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

What do you like about Trump and his policies, and what do you want more of?

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So…80-some posts in and where are the great BB Defenders of Free Speech who took up strong words in defense of Ann Coulter’s right to hate? For an incident where the First Amendment protecting free speech actually applies? Here’s the list:
@burllamb;
@mmiller3669;
@dxl;
@VenTatsu;
@wysinwyg;
@white_noise;
@Max_Blancke;
and a few other maybes.

All no shows.

Edit: Thank you, Max, for showing up to contribute, BTW. In all seriousness.
Edit2: And now @white_noise

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IIRC, once her right to free speech was curtailed, her subsequent actions are (somewhat) irrelevant. She can make a fuss all she wants at that point, because the 1st Amendment takes precedence over disrupting a meeting. Those rights include standing up for her rights, which was the exact content of her “disruptive” protest to being removed. It was her removal that caused the disruption. If the police hadn’t forced her to leave for specious reasons, no meaningful disruption would have occurred.

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More Constitutionally-bound justices. Smaller government; fewer politicians, fewer bureaucrats. Wiser foreign policy. Lower taxes which is entirely responsible if the size of the state is slashed. Not that I trust Trump to accomplish all this, but far better than Democrats continually expanding the purview of government.

What exactly do you mean by constitutionally bound justices?

What do you consider to be wise foreign policy?

Why do you want lower taxes, and what parts of the state do you want slashed?

Forgive the litany of questions, the broad terms don’t really mean anything to me on their own.

Edited to add, how have democrats expanded the purview of government?

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Funny.

That’s what many on the Left thought Donald Trump would do to the Republican Party in 2016: that it would guarantee the election of Clinton.

It didn’t work out so well for the Left.

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Any meeting? Any disruption.

Nope. I’m not going to set you up for a strawman argument.

Laughing at THIS meeting was reasonable free speech. Insisting on her rights at THIS meeting was reasonable free speech. Enough said. No need to pull out BS extreme examples to try prop up a weak argument.

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There’s a REALLY BIG difference between the government prosecuting someone for their speech and a private entity not allowing someone in because they were an ass.

If you don’t understand the difference between the two, you shouldn’t be discussing the first amendment.

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Really have to go, but google the expansion of regulation under Obama. Staggering.

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I’ve already formed my opinion of what happened under the Obama administration. I wanted to know how you saw it.

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Well thanks, but none of that really offers any insight other than your preference for conservative judges, closed borders and withdrawal of foreign aid.

This is another broad judgement. If you are unwilling to give specific examples, I have to wonder about the real substance of your statements and your understanding of the issues.

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Well, I read the interviews with the jury foreperson and other members of the jury. They explained that she was convicted for her actions after she laughed, but that they felt both that the arresting officer was being somewhat harsh ( it was supposedly her first time arresting someone), and also that the law forbidding conduct that interrupts the legislative proceedings was overly strict, but that the activist clearly violated the law while being escorted out.
So, although the activist framed the story as one in which she was convicted of laughing, that does not seem to be the case. And most of the media reports framed it the same way.

“We did not agree that she should have been removed for laughing,” the jury foreperson stated. Some jurors indicated they believed Coronado made a mistake. “Ms. Fairooz’s comments as she was being escorted out caused the session to stop,” the jury foreperson said. “It disrupted the session.”

Ms. Fairooz was also arrested in 2007 for disrupting a congressional hearing.

"Capitol Police said later five people were arrested, including Ali-Fairooz, who was charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer.
She was also charged with defacing government property for smearing the red paint from her hands on the hallway wall outside the hearing room. The other four protesters faced disorderly conduct charges.


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If I understand it correctly (IANAL), once the officer unconstitutionally started to remove her, everything that followed was protected speech. The officer in question caused the disruption, not the “activist.”

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No, only Republicans are allowed to do things like this. It is known.

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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.”

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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.

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

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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.

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