinction has to do with @Ignatius’s point: That citizens not having the ability to laugh at those in power undermines the integrity of that system and the ability to elect representatives to wield power on their behalf (a concept common to both systems).

13 Likes

This isn’t a fedora. It is a trilby.

Well, when you put it that way, maybe 5–10 years would be more appropriate. A hearing! I declare!

16 Likes

As I recall, the insistence on decorum is why we have a racist as attorney general.

12 Likes

I suspect that the judge and defense attorney(s) probably do have a good grasp of the law. If not, there is always the possibility of appeal.
I sort of see your argument as being that those responsible for security in the Senate would themselves be guilty of disrupting the proceedings if they are to ever expel a person from the room.
I think it is important to understand that there are times when disruption is going to be illegal. The other two defendants were acquitted of disorderly conduct, because their disruption happened before the Senate was gaveled into session. Ladyvinia made the comparison with a courtroom, which is a good one. We all know that during a court session, the audience is there for transparency of government, not to participate in the trial by heckling or shouting suggestions.
That does not change even though you decide to label your heckling as “protest”, or if you feel very strongly about the trial or hearing in process.